The Press Box - Ep. 164: ‘The Masked Man Show’ With Aubrey Sitterson

Episode Date: August 10, 2016

David Shoemaker is joined by comics writer and 'Straight Shoot' host Aubrey Sitterson to discuss what WWE can learn from PWG (4:00), wrestling's place in the Olympic ringer (38:30), and Raw’s main-eventers (43:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and whether or not you're getting a good deal all right from your phone. So drop your old ticket app and experience buying and selling tickets the way it should be. To start using Seatgeek, download the free Seatgeek app or go to Seatgeek.com. Welcome to The Maskman Show. Welcome to Channel 33. Welcome to The Ringer. This is not a website. This is a podcast.

But anyway, I'm sitting here on this wonderful, wonderful lovely morning with my old friend, Aubrey Sitterson. Aubrey, how you doing? I'm good. How are you? Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. And welcome to L.A., man. How long have you been out here?

Just under two months, I think. It's been a blur. Are you on board yet? Oh, yeah. Like, I'm working really hard at this job. Yeah. But, you know, if I'm going to be working a job where I just get to go outside and, like, breathe fresh air a few times a day, I'd rather it be L.A. or than New York air. I mean, that much I can say.

This is kind of a brutal summer for you to have moved out here because it's been, like, unseasonably nasty, nasty hot. It's funny because the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, it's funny. The first, like, I mean, the first literally like four out of five times I came to L.A. When I was writing for Grantland, I would come out during the summer. And almost every time I would come out and people would be like, oh, it's a heat wave. Everybody's losing their mind. And then I'd go outside and it would be like 90 degrees. And I'd be like, this is not a heat wave.

Like, you know, it's a different thing. In the south, it's hotter. In New York, at least 90 degrees in New York, it's like, you know, air conditioners are breaking and stuff. I'm like you. I grew up in the South and then moved to New York. And so I am, I thought myself well conditioned for humidity. but I've been out here for four years now and it's just like this summer

because El Nino I guess I don't know Are we still blaming El Nino? Yeah, I am. Do you think Vince McMahon wakes up every day mad that he didn't go through with you? Yeah, there's no El Nino gimmick that he's Yeah, I'm surprised that's not what he did with the Cologne Boys.

Yeah, those Ninos. Yeah, the Ninos. And then have him be like the natural disasters meets like Carlito. We gotta, don't put this on the air. This is too good of an idea. I just give it away. At this point,

Like three years ago, I had the idea to do John Sina socks, and I didn't say it on the podcast because I wanted to do, I wanted to keep something in your back pocket. Yeah. And then it just, then like everybody, like a year later, everybody sort of figured the joke out, you know, like, but I just thought it'd be really great if they made like 80s tube socks. Yeah. With like John Sina colors. And he'd wear them.

Yeah. And then like when everybody's chanting John Sina sucks, you just, his fans wave them like rally towels. You got the built in, like, Mick Folley, cameo. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot going on there.

Did they actually sell socks from Sokow at any point? I'm sure they did. I mean, I know they sold the Santino Snake cobra puppets. Oh, yeah. Those were sort of like wind socks, though. Yeah.

Weird, I didn't really mean. But yeah, it was a, those were like more like acrylic or whatever. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the McFoly ones were made out of. Anyway.

That's the show. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Yeah, that's really good. You have any plugs? I want to do. So anyway, we ran into each other a couple weeks ago, a week and a half ago, at a PWG. Yeah, man.

And there's a lot of, I mean, obviously this show is 99.9% about WWE and it, and it's goings on. But part of moving to LA for me was like getting to go to PWG. There were so many times that I would come out and I'd miss it by a week or like, whatever, you know. And I could never, I never quite got around to like making that the focus of a whole trip. And it's tough. It's tough to do it too, because they announced it.

So last minute. and tickets go so fast that I don't know. And honestly, I'm, I'm going to say a million nice things about PWG. I'm almost glad I didn't try to write the giant PWG piece before. I mean, to go out of my way to do it because it's,

there's so many wonderful things you can say about it. At the end of the day, it's sort of the platonic ideal of an indie wrestling show. And it's not like if your expectations get too high, you might be disappointed. Yeah, for me it's the platonic idea of a wrestling show, period. You know, like, I mean, to your point, like, I'm, I'm hesitant to talk about it. Like, we talk about it on, we used to talk about it on my show more. Um, and I'm hesitant to talk about it

publicly at all at this point, because it is already impossible to get tickets. Yeah. And it sells out in, honestly, three minutes, like Bola, which is three nights. And it's their biggest thing of the year. Bola's Battle of Los Angeles. And it's coming up on, um, is it a Memorial Day or Labor Day? What's coming up? Labor Day. Labor Day. It's coming up on Labor Day weekend. And it sold out in Literally three minutes. Literally three minutes. By 804, they were gone. So I'm hesitant to talk about it because I don't want anybody else to come.

Well, they can't come. I mean, what do they can't? But yeah, I don't want to make it any harder for me to get tickets that already is. But yeah, man, it's, it is a small, small, like what do you think? Like 400 people get in there? Yeah, I'm bad with numbers, but that was, that's what I guess when I was sitting in there that night. 400 people in American Legion Hall, beer is cheap and plentiful. and you get a, my move is I get a pitcher just for myself,

so I don't have to get up too many times and drink right out of that, like an animal. And you were right by the action. There are no guardrails. It's the indie, it's the All-Star Indies, right? I need, yeah, it's impossible. It's impossible to, to emphasize, over-emphasize how close you are to the ring.

First of all, they've figured out how to get as many chairs in there as humanly possible. Yeah, man. To the point where I was one of the first, I don't know, 50 people in, and by the time I got to my, or by the time we staked out our seats, there was already a section, like, on the backside of the ring where, like, a row had been, like, a row had totally been nullified

by other people, like, actually, if you sit down in rows, like, C and E, then row D disappears because there's just not enough leg grid. Like, they crammed so many seats in it. And everybody has to pull forward so they can put in the standing room only people behind them. That's it. Then there's standing room only behind, people sitting on the stage as if that's actually seats. And then, like you said, you're right.

Say they're hanging from the rafters? Oh, yeah. If there were rafters, they would be, they would be hanging. People are sitting very close to the ring, but the best part is, like you said, they just serve beer based by the pitcher. Everybody's carrying pictures around. There's the line. 12 bucks, which, like, if you live in a big city, if you live in a big city, that is a phenomenal

deal. Like, I know, like, I, again, you're from Tennessee and I am from Texas, or North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky. Kentucky's the main one, yeah. I thought you grew up watching Memphis. Memphis, in Louisville, Kentucky. Oh, shit. Can I say shit?

Yeah, you can say whatever you want. Fuck! No, I grew up in Virginia. So $12 for a pitcher doesn't sound that great to like young Aubrey. Sure. But to Aubrey now, that is a phenomenal deal. Yeah. Did you get a picture?

Oh yeah, lots of pictures. But what I was going to say is the line for the beer, if it gets long and it was long for most of the night, just runs by ringside. So there's like, it starts sort of in the back of the house. But if there's 40 people in line, then like the 40th dude is literally like, leaning on the ring while the match is going on. But here's the best part about that. Once Excalibur comes out, once he starts doing the spiel,

once the match is one of the founders and is sort of like the moral compass slash MC of the show. Yeah, and the commentator. Oh, that's right. He does commentary as well. But yeah, like as soon as the show actually starts, all those people in line,

like everybody's always very worried. Like, oh man, I'm not going to be able to see. No, everybody's super respectful. And they get down on their knees and worship Excalibrate. No, they get down on their. their knees so you can see over their heads and they don't block the action. It's I don't know me like it's everybody knows how great the talent that goes to

PWG is right and it's it's become sort of the last stop on the Indies before people get signed by WWE in in a lot of ways right you can point to a ton of examples and that's a big part of how like when I first started going like four years ago it was 2012 Bola was the first show I went to and I went to both nights it was only two nights back then and both nights probably only two thirds full they didn't do the standing room only seating There were lots of empty seats. In the same venue. Same venue.

Yeah, yeah. The area over by the bar, there were no seats there because they had merch tables set up. And they sold PWG DVDs throughout the show, right? Not just an intermission and stuff. And they had the talent had their shirts and stuff laid out there. So you could buy it even when they're not physically sitting right there. And they've gotten rid of all that just to jam more people in there. And it's because I think the tipping point really was El Generico's.

last appearance. Really? Yeah, like that was when it really started to pick up because he did that and then he went to NXT soon afterward. So by the time that it was Kevin Owen or Kevin Steen at the time's last show there, I remember it being just so absurdly packed in there. And that was like the big attraction. Everybody knew it was his last appearance in PWG.

