The Press Box - Ep. 172: 'The Masked Man Show' With Steve Kazee

Episode Date: August 24, 2016

The Ringer's David Shoemaker and actor Steve Kazee offer up their final thoughts on this year's 'SummerSlam,' discuss what's next with NXT, and break down what happened between Brock Lesnar and Randy Orton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Masked Man Show is brought to you by Seat Geek, our presenting sponsor and the only fan-friendly app for buying and selling sports and music tickets and wrestling tickets somewhere in between. Seat Geek makes buying tickets on your phone a total snap. With just two taps, you can instantly buy tickets to the event the same day, have your tickets delivered straight to your phone, and enter the event without ever having to print a ticket. And if you can't go to a gamer show, you can sell your tickets directly from the app in less than 30 seconds.

With Seat Geek, there's no guesswork. You'll know exactly where you're sitting, what you'll pay, 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. Welcome to The Masked Man Show. It's our post-Somerslam spectacular. I'm here with Steve Kazee. Steve. Hey, man. How you doing? Good. How's the couch treating you? It's really nice. We've got a new setup today. I love it.

Yeah. Recording live from the from the luxurious office. of Bill Simmons. Bill will be here later, but not on this podcast, so sorry for the tease. The, SummerSlam was really crazy. Right before we came on, we'll get to SummerSlam, but we were just talking about how old it you have to be to be a wrestler. I should start off this way. Happy birthday Vince McMahon.

Happy birthday, Vince. He's 71 years old as we're recording this, and he was taking bumps. Has he taken a bump since he was 70? Yeah, I think he took one, didn't he? I thought he took at least one. So, like, a guy that I know is 30 years old and just decided to be a pro wrestler. And, like, it's not, like, it's not just like a weekend warrior thing. He's moving to, I believe, the Dudley's 3D Academy, like, moving to Florida to, like, he's all in.

There will be more talk about him soon, I guarantee it. But I guess it just raises the question, like, you know, 30 is pretty old to be starting out in the rest of the world. He never did anything before. No Indies, like, no nothing. He's just like, he was like, I've been a fan my whole life and now's the time. But maybe that's good. Maybe it's all a wear and tear thing where, like, you know, most people, I mean, a lot of wrestlers have been wrestling well past their, well into their 40s lately.

Yeah. But, you know, I mean, there's, it's like being a running back in the NFL, it's, you know, you can be done at 23 if you carry the ball a thousand times, you know? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know. I work out every day. I consider myself to be in good shape. I couldn't take maybe like

I could take like one bump and then I'd be done for a month Yeah I wonder I mean if I if if you and I went down to the performance center And they were just like they wanted to give us like fantasy wrestling school for two days Yeah And your options were really learn how to bump for a day and feel and be able to say that you did it Or just like do like the kids version and just run the ropes and jump in the in the foam pit what would you if you only had if you had to pick one or the other what would it be?

Oh man I'd take the bumps I think that's an interesting choice. I would, I would, I think I would logically, I would want to take the bumps, but it would be hard to resist the foam pit, which, which is a really weird but good segue in the SummerSlam weekend when it seemed like everybody should have been using a foam pit. Everybody. So, so much has happened since the last time I was on this podcast and since, I mean, it's too much to even wrap my brain around. But the biggest, I mean, correct me. if I'm wrong, I feel like the two big things that happened, the two, if you have to rank things. One, was Brock Lesnar opening up Randy Orton with his elbow in the most gruesome,

like, maybe, maybe planned, like bloodletting on wrestling TV in a long time. And two, Finn Baller accidentally dislocating his shoulder. So he dislocated his shoulder, put it back into place. One, the universal title, our first ever universal champ, and then relinquents. the belt the next day. Yeah. Which, like, Mick Foley announced on Twitter of all the weird ways to go about it.

Yeah, it was brutal. But, so, I mean, and that wasn't even all of it. Like, my, the first, my, my one note from the first, like,

hour of the show was that my two, two of my favorite wrestlers, Inzo and Sasha, need to stop almost killing themselves in every big match. Yeah. Like, both of them managed to go,

like, neck first onto the concrete every time they have a big, and this is not like, I'm not critiquing their working style. I'm just like, as a fan, halfway through both of those matches, I just sort of was like watching with my hands over my eyes

like it was a horror movie. Yeah, it's a really, I mean, it's a tricky thing to thread that needle, you know, to go to the edge and not cross over because you want things to look hype and you want things to look amazing. But they're, you know, like, I mean, his first pay-per-view, when he got knocked out under the rope,

you know, that was a, that was an intensity slash, like, didn't go to the right rope kind of thing. But, like, he full-out got. got knocked out and almost decapitated. And I've seen a wrestler killed doing the same exact thing. I mean, you all remember that Mexican wrestler a few years ago. Same thing. Hit the rope hard like that and that was it.