And I have to assume that they changed the card around to accommodate this because I forget who, oh, he was chasing Trevor Lee. And he lost clean. Trevor Lee made him clean. It was dope. And I have to assume that that was supposed to be near the end of the card. But they had it happen right before intermission, right? And seriously, like, half the crowd cleared out afterwards.

They didn't see the rest of the show. Yeah, I mean, it was ungodly hot. It was as hot as I've ever been in there. Okay, it's really warm in there. That's the one piece of advice that got over and over again. And I prepared. You disregarded it. I saw you show up in a, you had two layers of clothing on.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I took off the outer layer. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts Yeah you were wearing like a tank top when I saw you And somehow you were wearing less by the time Yeah, I put my hair up So just it felt like less But no it is outrageously hot

Has anybody I deed you from From PWG like DVDs or like Streams or whatever? What do you mean? Has anybody said like hey I saw you in the front row at PWG Like ever in my life? Yeah Yeah, for sure people see you all the time

Yeah dude and people send me like pictures and gifts and videos and stuff online all the time. Like whenever at PWG DVD comes out, I usually get like that's awesome photos. And like, did you see the preview that they put up yesterday? Yeah, man, because they do their DVD previews. I am all over that because like there was the big, like the big Chuck Taylor.

I guess he's not called, but what's he called now? Dustin? No, I thought it was so Chuck Taylor. Somebody was telling me that like there's a thing in Chikara, so he's not Chuck Taylor anymore. Oh, okay. And Trent, question mark. like the big thing where it spilled out of the ring.

Also, like, I don't know, I had a good seat this time because all the actions seemed to kind of gravitate towards me. Yeah, I'm all over the preview, which is super fun. That's awesome. Yeah, man. That's a good thing to be known for. Yeah, just being up in the best wrestling going on right now. But here's the thing.

I mean, like, I feel like we're kind of dancing around. Like what for me makes it so great is... Yeah, Dustin, apparently Chuck Taylor's, I mean, it's his real name, but also... But that's what he's going by now, right? I guess. Yeah, somebody corrected me online, very well-actually fashion. Another Kentucky guy. I like him for that.

There you go. I really almost got one of his Kentucky gentleman. Was Kentucky gentleman, is that his nickname? T-shirts. And I couldn't. Why? I knew if I bought one t-shirt, I would buy 100 t-shirts. Like, I was just- Oh, at PWG?

Yeah, at PWG. Dude, I had a friend come out. His name is Dustin. He comes on my show a bunch, and he has his own show, making towns and getting networked. And he came out, and he, for Bolla last year, and he bought, I swear to God, like 15 t-shirts. He bought a t-shirt from everybody just because he was having such a blast. And that's the thing is it is, we talked about this a little bit at the show.

Like, coming from New York where, you know, like they're wrestling mecas in New York, Hammerstein Ballroom for sure. Oh, yeah. Ring of Honor doesn't run there anymore, right? They haven't been running there. But I don't know. I don't know what the inside dirt is if they're going to come back or whatever. I have no idea.

But when I was still there, they did. We went to shows there, right? Hammerstein and Manhattan Center. And, like, that's a great place to see a show. but that crowd is mean. They're a mean, nasty crowd. And that's not the whole crowd, but it's just, it's a big enough crowd that it's, yeah, you just get a different element.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't really get that at PWG. It's people who are there and they're stoked and they're happy. And even though it's a million degrees and they're so uncomfortable and packed in there, it's a really nice, courteous, friendly, excited crowd, which I don't know, it's new for me coming from the East Coast. Yeah. I mean, I think it, I think there's, there's. I've definitely been to Ring of Honor shows that had that vibe.

New York is a weird scene. Like, I remember going, like, when I've been to like, period in general. When I went to the, I went to a Ring of Honor show at, like, WrestleMania and Miami. And it was also in like, it was like a, you know, whatever, like an old VHW hall. Cool. And it was, I remember the vibe there just being like, I was just like tingly inside.

It didn't matter what is happening in the ring. Maybe it's just New York, then. But I think you're right. I mean, the closest thing. When I was in there, I mean, and part of it was a recency bias thing, but the thing that it reminded me of way more than a ring of Vaughn or other indie shows was the W.W.E House show I had been to a month and a half before. That's high praise as far as I'm concerned.

Right, because the key thing, I mean, the Staples Center, I didn't know what to expect. I went because someone offered me a ticket and I was bored. But the house shows at the Staples Center are dope. It's a hot crowd. Really, really fun. And it's a hot crowd, but the biggest thing, the thing that it has in common with PWG is everybody there is 100% invested in it being. a good time. Yeah.

Like you are happy when things go well. You are supportive when things don't go well. But you are fully, you're just engaged. And you can cheer whatever you want to cheer at a wrestling show. I'm not trying to be some sort of like moral godfather of wrestling fandom. Don't cheer. Don't cheer. Don't chant.

But like every, but when everybody is on the same page to like react quote unquote appropriately, then it just makes it a better experience for everybody. Absolutely. And at PWG, like there was a kid behind me. was just like three kids who were doing some sort of like dickish ironic stuff going on. Did you shout it down? Oh yeah. Like this old dude just like like just about hit him with a chair.

Like it was insane. It was good. Like it changed. They were messing with the vibe. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's because the focus is on the wrestling, right? And this is not like some like, you know, wrestling versus sports entertainment,

purest thing. But it's just a simple fact of the matter. It's like when you're watching Raw, the focus isn't solely on the wrestling. It's on the characters and the promos and. where people are positioned in the card and all this kind of meta-fictional narrative that people buy into. And that leads them to find other things to entertain themselves. Whereas at a live event or PWG, it is pretty much just wrestling. And so people get fully invested in that. And for me, the best, the wrestling is the best part of wrestling. And, you know, this wasn't the show that you were at,

but the show prior, which I guess was Prince. I don't know, I'm getting it all mixed up in my head because I drink when I'm there. But Jeff Cobb, who's, dope. Yeah. It's just awesome. Mr. Athletic. Former Olympian, Jeff Cobb.

It was his first time at PWG, and people didn't really know what to expect. You know, I don't, whenever I see a new name on the card for PBBG, I do not research them. Right. Because I want to be surprised. Because I know that if they're, if they got booked by PWG, they're dope. And so I don't really need to find anything out about them. It makes for a more fun time. And the biggest pop of the night, the biggest reception that, reaction that anybody got at that show was Jeff Cobb doing, what I

learned is called the tour of the islands, which is just three rolling deadlift German suplexes. Oh, right, right, right. And I think he did that. I think he did it. I'm sure he did it the most recent show, too. But nobody knew what to expect it. Nobody knew it was coming. And he just kept doing them. And it was against Chris Hero, too, who's massive, right? People stood up and lost their minds. They weren't chanting. They weren't trying to be clever. They weren't trying to get over some catchphrase or anything. People were just standing on their feet, screaming their full heads off for rolling German suplexes and it was the dopest.

It was the coolest wrestling moment I've had in months. So let's take this a little bit more meta. First of all, you talked about well, we're going to get back to, I mean, you're talking about Generico's last show and it's sad that he died, but Sammy's... Did he die? Down in Tijuana? I've

heard some rumors. There's a stabbing incident or something, right? It's been a long time since his friends and family have heard from him. That's all. Maybe he's just been kidnapped. Grim. Oh, God. But who on the roster right now, the roster, I guess, used loosely. Are you going to be saddest or would you be saddest if they left for WWE? Bro, I'm, I am incredibly saddened. He's a pal of mine. He comes in, he's coming on my show a bunch. I'm incredibly saddened that Roger Strong, that was Roger Strong's last show last week.

Roger Strong, I mean, if you only know Roger Strong from Ring of Honor, you might be a little shocked to hear me say this, because in Ring of Honor, he's kind of just been, I don't know, like the old standby. He's just the guy they go to. And that's a lot of my perception of him. I'll admit that. And it was mine too before I came, before I moved out here, I started seeing him at PWG. And my time in PWG, so I've been to almost every show since I moved out here in 2012 because I went and I was like, yes, this is exactly what I want. I got to see Roger Strong's rise in PWG as kind of this monstrous, give no shit's vicious heel. And he's mean and it's perfect.

and he's just, he's been allowed to really grow. And like, the line on Roger Strong has always been that, oh, yeah, he's a good hand in the ring, but he doesn't really have much character or charisma. He's not great on the mic. I mean, you saw him on Friday or two weeks ago. That's just, it's not true. It's just patently false. I am, he is a massive part of that company, of that, of PWG as a promotion, and also

PWG's success. Because for most of the ascension of PWG to the point that it is now, Roger Strong was the heel champion. Yeah. Everybody was chasing and would beat up all your favorites every single time. Yeah. And they don't have that anymore. And so I think that that is a, I mean, like, I don't, like, PDBG is not going under

or anything. They're more popular now than they've ever been. But I think the loss of Roger Strong is an unspeakably big, like, I think that's a bigger loss, honestly, than when they lost Kevin Owens or Kevin Steen at the time. Because Kevin Steen was, you know, he was a reliable, awesome part of the show, but he wasn't what the promotion was built around. the way that Roger Strong has been for the last few years. Huh.

It's sort of like the Adam Pierce on the Indies role, or Indies used loosely. I mean, he was just the NWA champion, just touring around. And part of what made him, he was flawless in a lot of ways, but part of his, and I mean this in the most complimentary way, but I think part of what made him so great was that, like, you kind of thought that he would be around forever. And then when he wasn't, that was sad. For sure. But it makes you invest yourself more, and it makes, I'm sure, companies more likely to invest

themselves and him. For Roddy, the thing was, the biggest thing I thought, and like the biggest thing that worked in it, like, outside of the flawless, amazing in-ring performances, right? But that's not news to anybody who's seen that guy before, was how fearless he was in terms of getting the crowds to boo him, which you can't say for many people on the Indies at all. Because, I mean, and this isn't me knocking on them. The fact the matter is, a lot of their living is made by selling T-shirts and selling merch and getting people to come to these shows. And I understand the fear that, oh, well, if I'm too unlikely. If I'm too vicious and too mean,

people aren't gonna, like, promoters aren't gonna want to book me. And I'm not gonna be able to sell t-shirts when I go to, I don't know, Kentucky or whatever, you know? Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, listen, every, and everybody on the Indies is,

you know, you're working face, you're working, you know, back and forth, depending on what night and what territory. For sure. And also, these guys are literally selling their merch sitting on the apron of the ring before the show starts.

Yeah, yeah. Like, you walk in and the wrestlers are sitting in on the edge of the ring with their t-shirts, hung on hangers over like on the ring ropes yeah and you walk up and you're like hey chris hero can i buy that shirt from you yeah it's dope i mean and it's neat it's fun too because like if you get in that beer line you're just walking by you're just standing next standing right next to these men trying to hawk their wares when you're going to buy beer it's fun i mean and those guys

recognize it too because like they you know they're not in chill mode really because they know everybody's so jam packed in there they're just friendly they're just super nice and they're guys who I've, who I kind of know now just because I see them every time I'm there and they recognize me and we yammer at each other while I'm waiting for beer. I got my seat this last time was directly in front of Zach Saber's balls while he was perched up on the ring. I noticed that. I noticed that. That wasn't intentional, but it just happened. I have some friends who would have really, who would have like paid you a lot of money for that seat, I think.

But I thought, I said last week, I went in thinking it was going to be Zach Sabers farewell and it was instead Roddy Strong's farewell. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it was a really, really good show. And I think that my favorite, I don't know my favorite, but the wrestler that I responded to most that night, in comparison to how I expected to respond. Was it Space Cat? A Space Cat was, no, I'm not, I wasn't as big a fan of Space Cat as some of the people in attendance. But I was cheering along.

I was part of the crowd. No, it's Trevor Lee, because I wasn't, because he played, he worked heel in a way that, like, nobody else in the roster really did. Yeah, he, um, did he come out to Born in the USA this time? I don't remember. I don't remember either. There was a lot of music. They, they changed songs every, every week, I mean, every month, right?

I mean, like, the theme songs. Most people keep consistent music. Okay. Well, I only asked that, I only assumed that because there was, like, every single song, people were standing up waiting and trying to figure out what the, who was coming out to the song. It seemed like. There were a lot of new songs that night. For sure.

Space Cat came out to What's New Pussy Cat, which was new. but yeah dude Trevor Lee has been really really fascinating to watch in PWG and he's a perfect example of somebody that PWG as a promotion identified as this guy's gonna be a big deal and he's not doing much of anything yet like you know that guy's a second generation wrestler like his dad wrestled in Omega oh no organization for modern extreme grappling arts what yeah dude down in the Carolinas his dad was like one of the Hardy Boys dudes

and so he's a second generation wrestler He's wicked young. And he was just kicking around the Carolinas in that, I think it's called CWS, Carolina Wrestling, CWF is Carolina Wrestling Federation. I'm sure that exists, yeah. I don't know, something like that. Like he had that big, like, two-hour match with Roy Wilkins down there recently. But, yeah, they identified him.

And like, nobody ever really heard of him. And PWG is kind of what catapulted that guy onto the national stage. And I think that's what's great about PWG is how savvy those guys are at finding people you haven't heard of, right? They brought Speedball Mike Bailey down, down from Canada, a guy that nobody'd heard of and had done nothing in the United States. And they built him. They built him as a star. And I guess that guy's having visa issues, which is why he hasn't been back. But, yeah, it's really, Trevor Lee's evolution has been really fun to watch because he started off. The first, his first match in PWG was it Mystery Vortex? Do you know what that is? No.

Mystery Vortex is my favorite show that PWG does because they do not announce the card ahead of time. Oh, really? Yeah. And so for any other promotion, that would be the kiss of death, right? Because, like, we don't know who's going to wrestle, so why would we bother going? But PWG, you just trust that they're going to do an amazing show. And so you go to Mystery Vortex and you have no idea what's going to happen. And so this was the, I think this is the first face mystery vortex.

And the opening match was Trevor Lee versus Alexander. What's his name? Let's see. Oh, Cedric. Cedric Alexander. Yeah, yeah, versus Cedric Alexander. versus somebody else, and I'm forgetting who they were,

but it was all three of them their first time in PWG. Nobody had any idea what to make of any of them. And like Trevor Lee came out with like kind of bikini cut briefs and doing like a really like kind of like mincy gimmick. And so everybody thought they're supposed to hate this guy. And it turned, and then he wrestled baby face and everybody was super into him. And for a while,

Trevor Lee was like the young upstart underdog baby face. He got a clean win over Michael Elgin when Michael Elgin was R.O.H. champion, which caused like that whole kerfuffle. And then they, he beat Kevin Steen as well clean but yeah dude that was the ang one of the angriest I've ever been was I was at that PWG show and I was with a friend of mine who I'm not going to name right now and we'd eaten edibles beforehand and like he had which are totally legal in California yeah it's for medicine the um we um we and he had driven right and the plan was that I was going

to have like I was going to be able to get as drunk as I wanted so he could drive me home. Right. And I wanted to get pretty drunk. That's a real luxury in Los Angeles. Yeah, dude, to find some way to drive your ass around. Yeah. And so, we ate this edible while we're standing in line.

Then we went in and we got through the first match. He said, listen, I got to go. I was like, what are you talking about? And he had to leave. And he went outside and he puked. And then we had to sit in the car and wait for me to sober up enough to drive home. And I missed the rest of Mystery Vortex. And you know what the main event was?

The main event was Adam Cole defending the PWG. championship against Candace LaRae. And I missed it. And I've never seen it because I know if I watch it now, I'm just going to be upset about it. You're just going to be looking at that empty chair right by the ring. We're just going to be so mad. All right. Let's move.

Let's get to. But you got to circle around to WWE or people are just going to stop listening to the podcast. They stopped already. In a very, so the meta question. Yeah. What can WWE learn from PWG? You've been watching the Cruiserweight Classic, right? I have.

Yeah. I don't like it. Do you think that they, do you think that there's some hints that some elements of PWG in that show? Or do you think that there's, do you think there are bigger lessons that WWE can learn? You know,

I think the biggest lesson to learn from PWG, and it's something that, you know, this is an ideal world thing. This is something that WB cannot do as a business. But, I mean,

this is one of the big keys to PWG's success, even compared to something like Ring of Honor pick a promotion, right? Is it they only run a show every six or eight weeks. Yeah.

Like, that's it. I mean, like, that's, like, the simple fact of the matter is WB has so much content that not all of it can be stellar. PWG runs a show every two months or so, and so they can stack the roster with only the best stuff,

and it shows. I mean, like, that to me is the biggest part of PWG's success. I mean, I'm going to piggyback off that to say, and you mentioned this earlier, it's 95% wrestling, and that's, that might be, it might be more than that. Yeah. It's just match, brief pause, next match, brief pause,

next match, next match, there was one, did Chris Hero give the only pre-match promo of the whole night, maybe there was one other one. And by the way, without giving too much away, Heroes Pre-Match promo had more action than most promos. I don't know if that'll make the DVD or not.