Yeah, that's an interesting thing because it's hard to, it's not the same thing as jumping off the top rope onto the floor, like doing a like Hurricane Rana and landing on your head. Like it's, it is just like he's going so hard. 150% all times. You realize how difficult, like the degree of difficulty and even the smallest things that wrestlers do, right? Yeah. I mean, in some sense, just because of.

planning and staging and and and you know liability coming you know the liability issues that the people at the very top recognize you you almost have to assume that like Sasha doing the or like Sasha in Charlotte when she did the the razor's edge into the hurricane Ron off the top like that might be in a weird way one of the safest moments of the night right because like they can't like that can't go wrong they have to plan that out really well now there's a limit there's a limit to how much you can plan when you're both like sweaty and doing like a flip off of a 12 foot. It's weird too. I don't know if you felt the same way, but that match,

I don't know how I felt because you were there, but watching at home, it felt so sloppy in the first like five minutes. It took a while. It just missed a lot of beats and they missed a lot of moves and they were like holds that were slipping. And, you know, I watched that match like for the first,

like I said five, ten minutes in just like sheer horror. I was like somebody's going to really get hurt. And unfortunately, I'm starting to see like Sasha. to, and again, not a criticism of her work because it's what's gotten her this far, but she is, you know, seeming to be a little injury prone at this point. Yeah, I mean, injury prone is a word, it's a phrase I don't like to throw around because it sticks to people and then we're, and then like I feel like I'm partially responsible. But yeah, I mean, heaven forbid Finn Baller gets stuck with that label.

I mean, he's been grinding for a decade or more, in more than a decade. Yeah, I think that's the thing people don't understand either is how long he's been at it, you know. It takes a toll. But that, I mean, look, that's a complete freak, a freak accident. You saw it. That's a move they do a thousand times get thrown into that barrier. And he just happened to hit the wrong way to try to catch himself and pops his shoulder out and, you know, you're done for six months.

To be clear, just as I'm not calling any, I don't want to call any by injury prone, I'm certainly not calling anybody dangerous in the ring. But there was a lot of chatter online that this is the third major star that has come out of a Seth Rollins match injured. Fourth, if you include Seth Rollins. Hitman. bringing the heat I saw, you know. Yeah, Brett Hart has a, I was joking with somebody else in that podcast a couple weeks ago

that they just needed like Brett Hart to get, they should just hire him to give a five-minute rant at the end of every raw, just like the crazy old man rant because people would tune into the network for that, right? Just like. Sure. But yeah, he brought the heat this week. But yeah, I mean, we've seen Sina and, you know, Sting, most notably, like, go down with injuries.

and Ron's, you know, like, you're not, it's impossible to critique the, the, the, how he blew at his knee. I mean, that's a thing you see over and over again. Although, at some point, maybe that's not a move you need to be doing on house shows, you know, and then you, I mean, it's, it seems so silly for us to sit on these literally plush couches and critique the way that people, like, beat each other up. But it's a real, like, you know. Well, you have notoriously stiff workers.

I mean, you have people, I mean, Ryeback took a really bad reputation for a while. You know, and then you've got people like punk who, you know, just always wanted to whine about everybody who worked too stiff and now he's in UFC, which makes no sense to me. But, you know, it's a tricky thing, man. You're in a business where you're, you know, you're pretending to beat the life out of people. And so you want it to look as real as possible because as a fan, the one thing I hate is like the match last night where Dana Brooke was like pulling up short on all of her punches. And you could see they weren't even connecting, you know, and it's like I'm completely out of the match at that time. That's just because she has short arms. Right.

That's the problem. She was going as far as she could. But yeah, it is really weird. It's the, I will, I don't, we don't have time to talk about CM Punk, but we did watch, we watched NXT. I was at the NXT event and then everybody, like in the arena ran across the street to the sports bar. There's a, there's like an Irish pub, a giant Irish pub across the street from Barclays called McMans.

Yeah. So every time anyone's like, where are we going after the show? I'm like, McMans. Like, we got to go to McMans. But we, everybody went over there and it was just packed with wrestling fans and when the CM Punk training promo came on, that was the biggest pop of the night. I mean, it was insane. It was insane. I thought it was going to get boo. I would have, I would have guessed there'd be a lot of booze, but, you know, we got to stand behind our guy who might

literally die in a month. Here's hoping. But yeah, I mean, it's just a really weird, I mean, it's just so hard to, to judge these wrestlers, you know, I mean, and we, because we all hope, we all wish they would never get hurt, But we love the era that we're in. I assume I can speak for everybody when I say, like, I want to live, I want to watch wrestling. I don't want to live in a world where Seth Rollins isn't power-bobbing people onto the ring barrier. You know, it's a cool, it's a fun period we live it. Yeah.