But yeah, no, I mean, Roger Strong came out at the end and did his thing. Oh, yeah, that was a post-match thing. But, I mean, that's another thing like the House show is obviously they're not doing all these backstage vignettes and shit, right? So it's just like it goes straight. It's pretty much match after match. It's hard.

Like, when people complain about WWE, shows, pay-per-views, whatever, you don't realize it, but that's what you're complaining about. You know, it's the silly way they book cards now where it's like, you still have a popcorn match, even though you've had like, you have like 15-minute backstage segments or promo packages between every match. I mean, the tough thing, though, is we're not indicative of wrestling fans. Oh, no, no, no. You know, like, so I think, yeah, like, so I think that even though we and people probably

listen to this podcast are like, yeah, just give us the matches. Like, I wish Raw was just three hours of dope-ass matches. Oh, no. But like it would kill the ratings. No, no, I agree. I'm not complaining about Raw so much, but like the live experience of Raw. It's sort of miserable sometimes where you just sort of, you end up spacing out between matches. Yeah.

Because, I mean, you can tell when they go to commercial, like during matches. Yeah. Because everything slows down because, and you can't blame them, right? I've had two great Kevin Owen's experiences during Raw commercials because he, he has fun. He enjoys it when they go to commercial. Oh, that's funny. But the, but for the most part, yeah, it's just, it's, there's nothing, nothing. going to happen.

Tracy Cadell is his, is Trevor Lee's dad. I just, I found his Twitter. I'm thinking I'm going to follow him on Twitter. Do it. Oh, I do too. He always says really nice things about his son and it's heartwarming. That's really great. There should be more people saying nice things about their son.

Just in general. And their daughters, all children. So what, so do you think that there's, I mean, so you don't, so why don't you like the Cruiserweight Classic? Oh, I just don't think the matches are very good. I think there's like one and a half good matches on every card. I agree with you. my, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm just being too tough on it.

My, my, or tough on the world of wrestling. My initial reaction was like, it was like just seeing an indie wrestling show where the two guys had never worked together before and hadn't planned the match. And then, but, but, a lot of those guys aren't ready. I mean, that's like, that's 100% true. It's like, it's like 32 guys in it. Is that right? It should have been 16.

It should have been half of whatever it is. I mean, because this first round is basically them just, you know, cutting out the chaff and then, and like, that's the other thing. too is a lot of the matches so far. But that's, but the weird have gone, been really predictable in terms of who won. Because you just look at and you're like, well, I know Brian Kendrick's moving on. Yeah, maybe so. But like also, but there been a couple that surprised me.

Like, DeVari's brother lost, right? I thought that was crazy because Ho-Holun, God bless him. He's one of the guys who's just not really ready to be there. But, but just the fact that they were matched up at all. Yeah. I mean, I think that, I think DeVari's going to be like. That guy's going to be a problem, huh? I thought he was really, really great.

I mean, and he was really the other thing that's bumming me out about it, too. is like all the guys who are actually working heel are getting eliminated, right? Yeah. Like him, the Clement Patois, is that what his name? Oh, I love that guy. He was rad because he was a villain. And it was my favorite match of last week, the Galaher and the other guy. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was the other guy's name? Do you remember? No, I totally forgot. The Italian guy. I like that match too because the Italian guy kind of, like he wasn't a full-on villain, but he kind of did a little bit of it. And he was like a different, like, that's, they took.

talked a lot in the buildup to this thing about it being, you know, cruiserweight wrestling isn't just one thing. It can be all these different types of wrestling. And yet, all the guys moving forward are a very specific type of cruiserweight wrestling. And that kind of bums me out because I want some of these big, musly, short, hoss dudes moving on in the competition. Was it the Fabia Nychner guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's, yeah, there's some really interesting people. And there's, I mean, there's a lot of people in the, who I would just love to see get some time to develop. I mean, you, I, what I was going to say earlier, is it felt like a lot of them feel like sort of like second or third tier indie wrestling matches.

But the biggest problem from my point of view was that they're being filmed like WWE matches, right? So it's like it's hard. It's, I mean, you're judging them by a different play, by a different set of rules sort of when you see them on the network. And it's, and I'm not, I'm not saying that WW is better or whatever, but it's just like, you're just looking at it in a different way and it's hard, it's a hard way to judge. It's a weird thing, man, especially because the crowd is the full sale crowd. Yeah. And that crowd wants a very specific thing. And I think the best example of kind of the weird schizophrenic beast that the CWC is, is I guess it was maybe the second week when Zach Sabre faced Tyson Dukes.

Yeah. Which, by all rights, I mean, I know we all love Zach Saber and he's really talented dude and he's really interesting to watch and all. But by all rights, Duke should have been the hero in that match. Sure. You know, Dukes was the guy who had had a shot. and he had broken his leg and he went back home to Canada and he worked as a truck driver while still wrestling and he worked hard to get back there

and he was like he was the underdog and he was the guy we should have wanted to cheer whereas Zach Sabre was kind of the skinny, arrogant preening wrestler who would dance around him and like do these wacky like kind of arrogant like the you know cross his arms and doing the bridge and like all the Zach Saber's stuff like that to me reads villainous right this isn't me talking about Zach Saber the guy

this is Zach Saber the character. And yet that crowd went apeshit bananas for Zach Saber because they were supposed to. Because they know they're supposed to. That's what's really hard. There's so much confirmation bias in that specific audience that it kind of blows the facade that they're trying to build with this thing. I mean, in wrestling audiences in general now, even though you and I, like you said, you're right, we're not indicative of what like the average wrestling fan is.

The average wrestling fan still like is on, still checks out the dirt sheets or at least whatever like version of the internet they want to go to. they know to pop when Sasha Banks debuts on Raw. Like they know, like they understand that this is an exciting moment that they want to be a part of. Now they might not have done all the homework or watched all the DVDs.

But they know the names. But you're totally right about Zach Saber. Every time I see him, I'm like, he is like, he should be working heel. That match against Kyle O'Reilly that we saw. He was an asshole and it was amazing. Yeah. It's great.

It's great. And because like he is a sort of like, he's the guy that like your girlfriend or your wife is like, you know what? He's kind of cute. You know? And like, but like she shouldn't want to like go to be a fan, you know? Or she should like make you mad by being a fan.

Absolutely. That's what Jim Ross told me like what I was like when I was talking to him about the rock a month or two ago. And I was like, what was the problem? Like what went wrong when Rocky Maya Via debuted? Why did everybody boo him? And he was just like, I think everybody booing. I think their girlfriend leaned to them five seconds earlier and said this guy's really cute. Wow.

That's interesting. I'm not sure if that's true, but I love that idea. With Sabre, I think it has a lot to do with the style of wrestling too. You know, like, I know, like, you know, I've listened to Colt Cabanas podcast, too. I know that we're all supposed to love Johnny Saint and, like, think, like, put that shit up on a pedestal. But that's a, it's a very tricky thing to do and stay likable, especially when people are having to kind of, like, wait around for you to do your, like, spin move before you put your hold on, right? Like, and I think, like, there's a big difference between the way that he does it and the way that Galaher did it, actually, on a CWC, you know? Totally agree.

Sabre does it with a certain arrogance, which I think is dope. I love it. I think it's great. It does not mean hacking on saber. I just think that there's something inherently unlikable about that guy wearing a union jacket to the ring and pop up in the collar. It infuriates me. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. In a way that it should. One of the knocks on him is that he makes everything look too easy. And I'm not, and I think it has more to do with just it's a stylistic thing. And if you book it as a heel thing, as a heel look that it's not. It's not. And also, he makes it look too easy as a sort of like control V,

like insult towards a certain sort of indie wrestler. I don't really know what that means, honestly. Well, I think it's part of, it's a lot of what you're saying. I mean, I wouldn't have brought it up if it weren't, but it's the sort of like, you know, like the opponent is just being still while you're like getting your like leg around his neck

so that you can do the whatever, you know, like it's, and certainly we, when we saw him work, Kyle O'Reilly, like there was a lot going on in his face. I think that there sometimes where like maybe there's not as much going on in his face as you would want there to be, you know, like. the difference between seeing him up close and personal in PWG versus on a camera, too, you know, where you don't get to see all that stuff.