But this all ties into what might have been the sneak, like the surprise smash hit of the week so far, which was Daniel Bryan and the Miz, like just tearing into each other on Talking Smack. Yeah, I watched that still don't really understand fully what. happened and I kind of love that. I mean, you know, they're finding a way to surprise me, a person who's been watching this for like 30 years, like is, is interesting to me. And I think it's also this blending of the reality era. Yeah. You know, I always said with total divas, which I loved, it would have been more interesting to me to start seeing some like a little bit of k-fabe on there. You know, like, let's twist, because none of that stuff is reality anyway. So like, let's

twist it and turn it and help it sell, you know, the actual like program a little bit more. So maybe they're figuring out a way to do that. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, certainly Total Divas had, I mean, it had its advantages, and it would be fun. It would, you know, if they pushed that a little bit further. Yeah. I mean, but like, Eve Marie is, well, not suspended, I guess.

But speaking of, okay, like, everything leads to something else. This is what's great about wrestling sometimes. The one thing I've always maintained, and this is not based on anything anybody told me, but like, whenever people say, is this a shooter, is this a work? The one thing I'll always say there's never a work is the wellness policy. They cannot

mess around with the wellness policy. Right. And they didn't do that with Eva Marie to be clear. I mean, there was no like shoot promo about,

I mean, I guess they kind of did that with Orton and Lesner, although Lesnar didn't fail any WWE tests. Right. He's not being tested as far as I know. But the,

but yeah, to have Eve Marie's music on Sunday. Like went through the whole intro. Yeah. And then to say, she's vacationing or whatever and not coming out was as close to that line as they could get

and I thought it was pretty effective. You and I disagree on this only in the sense that I think five years from now there'll be at least one occasion where a wellness report is fabricated for the purpose of a storyline. I don't, because it's such a good device at this point. It's the one thing we all think is untouchable. I think you're right.

I think that you're right. I think that it's important. would be crazy to say that they would never do it. So I, so all, but, but I just think that in an era where so many big stars are getting pinged for stuff, you know, it would be, it's crazy. The, like, I just don't think that if you have to suspend, if you have to suspend Roman Raines for whatever he was doing. Yeah.

Uh, and he's like your number one guy. If you feel the obligation, if, if WW feels the obligation to suspend their like top guy, then it would just be, it would just call too much into question if they were, if they were suddenly just like using this in a, you know, I mean, I can imagine a like a,

like a work shoot where someone's like, hey what, you don't care about the company, you keep getting suspended or something. Like maybe, but man, it would be crazy. But, you know,

anything, everything will happen eventually. You're right. It seems like Adderall is the new steroid though. Like, it's like, that's what Roman Raines got,

I'm not sure if he got pinged for Adderall, but I know even Marie, but I don't know. Even Marie got pinged for Adderall. Yeah. Didn't, there was another guy a few months ago got, oh, Adam Rose apparently

got, uh, yeah, and even Marie's husband was saying that, yeah, vaguely, I actually have an Adam Rose T-shirt somehow. The, uh, the, the, Adam, um, I think, I think even Marie's husband was that, you know, was saying she had a prescription for the ad of all and it shouldn't

have been an issue. I mean, again, they're not messing with the wellness policy, but I was joking, half joking with some friends this weekend that, that the wellness policy is starting to look like some sort of like WWE enemies list where like if you don't have a contractual way to ponder somebody, you just let them, let them fail a test. It was true.

Everybody could fail on any given day. Right. If someone does something wrong on the road, you're just like, oh, whoops, look who got 15 days off. I think the tricky way with Eva Marie is that, you know, that's her, the whole schick and the whole bit they're building right now is that she's not able to perform, you know, and they build and build and build and all of a sudden she's popped for wellness. It was like, oh, come on.

It could be the best possible, I mean, if a wellness policy violation could ever, help someone's career. This might be the one. Although Roman Reigns, I think in the broad, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, uh, in the, uh, in the, uh, main event at the time that he got, I mean, into the, like holding the belt at the time that he did. Yeah. They got, that he got pulled.

Well, but he might be back in the, in the, in the, uh, main event. So soon. So soon. Uh, it doesn't take much. Um, so fin baller, relinquish. the universal title. The biggest heel of the night at SummerSlam, by far was that red championship belt.

I mean, the crowd just lost their minds. Yeah, you were there. It was bad, huh? It was, from what I could tell, it was much louder in the arena than it was on TV, and then by the next day, it seemed like they had taken it down

a couple of notches on the network, too. It was all that was happening in the ring. I mean, in the arena was booing the belt for like the first two-thirds of that match. I want to talk to wrestling fans for one second. Okay. You guys need to stop doing things like this. You're idiots.