And it could also be quality of the dance partner as well. Listen, I was super excited to see him at PWG. Kyle O'Reilly is my long-term indie wrestling crush. Dude, he put on a lot of mass. He's looking good. Yeah. He's a big. He's a big dude.

I mean, I've been saying, I've said in on podcast and in writing for probably three years that like he should be the WWE approved. If WW wants to redo Daniel Bryan, but with somebody that, like, Vince can get behind. I think that, like, Kylo Riley's your guy. But anyway, let's move on. We talked enough about PWG. Well, we alluded to this earlier. Before we get to that, before we get back into the wrestling stuff, I want to tell you about another one of our sponsors.

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slash W-R-E-S-T-L-E and using the offer code Ressel. Terms and conditions apply. Listen, I want to talk about two things really quickly before we get out of here. One, it's Olympic season. Okay. You're a smart

guy. You're a funny guy. Hey, thanks man. A lot of people send me text messages and emails about Olympic wrestling, like straight up wrestling. Now, it's not even going on now, right? I don't think it's how, I asked, my wife pays attention to the Olympics. I asked her to let me know when the wrestling, like Greco-Roman or amateur, or the weightlifting happens. And she hasn't let me know. So either it hasn't,

or she hates me, which both are viable. I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I have the entire listings ahead of me. I think maybe it doesn't start until the 14th. Okay, we got them time. I don't know. I could be totally wrong about that. But listen, people always try to talk to me about wrestling. You probably get this too. You go to, like a cocktail party, you go to a bar, you tell somebody you're into wrestling and they either talk to you about like Greco-Roman wrestling or MMA or something. And you're just like, I don't, it's, I will talk about that. Yeah, I like talk about it. Not exactly like my, what I would just said, but okay. But yeah, so do you think a lot of people have asked me if UFC should be an

Olympic sport? Right. That's a conversation for another day. Greco-Roman wrestling is the Olympic sport. The fact that it was gone for, for one cycle or whatever is sort of mind-boggling, but, you know, politics. Do you think pro wrestling? should be an Olympic sport. Man, I just don't think it would work because, you know, W.E., which is like the standard bearer of professional wrestling, they actually enforce their doping policy. Oh, man.

Citterson, right? Yeah. That's how you included a drop for yourself. Citterson. Man, I don't know, like as like a performance thing, like they do floor routines or whatever, like whoever's best at performing pro wrestling. Yeah. Uh, yeah.

Why not? I don't know. There's curling. There's, there are so many things. There's, there are 8,000 swimming events. Like, we spend so much time arguing about, arguing randomly about whether or not pro wrestling is a sport. There are so many things in the Olympics that are less of a sport than pro wrestling. Do you think pro wrestling is a sport?

I, I am happy to use the word recklessly because I really don't care that much. Right. Okay. I think at the end of the day, like, no, obviously not. Like, whatever, by whatever rules you set up, it's not a sport. But you know what? Neither is any form of horse riding. And there are like, a,

Equestrian things in the Olympics. Fair enough. Yeah. What I was saying to Isabella, our producer, before we started, was that my general rule is, if LeBron James had started playing the sport at the age of five, would he be dominating the sport right now? If the answer is not unequivocally yes, then I think you're probably not talking about a sport. That's interesting.

That's fair. Yeah, I think LeBron would be a hell of a pro wrestler. Oh, yeah. To that point. Yeah. Okay, I'm on board. Pro wrestling. A sport should be in the Olympics.

He's convinced me. Yeah. No, but you're talking about the floor routines and stuff. Like, people, like, you know, waving, like, ribbons and stuff. I mean, it's just all, like, I don't mind this as part of the Olympics at all. Those things can be Olympic sports, but, like, man, cutting a heel promo, like, that's a life skill. Just call out, like, have, like, the wrestling decathlon or something where they, like, all the different, all the different skill sets are broken up. I'm on board.

You've convinced me. If not. The reason why I was thinking about this was the Cruiserweight Classic, though, because they have all these guys from around the world. like if, I mean, maybe the Olympics should be Vince's, like he should, once every four years, he should just sort of let bygones be bygones and invite the best indie wrestlers, the best Japanese wrestlers, the best, from all people, the best wrestlers from all over the world, and have the World Cup of wrestling or whatever. I mean, they're kind of doing that a little bit with the CWC, right?

Right. But then that's what, that's, that's, that is the most interesting part of the CWC. Right. By far. Which, which has kind of been kneecapped by the fact that there's just, everybody's signed up, place you know like they can't get anybody from leach underground they can't get anybody from new japan like ring of honor like i don't know like that's that's that's one of the things that i think really damaged the cwc too because when it was initially announced it was before um like i don't

like it was before certain like i forget exactly what it was but people thought that the field was going to be a lot broader than it sure and then people kept on getting signed up like signed by places well that's what i mean that's happened so many times that's super juniors i think like took a lot of people out of the running for it yeah yeah yeah i mean i mean I mean, I think that, I mean, you even have people, I mean, just the Ring of Honor and Lucha Underground, sort of like, all of a sudden just like, you know, signing that those last two guys that they had been sort of like hoping would sick around as free as like, you know. Well, that's the thing, man. Like, I mean, to have a cruiserweight tournament and say it's the best cruiser weights in the world and you don't have ricochet in it is kind of bonkers, I think.

Yeah. You know? Man, ricochet. He's dope. Or you're not on board. Oh, no. I'm totally on board. I feel like the thing I've said more in this podcast than anything else is that, like,

Like, they should have just made him Sincara from the beginning, and he'd be the biggest star in WWE right now. The Pride of Ireland, Rick O'Shea. That would be even better. That's the gimmick. Just put him in like, yeah, put him in an orange and green mask. Put him next to Finn Baller. We're good to go, man.

I'm glad you mentioned Finn Baller, because here's what I really want to talk about. We're finally going to get around to WWE right now. Thanks for doing. Raw on Monday night ended with this weird thing where there's like the, there's in the, in front of the backdrop of the wrong. Finn Baller feud for the new universal championship. We have Rusev come out and say, no, I'm the, I have the title.

I'm the champion of this show and sort of wrestles a main event match against Cizaro, right? Which is dope, I think. And then, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we have Roman Reins, who is sort of like demonstrably been semi-demoted to feud with Rusef. Cesarro, who is in that main event, is feuding with Seamus. Kevin Owens is sort of taking a little sidebar, you know, sabbatical to put over Cass and Inzo along with Chris Jericho. And Sammy Zane, as near as I can tell, doesn't have a SummerSlam match. Right.

But amongst those guys, I'm really interested because, like, you always pay attention to the main event, right? And we're all very excited that Finn Baller is getting this big spot, right? I mean, regardless of whether or not you think he's the best. wrestler ever, I think he's the best shot WWE has at finding that transcendent star they're looking for. I mean, actually, I think Sasha Banks is sort of above him on the ceiling rankings. But I love Finn Baller's potential. If Finn Baller was a little bit younger.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the biggest thing. It's like they've only got so many years left because he's like in his mid-30s already, isn't he? He's early to mid-30s and he's got the body of a tot 19 year old. And Boyd is the camera people on WWW. Do we know that? They love it. But no, I mean, like, that's, like, the biggest knock against him. I think that guy could be, that guy's ceiling is, that guy was a little bit younger.

That guy's ceiling would be what Jeff Hardy's ceiling was. Sure. Which is to say enormous and astronomical and humongous, because they dropped the ball with him, right, in a really profound way. I mean, he dropped the ball. There was a lot of mutual dropping of the ball. Yeah, yeah, yeah, doing all the drugs and everything. But, no, man, I think that, like, the crazy thing to me, like, I'm really excited about the Finbauer stuff because it's something new. And that's, I mean, you can.

You can't, you can't overstate how important it is just to have new shit happen on your wrestling show and how valuable. That's what I was going to say, even if you're not 100% in on Baller, I don't know, I don't know who else. It's new, it's exciting. It shows them actually working a storyline in the appropriate way. Like, this is the way to put over a young guy to make it seem like he's the number one draft pick and we're going to treat him like, you know, Anthony Davis when he got, when he came into the league. I'll tell you what's wild though, man. Seeing him standing next to Seth Rollins in the ring, them just not even wrestling, right? just talking with one another.

They are on vastly different levels. Rollins is way better. Rollins is like enormously, orders of magnitude better than Finn Bauer. It's shocking. And the other thing that's really interesting to me too is, I mean, and so like,

I'm asking for, you know, angry tweets now, but I'm a big Roman Raines fan. I think that guy's really cool. I agree. I think he's really, really awesome.

And it's wild. And I understand the reasons why, right? But it's wild that W. W.E. took like three years to push that guy into the main event and people said it's being shoved out of our throats he's forced on us Finn Beller's been there for a night and he's in the he's legit in the main event of the second

biggest wrestling show of the year and people are okay with it and this isn't I'm not angry about it but it's fascinating I think it speaks less to either guy's talent and more to W.E figuring out how to push guys in the current environment and Roman Reigns came in at the tail end of an old booking philosophy yes and he's really suffered for it it's a shame because he's awesome. There's a lot of reasons for that. First of all, if you ever call wrestling fans for having double standards again, then you're never going to be able to comment on wrestling for the rest of your life.

You're officially banned from Twitter and the rest of the internet. Yeah, I mean, I think you're exactly right. It's an old booking philosophy. I mean, a lot of what Roman, a lot of what Herman Reins was the comparisons to Ambrose and Rollins. But it was also that we could see it coming. And that goes to exactly to what you were saying. It's that we knew the mold that they were fitting them into. Right? And Finn Baller didn't. Finn Baller shocked everybody when like everybody, everybody thought, I watched it happen on Twitter.

Everybody thought that it was a foregone conclusion that Roman Raines was just going to squash him and it was going to be in the main event again. And it didn't happen. And it feels, again, it feels new. And that's, well, the most interesting. I mean, the bigger, the bigger deal to me is not that they're what they're doing with, or the clearest indicator is not what they're doing with Finn Ballar. It's the fact that they're using Roman Raines to play against our expectations. Yeah. Right? The fact that they even bother putting Roman Reins in that match because they know how shocked will be to see him lose. Yeah. But I find, but what I end up, I mean, the whole reason that I wanted to talk about this was like, Finn Ballard is great. And there are, you know, rumors that go both ways about who's going to win at SummerSlam. I'm absolutely sure they haven't decided yet.

But, you know, we don't know who's going to walk away our first universal champion. But the bigger thing we don't know is like what is the shape of the headliner division on a. Raw. So all the guys we've talked about, Reins, Finn Baller, Kevin Owens, Sammy Zane, I guess theoretically, but more importantly, I said, did I say Raines or Rollins? Whatever. Raines Rollins and not and then you kind of go down to Cizero and, and Seamus. It does seem like they're kind of teasing something happening with Cizaro at some point, whether it be even getting traded to Smackdown or.

I thought the most significant part of Raw last night. was Daniel Bryan, like not just what he said, oh, I think you're being underutilized on the show, but when he turned and mugged to the audience about it, right? Like that felt really, I mean, I'm not sitting here telling you that was a shoot, brother, but like it felt real, you know what I'm saying? Which is the important part. And like that felt really significant. But, you know, they've been playing that game with Cesarro for years now, right?

Like pushing him as like the guy who could do anything and he could be the top guy, but they never really pull the trigger. so I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it would be really cool if they were smart enough to do something with like a trade with like a free, you know, to try to somehow Smackdown tries to steal him away. Mm-hmm.

Do you think it's undercutting the division, like the brand split that they have so much interaction so early? Like the Brock Orton thing I kind of get because, you know, that was made ahead of time. And also the story is that those guys are invading these other shows and they're not allowed to be there. Right. They either escape to the audience or they're escort out. So what are you, Daniel Bryant and stuff? Yeah, I'm not making an argument. I'm just curious.

Like, do you think that that undercuts this whole idea of a brand division by having him show up? I kind of like it. I mean, I like what he did. I think that I think that you could, I take what you're saying. Like, it makes, it actually makes a lot of sense that maybe we should spend a, maybe like after SummerSlam. Well, let's spend like a solid six weeks without any mention of the other show. Right.

You know, with the exception of commercials. But, yeah, I mean, I think they have to walk a fine line now between really feel, making it feel like really separate entities, but also not. disappointing, not confusing someone who hasn't watched for three weeks. Right. You know, I mean, that's the sort of, the, the most, the most underrepresented part of wrestling fandom are the people that don't necessarily watch live every week. That don't watch the 18 hours of WWE program when we have to watch now.

Yeah. It's a whole lot, man. It's a lot. So you don't watch Smackdown live. I do. I mean, I have. No, no, I'm sorry. Smackdown like at 5 or 8 p.m. or whatever.

Oh, are you asking me, do I watch Smackdown Live live? Yes, exactly. No, I don't. I don't watch any of it live anymore. I watch the next day, and I watch the Hulu edits, too. I love the Hulu edits. They're amazing. They're really, really great.

And also, I mean, we talked about this a little bit at PWG, but I kind of got chased off of social media for watching these things live. And like, once a month when I watch the pay-per-views live, and I'm like, oh, wrestling thought that, like, my wife certainly doesn't want to hear. Let me put this on the internet. And I instantly regret it. Yeah. Because, like, the fandom is just so vociferous. Is that a good one? Yeah.

a good word. But yeah, no, like, so I don't, I don't watch any of it live anymore. Yeah. I, I watch most of it live, but I don't tweet a lot either. Yeah. It's like, tweeting is like another gear of engagement, you know? I mean, it's, I just can't help myself sometimes. And, like, so that's the thing.

Like, now I, you know, when I get around to watching Raw, late on Tuesday night on Hulu, I send out a bunch of fucking random, I don't know where Sands context tweets about what Rusef is doing or whatever. Rusef is doing some really great stuff Why aren't people responding more To the Raines Rusef feud Are they not responding? You mean like online and stuff? No, I meant in the crowd

Like I felt like I don't know It was kind of like a muted reception To that whole Cake segment on Monday It's not like that was breaking new ground And like this brilliant stuff But that's it but that's a go-to man I mean I wrote back at Grantland

About the history of It's Chekhov's cake right Yeah I mean no The history of right Yeah that's great The history of wedding angles, like, of all the weddings or, like, celebrations of matrimony they've had in the ring, inevitably, someone's going to come out and throw someone's face in a cake. For sure.

Or, you know, put a snake in a box. But, like, it's a really great, like, renewable resource that wrestling has. Also, speaking of, like, flashbacks to old things, I'm, Rusef was basically wearing an old Sean Michael's outfit with just, like, the khaki slacks and vest with no shirt underneath. It was cracking me. Yeah, you're right. What he was wearing was hysterical. And it's perfect. And we're not making fun of Rousseff.

It's a perfect choice because he's a bad guy. Oh, no, no. It's so great. And we should want to hate him, right? Like, if anything, we should be criticizing Lana, who looked too good. Yeah. She looked too good for us to boo. Like, and that's a problem.

But Rusef, like, it was cracking you up last night because if you, if you kind of like, you know, blurt your eyes and let your eyes go out of focus a little bit, he just looked like tan, tan Roman Rains. Yeah. Like he just looked like evil tan Roman Rains. Yeah. Because like the clothes are the same profile and everything with the vest and all. I wonder if there are conversations that happen,

because Roman Raines conspicuously has this creepy beard now. Oh, I like it. You don't like it? I just think he needs to grow out the mustache a little bit more, like trim the sides. I'm a little, I think, I've thought too much about it, obviously. But I wonder, I used to always think about this with Roman and Seth, and now with Rusef, too. Like, when they're booking these feuds, are they like, all right, Rusef, or like, Rains, you're going against Rusef, so grow in your beard so you don't have the exact same hair and facial hair profile. Because with Seth, there was always a thing where, like, Roman had just the goatee, right?

Now he's shooting with Rousseff, so he has the beard to set himself off from the guy with the goatee. That's interesting. You know, I think we're a little bit, despite the divas division being, sorry, the women's division being. I do that too. Yeah, I don't feel so bad about it. But despite the fact that you have to have, like, literally a different, like, crayola color of hair to wrestle in the women's division now. Like, the men's, like in the, over on the men's side, it's just a lot of dudes with kind of regular haircuts and facial. There's not a lot of.

I think it's a lot better now than it was, say, 10 years ago. Like, 10 years ago, like, it was all just dudes who got brought up who looked like Alex Riley. Oh, yeah. You know? That's true. I think they're doing a lot better with it now just in terms of, like, different looking guys. Sure. And everybody looks right as opposed to just looking like, like, this, you know, like, Dolf Ziegler now has, I mean, I was watching Smackdown last night.

and the main event was Ziegler and Ambrose against Bray Wyatt and Eric Rowan. Cool. It was really good, like, just a really good old school booking of just like,

let's put our two, like, title competitors together and like they have to fight on the same side. I love it. And really when like, like, the fact, I mean, they went into this match knowing

it seems like from, from the get that Bray Wyatt was going to be the heel in the feud and he was not even in the feud, you know, like it's, it's, it's,

they've done this small, thing really well. Snackdown's way more interesting than raw right now. Am I crazy? You're not. But it did occur to me that like are looking at like Ambrose Ziegler and this sounds so crazy, but Ambrose Ziegler and Bray Wyatt could all sort of be like brothers. Like that you know like

now that Ziegler doesn't even have blonde hair anymore. They all just sort of look like they're all just like white dudes with brown hair at this point. Yeah. But those are like three of my favorite guys so I'm not complaining. Right, right. Anyway, enough about these guys. So let's go, let's try to, is there an answer to the question this non-question they asked.