You are doing things like rushing the ring and you're going to cause all of us who like to go to these events and sit close to not ever be able to do that. They're going to end up putting up some kind of glass barrier around the ring like you're at a hockey game. Stay out of the ring and stop booing belts because two months from now you're all going to be cheering that belt and you know it.

So be quiet. Enjoy the show. There were two superstars wrestling their asses off in the ring in front of you. You paid money. It's like Twitter comments. You're just there to boo. Come on.

Anyways, back to the program. I agree with you. And I go on record as saying this. It's a sexy fucking belt. Really? I'd wear that belt. See, that's the hot take of the century right there. I like that belt.

You would wear that? I don't mind the red belt. So I think that my only critique of WWE, I mean, because really, I don't love the belt, but I'm not going to get mad about the color or whatever. My critique is that if all you're doing is changing the color palette, that's the only thing you're introducing. Then why are you doing this grand unveiling on the night?

As if everybody was like everybody wanted, I think in every, the reason why SMARC fans like you and me go nuts and boo with these events inappropriately, and we've all done it. Sure. is when our ridiculous, outsized, fantasy booking expectations are not met, right? It's unrealistic, but sometimes you just get something in your head, and every wrestling fan who was there that night, I think, had imagined some big gold belt with the eagle wings and the globe all, like, smushed together.

They want the old school. They wanted some belt that was never going to exist. Right, exactly. The interesting thing, I mean, just on a meta level, is that they're finally, they're actually pulling the belts out of the lineage. I mean, I guess the world title still kind of carries the lineage of all the belts that came before in a way, but they're not trying to separate them and have that weird line between, you know, the NWA and one of the belts and then, you know, just the, you know, the WWWF tradition on the other side. But yeah, it was weird the booing of the belt.

But if I were doing, if I were WWE and I knew that I was just changing the color of a belt to make it look. slightly different. Right. Maybe I just like do an online poll and let the fans pick the color, you know, or do something like, because it's not, it was such a letdown. It was like the gobbledy goaker. It's like, what is this thing going to be? And it's like, oh, it's a dude, no chicken suit.

Like, you know, your expectations were never going to be met by a red version of a belt we've seen before. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is, I don't mind the booing of the belt, but the booing of the belt has a time and a place. And you boo the belt when they unveil it, and then we all move on and we watch a match. But the fact that it continues, you know, it's like, it's a little bit like that after mania raw where the guys are still sort of drunk from the two days before and they just

sure and they go nuts and chant and go nuts and like i get it but at the end of the day we are there to watch wrestling um well i'm gonna i'm gonna take grab that segue and run with it the my biggest critique of summer slam and i'm not the only one to say this by far is that that was just way too fucking long and sitting in the arena people were i was looking at twitter people were like what's wrong with this brooklyn crowd like what's we've been here since five o'clock and like this thing is still going on. It's, I, I appreciate WWE's, uh, WVE, you know, opening the doors early and letting us have all of this bonus wrestling and

everything like that. And it's cool on the network when you're watching at home and you're like cooking your spaghetti to have like to have the pre show with a match happening occasionally. It's nice that all that's going on. But I mean, I don't know how I feel like Ron the Rollins, the reaction to the belt during the Rollins-Bowler match was basically like the raw after WrestleMania. Like, everybody was so punchy by that point that there was no, and the, here's my rant of the week.

The shape of the card, besides being so long, the shape of the card was so wrong. Made no sense. I don't, I don't even, I'm not even interested in talking about Roman Reins and Rusev having, but like the place where it was was just odd. The fact that they were, that they had like the Smackdown women's match after the raw women. And I don't, I'm not saying that like, like, the raw, I mean, if you want to talk about who deserved what, you know, the women's title should have been second to last, but that's not what I'm arguing. Right. I'm just saying like the arc of it was so weird.

And I get the idea of, you know, you don't want to keep everything up at a fever pitch for too long. And there's certainly been WrestleMania's where it was like a just a drudge for the last four matches because they were all 45 minutes long. But we don't need popcorn matches. I understand the purpose of a popcorn match to like, you know, like, like, you know, like, you. you know, just elite, to get you out of that mood and you can take a breath, you can go to the bathroom, whatever. But we have 20-minute video packages between every main event. Now, that is your popcorn match. Yeah.

Like, that's your, that's your chance to sit back and, like, go outside for a smoke. We're good, you know? We don't need that. I mean, it's just, it's so weird. The fans have no, I mean, after five hours of wrestling, like, the matches are in such a weird order. How do the fans, the fans don't internally know how to respond correctly after, you know, know, because you're on autopilot and you just, the matches that are happening aren't the matches that are the most important. It's so weird.

Well, I mean, it's confusing to me. Look, I'm not a fan of baseball. I was a fan of baseball for a long time and then baseball games started averaging somewhere around four hours. And then I was just like, I lose interest, you know. And I, and I worry sometimes that, you know, that that that same track is sort of being taken. I'm a firm believer that Rawl should be two hours. and Smackdown should be two hours. Paperviews should never go longer than three. I mean, it's just we don't live in a world where you're going to keep people's attention.