How do you rank the W.W., I mean, the raw headliners. Rollins, Baller, Rusef, Reins, and if you want to bring in K.O., Sammy, Zane, Cizaro, or Seamus, by all means, do it? So are we talking about, like, overall scale and talent, or just the spot on the card right now? Where do you think that they exist in Vince's mind right now? Okay, well, Rollins is number one with a bullet, and there's not even, there's, amongst the people you listed, I don't even think there's a close second place right now. Right. And does Aubrey Cederson agree with that? Let's do Vince versus Vince and Aubrey both coming.

Yeah, Rollins, I think, is, I mean, you can make a real argument. I'm a big John Cena fan too. And I think that when that guy's on, there's nobody better than him. But in terms of week to week performances, I think that Seth Rollins is the best professional wrestler in the world right now. Yeah. Yeah. So I agree.

And listen, I mean, we're talking. I mean, we talk about the guys that we talked about PWG to start the show. we talk about Finn Baller, you know, being behind where Rollins is, nobody thought Rom's going to be this guy when he got called up. I certainly didn't. Dude, early episodes of my show when you would come on and we would talk about, I remember like us, like specifically me and you having a conversation and me saying that Rollins' ceiling was Christian's career.

That's something that came out of my mouth, right? And I was just wrong. I don't know that's totally off base. Yeah. I mean, I talked to him. I love Christian. That's not an awkward Christian. I interviewed, I interviewed Rollins one time when I was just like, yeah, nobody really

expected this from you, huh? And he was just like, yeah, I just love proving people wrong. Like, he didn't seem like, I don't know, I mean, and even in person when he talked to him, he doesn't seem like he's... He doesn't have that Sampunk chip on his shoulder. No. That's why he's going to... That's why he's already a bigger star than Sianpunk was. Yeah.

And not in certain ways. Also, all that, yeah. I mentioned this on the show before. He still gets a weird reaction from some of the casual fans or non-fans that I know, but casual fans too. If you read like the www.com comment sections, people hate Sethrons and not in like he's a bad. he's a bad guy kind of way, but he's like a weakling, how could he be your champion? Why is he your number one pick? I think that that's, I mean, I think, I think that is in the right way, though.

Yeah, but it's the same thing I hear from like, you know, non-wrestling fan friends who like look over my shoulder. It's a weird, listen to him to talk. I don't know. But he's the best. He's the best. I think he's the number one with a bullet. So amongst the other guys, Baller, Reins, Sezaro, Rousseau. I think it's a big drop down, but I think you got to put Raines there.

Yeah. I think that, you know, even though he's not in the main event, the main event, main event right now. Like he, he was there most recent, like recently enough that he's there. After that, I think it's Baller.

I think, I guess you can put Brock Lesnar in this mix, too, if you want to put Brock. Oh, yeah, he's a raw guy too. Yeah. Brock is just, so it's Rollins, Lesnar,

Reins, Baller, Ruseff. Wait, Kevin Owens below Rusef? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right.

Then Cesaro. Owens. And again, this is not a measure of quality. Kevin Owens is one of my favorite, favorite guys to watch wrestle. But just kind of where they're positioned on the card. Yeah, I mean, like, I think if you are in a tag team covled together to put over Enzo and Cass, yeah, you're not really a main event star right now. Yeah, although, you know, Jericho and Keog, I mean, if you, working a program with Chris

Jericho is never a bad place to be as far as it, I mean, it may be a terrible place to be, but it reflects well and you're standing it with WWE management. Oh, for sure. I mean, like, I think that it's really telling, so here's the thing.

Enzo and Cass are really, really good at some things and not really all that great at some other important parts of being professional wrestlers. Their matches aren't that great. They're still figuring it out. And that's not a knock on them.

No, I think that's fair. They're young and new and Enzo's been doing it for a shockingly short amount of time, right? The fact that they put them with Chris Jericho, who's in my top five wrestlers ever, and Kevin Owens, who's one of my favorite guys to watch right now.

And both of them are so very good at in-ring work and telling the story and putting things together. I think that's really telling both in terms of W.E. acknowledging where Enzo and Cass are, but also acknowledging how great Kevin Owens is. As you're saying, to be putting him in the same level as Jericho. It's amazing. And the other thing I think that's really exciting

is I hope they keep that tag team going because Chris Jericho is kind of an, like Chris Jericho had such a phenomenal singles career and multiple singles career. Yeah. how good of a tag team wrestler he is. Jericho is some of the best stuff of that era. I love that.

Jericho is so good. So if they can keep Jericho or whatever the hell they end up calling, whatever stupid name they end up giving them, they keep this going. Why is it that the name Jericho is so good at making into terrible tag team names? I don't know. It's just part of the overall brilliance of that guy.

It kind of really messed the tag division for a while because you're trying to make everything like the Miz show and like everything has to be a name. The Miss show is good too. No, I know, but just naming the teams has to be a mashup. And just because Jericho works well with every name. It's not just, I mean, like, you know, Rock and Sock connection and like, I don't know.

That's true. Did you see, while we're talking about cast, I mean, InZone cast, did you see Inzo's promo with on the, on the Cruiserweight Classic? That's been, I mean, it was on, but I think it's been floating around the internet a lot. Wait, he cut a promo as part of the show? Yeah. As part of CWC? Yeah.

No, what episode was it on? Here, let me, let me play a second of this. We got issues. Figitively speaking, we have issues of malpractice. nourishment and communities that would otherwise be flourishing if it weren't for apartheid, spearheaded by political figures who sit at the stratosphere of the political infrastructure, who see to it the exponential growth of the corporate infrastructure? Or is that conundrum really just a liaison between factions of hierarchy that have endeavors that go beyond parliamentary procedures?

Proposals, referendums, filibusters, and legalities. I mean, hey, if you want to overindulge your eyes in between the lines of a communist manifest, they'll go ahead and be a Marxist. We've all been transients at some point or another, and I get excited even talking about it. But figuratively speaking, you got your right and you got your left. And people in positions of power, they come at you from different angles. Could be acute, could be obtuse. Rarely ever is it perpendicular. I mean, sure, you got your Hillary Clintons.

You got your Donald Trumps, right? You got your Shane McMan's, you got your Stephanie McMans. You got your Thomas Jeffersons and you got your George Jefferson's. And I've sat way up top high. Deluxe apartments in the sky and ranting on political jargon. But that's not why we're here today. So without any further ado, allow me to quote the performing artist, Aubrey Graham, formerly known as Drake,

please hold on we're going home and you know when I get there at least have the decency to leave you the porch light on and if you didn't understand what I said we can sit down over a cup of Joe and I can break this down for you in layman's terms it would take me I don't know three years to memorize

the promo that he cut in this situation but yeah he's he's really just amazing and it's crazy I mean you're right like they have some work to do it's nice to see the guys like them and like Finn Baller for the kind of complete opposite reason are getting the opportunity to work out these kinks on the main roster in big matches too because there's a limit to what you can learn when you're wrestling like you know whoever the like the

like the dudley boys every week or something like that dude it's going to be really interesting to see actually the dudley boys are great i'm not trying to knock them saying but it's just the measure of like response the crowd is giving you for sure i think it's really interesting to see who of you know w is pushing guys in a very different way right now you know it used to be that you had to come up and you had to take your lumps and you had to earn your stripes and you had to pay your dues and other cliches, right? And now that's not really the case anymore, right? Like, they've realized the value of pushing the hot new thing again, right?

Which wrestling used to do. I mean, W.E hasn't done it in a really long time, but like that used to be a big thing, like the territory days of like, oh, this young farmer boy from the audience has come up and he's challenged this colossal man, right? Like, that used to be a trope in wrestling. And W.B. hasn't done it that much anymore. It's going to be really interesting to see who the first one to fail is. Like who the first would just fall directly on their face?