And I do think I wasn't there, but having watched NXT takeover and the UFC on the same night, it was probably one of my favorite nights of viewing sports entertainment in a long time. And I think you must have been feeling after having sat through NXT for three hours and then sort of having a four and a half hour summer slam, it's a lot.

And, you know, it's a decrescendo from, I think, the hype of the weekend. Well, I mean, this was the first... Into a Sunday night. The NXT card, I mean, Joe and Nakamura are just the best. But, like, compared to last year, the actual WW SummerSlam card was vastly superior to the NXT card. Yeah. In a way that, like, last year, the NXT card just totally stole the show, you know? But you're right, because of the way, because of the arc of the weekend, which ended in sort of like a five-hour

nose dive. Yeah. Or decrescendo. Nose dive is probably a little bit extreme. I'll take your word. But yeah, I mean, I left on, I woke up on Monday morning and I was just like, man, that revival match was really great on Saturday. I mean, it was.

By the way, Dash and Dawson. I love this guys. Yeah, I mean, that was just Gargano and Champa. I mean, wow, what a, those, those four guys just went at it. And it was, it was the perfect, it was a level of like, the awesome. of indie wrestling and like the full breadth of WWE style wrestling mashed up in a way that I mean I'm sure I'm sure we could find a Kevin Owens match that is sort of like

hit that same high point on that scale yeah but man it was really really great I feel like those guys are splitting though yeah gargano champa I mean I everybody is everybody on the roster is a little bit smaller now than they were well 20 years ago for sure but even like five years ago. And I think there's lots of room for undersized, quote unquote, undersized guys on the main roster. But, but, and so I don't think there's a lot of reason to be like, man, if only he was a little bit tall.

People say that about like Xavier Woods. And I think that's true. If he were taller, he would be in a whole different spot. Yeah. But man, if there's anybody, if Johnny Gargano was six inches taller, he would already be the world champion. Yeah. He's so good and, and just has everything they could possibly want, you know?

I agree. And that's, and that's not to take away anything from the rest of the guy. guys in that match, man. The revival have come so far in such a relatively short amount of time to be, I mean, they're going to be headlining, like, you know, an NXT takeover event, for sure. Like, it's, it's just so great. So, yeah, I mean, I think Gargano and Champa, it looks like they're going to have a little feud, which is, which is good. Yeah. I mean, I like them better separate than I do as a team. I just think they're both really talented. And I don't know, man, with like the cruiserweight push and all that, and we'll see. I mean, Finn Baller's not

that big of a dude. Yeah. I mean, and I think in some sense, they're going to have to hold back on promoting any cruiser weights to the main, you know, to the quote-unquote main roster. Right. Just to protect Baller a little bit. You know, I don't think it's an accident that, like, him and AJ Styles are on separate shows. Right.

They fill sort of the same slot. Yeah. And I think it's going to hurt, you know, the Luchy Dragon type guys that they're not, they're not going to be able to get that little guy making good push for a little while until we, until we, well, but now Finn Baller's gone. So I don't even know what I'm talking about. Six months, man. He had, apparently a surgery was successful.

Yeah. Maybe he can get in the gym with, he can get with John Cena's rehab coach or whatever and be back in a week and a half. But like, but yeah, I mean, so broad strokes. Well, before we get off of the next T, how did, what did you think about Joe and Knock and Roy? Oh, I thought it was one of, I mean, one of the best matches I've seen all year. It was, I thought, I thought, it was really good.

I think that there were, I think that I, again, imagined sort of a better match between them, you know, in my, like, in the fantasy, in like my fever dreams. Like, I thought I just had something else, but it was, um, it was really good. The finish, the, the last maybe three minutes of that match were insane. I mean, so many big spots.

And those knees, like to, to Joe's face, they looked, I mean, they looked brutal. He sold the hell out of that dislocated jaw. Everybody in the arena was just like, was that real? I know, whatever. I thought for sure. I was like, oh, he got his jaw knocked out. Well, you know, we start, we talked about how

they could never work the wellness policy. There was a period where it seemed like the one thing they could never work was the throwing up of the X. Right. But like after that, that happened when Joe dislocated his jaw and put air quotes around dislocated his jaw if you want. But then, but we all have seen the worked X. Like that's a thing that exists.

And so that was the conversation. And there, and so many people I was talking to was just like, no, no, that was clearly a worked X. Like they do it a different way. And I'm sure it's true.

I don't know. But it was, it's just so funny, you know? Yeah. There's, there's no limit. You're,

You're right. There's no limit to what they won't turn into a gimmick or whatever. But I thought on any on, I mean, if that had just been the main event of a standalone takeover that wasn't part of Summer Slam weekend, it would have gotten a little bit more of it. Maybe, maybe not. I was going to say we would be praising it more. We certainly would be spending much more time on this podcast talking about it. Yeah.

But so much stuff happened this weekend that it just sort of got buried. I saw a lot of people really say that that was their favorite match of the weekend, you know, on Twitter. I mean, I know JR was going on about it. I just think that like Joe has sort of come into a place where like he's going to be hauled up, right? It's got to be soon.

One would think. But like, we're heel heavy right now. Like good heels. Kevin Owens, like we've got great heels right now. But Joe is like next level heel right now because there's nobody. Because I'm afraid of him a little bit. I was going to say there's nobody who and he and Nakamura I think both have this.

It was really great about the match. There's very few people who, when you get into endgame, you could, if you like pause the TV and sat down with your buddy, you could like, you could write, you could probably write out how the rest of the match is going to go. You know the six moves that they have ready to win quark. Right. But I'm like, I watch both of those guys, but Joe in particular just sort of nervous and super excited about seeing it happen. Yeah. You know, I mean, like, when Joe, half of the roster does suicide dives now, but Joe's suicide dive is like legit. Yeah.

Not just because he's a giant guy. That's probably a lot of things. it but just his the way that his body moves through the air makes it look like you know a cannonball is so damn fast to be to be that big it's frightening it's really and and yeah i mean you know this you've you've i've seen you sitting at a table with samoa joe like it's he's he is one of the he is he is he is in the top at the upper echelon of wrestlers of like like you just feel different being in the physical presence of him for sure and he's not six foot six like he's about as short as you would think he would be but like he's just so scary

Yeah, he is. Although, I'm telling you, it's my dream to take a muscle buster from that guy. So, Joe, if you're listening, anytime, any place. On to a mattress. On to a mattress. Two preferably. Yeah, I mean, I hope that he gets called up. Last week, my fantasy booking suggestion was to just have him and Nakamura in the match by shaking hands and show up for the Smackdown tag team tournament together. Oh, that'd be awesome.

I mean, he's got to, I feel like he's going to go to Smackdown. I was looking at the rosters. Yeah, I think that you, I don't, I don't, you. don't, I mean, I don't want to like over associate the different guys, but I think that in the same way that you keep Ballard and AJ apart, you probably keep him and Owens apart just from like a silhouette perspective. Yeah, I agree. Although they're totally different guys.

I just am imagining what WWE is thinking, you know, the big, the bruiser. I mean, I guess the funny thing is Kevin Owens, who is, you know, obviously like one of my top five favorite guys is a very specific wrestler, but they've been booking him kind of as a Samoa Joe since he debuted. For sure. Which is not the wrestler that he is. Right. And I think that it was a good move.

Calling him a prize fighter. Right. You know, focusing on just him as like a, you know, like a brawler. A brawler. Yeah. Old school. He, by the way, has, I have nothing but praise for Kevin Owens. But whoever's making Kevin Owen's merch, you went from the best merch in the business to just like, we're borderline

Frudy Pebbles territory with the Kevin Owens merch right now. It's not good. Yeah. I would wear any Kevin Owen's merch in. shirt from the first two three months and you feel like that always happens though the higher you get up on the roster the more like cartoony your merch gets probably so this so it's probably a good sign i will say this looking at the merch stand at summer slam was the it was the best looking merch stand i've ever seen right the i mean like with nakamura i mean well i guess nakamura was the night night before but i know i think

they still had his stuff for summer slam yeah but with fin baller set ralins um uh the uh the new day Owen's, a lesser extent, John St. Like everybody's got their own look to their merch now, which is really cool. And it's, and it looks, and it's not all black stuff. Oh, Randy Orton's new shirt, Brock Lesnar's shirt. Like, it's all sort of identifiable, but it's mostly wearable. And it's all, and it all has a pretty cool. I mean, they're definitely head and shoulders above where they've been in the past.

Still got to talk about T-shirt texture, though, WWW. They're real not comfortable. I'm wearing, I'm wearing the Andre, the Giant, Eighth Wonder of the World shirt right now. Oh, the old school ones? Those are pretty good, though. Yeah, they try to make them a little softer. It's a little bit rough. It's a little bit rough.

The neck's a little bit tight. The, you know, we got it. We all have to, we can all complain about it. I cut sleeves off all of mine and work out in them. Really? Yeah. You don't just buy the sleeveless. They, like, they have some, like, John Tina sleeveless shirts.

No. I was wearing a bullet club shirt, though, at the gym the other day. And across, like, way across the gym. It's a huge, it looks like a, like, just big open space. And way across the gym, I saw a guy. And he just looked at me. And he, like, threw his head up and then gave me the two sweet from across the gym. That's so great.