Because it's going to happen. You know, like, I don't mean to be Cassandra here. And I'm not going to, like, make a bet on who it is. But I think that eventually this technique and this approach will go wrong. Because it has to. I mean, like, nobody bets 100 or bets 1,000, right? Yeah, that's a thousand. Nobody bets a thousand.

You know, it reminds me of the period, and I'm going to, I'm sure I'm going to get one of these names wrong. But there was, like, a period back in, like, with 2012 when, when WW debuted. Suncara, Ryback, Cizaro was around this time, and what's his name? The NXT trainer, it was being a fake Japanese guy. Oh, Tensai. Lord Tensai.

And they all, but they all, I mean, like Tinsai and Ryback and like Sincara, like we're basically all just like facing jobbers. Like that was like the, that was the last return of the jobbers before the most recent return of the jobbers. But like they tried to make it different. you know, it was like, well, Ryback will face multiple jobbers.

And like, well, they just brought all those guys in and they just slapped him into the midcard. And everybody treated them like, everybody looked upon them like mid-carders. And that's not what they're doing with these guys. Because there's no differentiation. You know, when you're, like, I think on some level, like,

they thought that, like, they really thought Ryback was going to get over as a headliner. But, like, he's literally part of this just mush of guys coming in at the same time. You're right. They're letting guys do different things now. And they're kind of like, like you said, they're putting themselves in the,

in the position of being able to do the hot. row, they started the show with Enzo. I mean, and last week, Sasha, Sasha actually started the show, but the segment, you know what I'm saying? Like, two weeks in a row, the opening segment had Enzo Amori in it. Yeah. That's nuts. Like, you remember, like, it used to be a big thing, like when CM Punk was champion and

people would be outraged that the show started with John Cena instead of CM Punk. Yeah. Like, starting the show is a big deal. It is. And they're trusting Enzo with the keys. I mean, listen, in the three-hour Raw era, opening the show is always going to be a big deal because it's like there's it's going to be a 15 20 minute segment you know like there's no it's not going to be a throwaway um you know the a lot of the a lot of my complaints about raw these days

are still the link to the show there's just a whole lot of stuff going on smackdown is especially the especially the hulu smackdown which you're a big advocate of such a joy to watch it's just like a it's a stream what is it like a streamlined like like 80 minutes or something like that of wrestling no no because raw is 90 i mean smackdown's got to be even less i don't think they cut as much from SmackDown though so I think it's still around the same I'm a big I'm a big like I've been watching everything I've been watching almost everything live uh East Coast live but the but it's a um that's always been the big I mean that's always been the best thing I'm next thing about NXT too right like everybody raves about like the creative direction or the characters or whatever it is they want to fuss about it's an hour it's an hour it's a fuck about it's an hour it's a perfect length for a rest of it gets and here's the thing NXT gets bad sometimes there's some lousy fucking matches but it's only an hour it's 60 minutes of your life and you're out like that's that's the the perfect length for a rest of wrestling show if you ask me. Yeah.

I totally agree. And on that note, we should probably end this podcast before it gets to the three hour mark. Yeah. Listen, there's other stuff we could have talked about, but I'm glad that we got to talk about

everything we did. I'm glad that we got some PWG into the show. I love talking about PWG. If I may, if you're digging CWC, if you're like, what, how on earth can David and Aubrey be complaining about the CWC.

It's so amazing to see all these young guys doing crazy, innovative stuff and it's new and fresh and different. Order a PWG DVD. Order the most recent one. Order one with people who you like in W.E now to see what they did beforehand. Order any PWG DVD and you'll be absolutely blown away. Also, furthermore, go to a local wrestling show because your local wrestling show isn't going to have all the guys that PWG has on it. But if the bookers are doing their job, They'll have one or two of them.

They'll have one or two really top-tier indie guys, and you can go see them for like eight or ten bucks. Beer will be cheap. It'll be family-friendly. It'll be a fun time. I don't know. CWC isn't your only option to see that type of wrestling. The things that I like most about CWC actually are the things,

or the interstitial stuff. The announcers, the stuff between the matches. They're doing a good job making it feel sort of legit and putting good packages together. But you're right about the matches. I was saying to somebody probably at PWG about how, one of my favorite like one of the coolest byproducts of Lucha Underground

is that there's all these like really good Mexican wrestlers that are working in the indie scene now where like a match that like a card in Indiana that would have been had nobody that you've heard of on it before now has like Pentagon Jr. And because of him, maybe it's like well we got him let's go ahead and Annie up and get Hero

or get like Chuck Taylor or whatever and now there's like two guys and maybe there's a third guy that you've heard a little bit about and that's an indie show you should go check out. Absolutely. That show would have had rhino on it now he's on smackdown uh anyway man uh thank you for coming by what plug all your stuff i well there's one there's one plug that people listening to the show should

there's a couple of them actually uh so listen we didn't there's a lot of stuff we didn't cover today yeah right a lot of stuff from raw we didn't really touch on smackdown at all uh tomorrow so that's the 11th august 11th at what did we say 6 p.m yeah 6 p.m pacific time uh showmakers is coming on my show, Straight Shoot, and we're going to talk Raw, Smackdown, NXT, CWC. We won't cover everything, but we'll cover as much as we can from each show. It's going to be a blast.

If you haven't listened to it before, it is a very kind of like specific topic-oriented look at all the stuff going on in W-E wrestling. Please tune into that. It's going to be fun. It's going to be great. You can search for straight shoot on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Podomatic.

Also, Aubrey-S-S-T-R-S-O-N-C-O-N-C-O-N.com. It's got links to everything, including all my social media. So this is a big week for me. So not only am I doing your show, not only are you doing my show, but then Friday, no offense, David, but the biggest name I've ever had on my show. Cody Rhodes. Cody Rhodes, come on. Typically, my show is all about, like, looking at, like, watching some wrestling and

then talking very specifically about that. But Friday, we're doing something different. Cody's a pal of mine. He's coming on. We're going to talk about everything. We're going to talk about what he's got coming up, matches against angle, evolve. He's participating in Bola, which I'm super excited for. the PWG tournament.

He's got Sammy Callahan, right? Space Cat Sammy Callahan on the second night. I'm going to be on the front row probably. Me too. We should sit together. I'm super excited about it. He's filming Arrow right now. Oh, really?

Yeah, dude, he's going to be a character on Arrow. That's public knowledge. It's not like a hot scoop or anything. But yeah, he's got a lot going on. And we're going to be talking about all of it on Friday at 5 p.m. Can you ask him a question for me? Yeah. I'm sure you're going to ask him this anyway,

but the thing I'm most interested to know from Cody Rhodes is like how scared he is Like, what's the feeling to wrestle his first indie match? Yeah, it's crazy. Dude, I mean, that's one of the things I'm really interested to talk to that guy. So he's a fascinating, really, really smart dude. Like, you can tell he's smart just from the way he comports himself and wrestles and all. But he's smarter than you realize, I think. And one of the things I'm really excited to talk to him about is because he's had an experience

that is a bizarre one, not just for a wrestler, but for any human being in 2016. And that he got signed by WWE when he was like 19 or something. And he worked there for his entire life. he spent his entire working career at at w buee at one company that's crazy people change jobs every two years just in normal businesses right uh so yeah i'm really fascinated to hear about kind of his mindset and like going into these indie matches and whether he feels like he needs to change anything up or not to me it's like i think i said it's like if you were uh if you were like a race car driver like you're a professional nascar driver and then one day you go to work and your cruise just like

hey, by the way, today, motorcycles. Right. And you're just like, well, that's probably a thing I can do. Or even just street racing, right? If you're a NASCAR driver and then you're like, oh, now we're going to do drag racing. These are very different things, right? They're the same, but they're very, very different. So, yeah, no, I'm very excited to hear his thoughts on that.

I'm stoked about it. And if you have questions, again, go to Aubreyseysitterson.com. There are links that you can actually go to the Google Hangout and submit questions for Cody. Let's, we'll continue this conversation tomorrow. Yes, sir. Thanks for stopping by, man. I'm at David Chewaker. on the Twitter and go to the ringer.com.

Go to the ringer.com slash merch and buy some cool stuff. And thanks to Zabella and Joe Fuentes and Tate doesn't really get a thanks this week. But thank you, Aubrey Sidderson. Thanks for having me. Great job on that mid-roll, man. It was really, really nice this week. Maybe the highlight of my career. Have a good weekend, Humanoids.

Hey, this is Ben Lindberg from the Ringer MLB show. This week we talked about how to rebuild a baseball team. With two people who are in the process of doing that, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, Brewer's general manager, David Stearns. You can subscribe to the Ringer MLB show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.