The bullet, yeah. Yeah, man. Bullet Club, I mean, Bullet Club is now like the not so secret handshake amongst wrestling fans. But that is, that's, that brought in the whole new era of wrestling clothes that you can wear out in public. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I still don't know if I'm really going to go rock the Bullet Club shirt at like, you know, a Silver Lake bar on the weekend or something. Well, it's tricky because in the current climate we live in, if someone doesn't understand wrestling, you kind of look a little like murderous. And they're like, what's Bullet Club?

like they're worried about you. Yeah. Very quickly. Yeah. They think you might be a second amendment voter. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. But Finn Ballar's merch, starting with the Baller Club, has just been off the hook.

Yeah. I like it. I mean, yeah, they have a lot of good stuff. The paint game stepped up quite a bit too, right? The paint game? I was just, I said, this paint looked so good. When he got signed, when he, people were talking about him getting signed by WWE, which is a year and a half ago, how long ago that was, I remember joking, probably on a

podcast that his that w w you should hire his airbrush guy before they hire him because like that's worth more to the company overall um i did have a report from backstage uh from a very very very very uh tuned-in source that there that that there was a door with a sign on it for the air like for the body paint like so there is a body paint department and backstage in w uwe you go um but yeah they really set that up yeah i'm still not 100 percent sold on like the rostowig but that entrance, but they're putting that entrance over like crazy. Yeah, for sure. And it's just so cool. There's nothing as cool as seeing a dude's paint get worn off over the course of a match. I mean, going back to the, you know, staying, like, I mean, obviously there were other people

with paint, but like guys who, as far as, he always, his paint always came off about. Yeah, Sting and Ultimate Warrior because they were wrestling like whenever they, you knew it was a big match because they wrestled, they wrestled and sweated enough for the paint to start coming off. Yeah. It was really cool, man. And I, yeah, I mean, that Ron's, Ron's Ballard match was the first thing I rewatched after, you know, taking, getting away from it for a few hours and going back. And man, it was so great. Yeah, it was a great match.

I mean, match of his lifetime up into this point, I'd say. I mean, it really sort of, you can't, like, debut at SummerSlam in that way and win the belt and all that. I mean, you know, putting the shoulder out, it's going to become legend. Like, if I were able to have a conversation with the guy, I know he's got to be down right now. I know he's got, I mean, you've got to be down. But, like, you just, you're going to come back in six. months hotter than you could have ever been had you been wrestling for the last six months.

Yeah. And you, yeah, I mean, the fact that he kept, that he dislegated his shoulder and kept going and finished the match, that's the stuff of legend. By the way, early in the match. Yeah. That happens early in the match. And he finishes so many other, I mean, it's move after move after move. It was really incredible. And I agree. I mean, there's nobody, I haven't thought deeply about this, but I'm trying to think, like, who, given the fact that he ended up winning the title, Because I think there was some real skepticism about whether or not this was a legit push versus like a Dahl Ziegler. Let's get the Marks Happy for SummerSlam push, you know. Given the fact that they put the title on him, what are the parallels?

It's like Goldberg except way fat like it's the, it's the bit, well, not the big show. It's the giant in WCW like where this guy just shows up out of nowhere and they're just like, hey, you're wrestling for the title. Well, I think, you know, a lot, there was a lot of chatter about, well, yeah, Finn Baller, Nxtee. and you know but no one believes in them up there people aren't that sold on them i mean i think this is a number one thing to say like that's not even in anybody's mind like that guy is the future of this company i think that there's probably some i think that the the um i think it seems like backstage at wwe that like two two mutually exclusive things can be true at the same time sometimes

you know or like can you know the winds can shift direction very quickly yeah vince McMahon is 100% in the Finn Baller, on the Finn Baller bandwagon. Like, that's his favorite dude. For sure. But, or he's, he's his favorite dude in so much as, like, he is fully dedicated to putting him over. Right. But, yeah, I don't think that it's untrue that he, that Vince, like, might not have

known who he was a month ago. Sure. Like, that totally could be possible. Yeah, I agree. Or, I mean, you know, not, not have been able to pick him out of a lineup. But I was joking around last week that they shouldn't have, you know, done the, I mean, that it was weird for them to have the whole demon entrance. on just an episode of raw, but I get that, like, one, you need to introduce the majority

of casual fans to this being a thing. You've got to prep it, yeah. And two, if, and more importantly, if it's this that's going to get Vince excited about him, it's that sort of stuff, then like, do it every week, man. Like, get, like, let, like, you know, as, as, if it's Finn Baller, who I think, you know, said before is the most upside of any guy on the roster right now. I mean, is the guy, he's the only dude who could, who, I mean, He has that John Cena potential for being the face of the company.

Also has that John Cena potential for like your girlfriend saying like, hey, let's watch this match. Roman Raines too, I guess. But like, I mean, the ladies talking about Finn Baller this weekend was just off the charts. It's not just the ladies. No. I'm from a world of musical theater. And musical theater, for those of you who are not from that world, is a very LGBTQ friendly environment. Sure.

All of my gay friends love Finn Baller. Like, it's the number one way to get any of my gay male friends interested in professional wrestling. I say, oh, would you like to see a picture of Finn Baller? Boom, it's done. They're like, what time is raw on? I'm telling you. Well, I mean, it was very recently that Stephanie came out in an interview, not came out. She had an interview in which she said, like, they were very serious about LGBT issues,

and that they would certainly be characters who were gay in the near future. When anybody disparages wrestling, I always say we're one of the first groups to, like sort of set boundaries like that. I mean, remember when Darren Young came out? Yeah. Nobody even blinked an eye. We were like, all right, cool, awesome. No, I mean, it was a weird. And then Pat Patterson, was Paterson, was Paterson? I think he was actually maybe before Darren Young. Who many came out on the, on the reality show, on the Legends House. Actually, I'm not sure which happened first. I think Legend House might have been right after that, but like it was calling an open secret gives it too much credit. Like, it was just well-known. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I think that that's, I think that in some ways, and this is what just boggles my mind about the end about pro sports NFL and NBA it's like for whatever like dinosaur stigma there is around being gay it's like there's no need there to be a stigma in a world where you're just like like one of the most impressive athletes in the world and i'm not there's no correlation except in that like crazy old way of thinking right but it's like it's just it's just so weird like why like why does it like it just shouldn't matter before we get into the really gross part of the podcast i want to tell you about our sponsor blue apron it's awesome not all are created equal.

Fresh, high-quality ingredients taste better and are better for you, so it's important to know where your food comes from. I personally cook with Blue Apron 100% shoot, and absolutely love getting great meals delivered straight to my house. Every week, I'm excited to try new food I'd never thought to make before. For less than $10 a meal, Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes, along with pre-portioned ingredients to make delicious home-cooked meals. Blue Apron knows that when you cook with incredible ingredients,

you make incredible meals, So they set the highest quality standards for their community of artisanal suppliers, family-run farms, fisheries, and ranchers. Whether it's Japanese ramen noodles, wild-caught-alaskan salmon, or heirloom tomatoes, my personal favorite, Blue Apron is bringing you the best. Some of the meals available in August include spiced pork burgers with goat cheese and cucumber corn salad, summer vegetable and quinoa bowls with fairy tail eggplants, shishito peppers, and corn. And chicken tinga tacos with summer squash and tomato sauce. Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to blue apron.com slash masked. That's MASKED. You'll love how good it feels and taste to create incredible home cook meals with Blue Apron, so don't wait.

That's blue apron.com slash masked. Blue Apron, it's a better way to cook. This week, The Masked Man Show is also brought to you by WWE 2K17. We finally got a real wrestling sponsor for the wrestling podcast. All right, folks. ready to be taken to suplex city, courtesy of WW2K17. 2K is back once again as the defending champion of WVE video games with its cover superstar Brock Lesner.

It's a personal favorite of Ben Simmons. That's good. I'm glad we worked at it. He's so excited! 2K17! I actually saw this game being played this weekend and saw Brock Lesnar in person. Brock Lesnar is even more impressive in the video game than he is in real life. Ben Simmons plays... Oh, he does like two-player mode.

It just kills the other guy. The other guy, the controller's just vibrating. Oh, my gosh. Ben is already as good as John Cena is right there. That's it. It's just squash matches nonstop. Okay, so back to the read. This game is...

I'm really actually excited about this game. 2K17, WWE 2K17 features amazing graphics and gameplay, as well as a gigantic roster featuring the biggest and brightest superstars past and present. We all new promo engine will bring the drama and personality of WW superstars to life in my career in WW universe modes. Your words will shape your characters as they rise through the ranks of

NXT and WWE to become WWE Hall of Famers. So enjoy a star-studded soundtrack featuring some of the top names in the music industry curated by executive soundtrack producer Sean Diddy Combs. You might know him better by his other gimmick, Puff Daddy. Pre-order your copy today and receive two playable characters of the legendary Bill Goldberg From his days in WCW and his WWE tenure That's when he had the shorts and not the briefs As well as two classic WCW arenas

For more information on everything WW2K17 Go to www.2K.com WWE 2K17 hits the shelves on October 11th So pre-order it now We're going to get back into the show with Steve Just a little bit of a warning Randy Orton and Brock Lesner drove us to drop the F-bomb about a hundred times

so if you have kids listening you might want to cover their ears for SummerSlam itself are there like what are there matches that we need to specifically touch on there's so many one there's so many big matches we'll run through these one by one well we've yet to talk about Orton and Lesnar

right so we should hit that let's start at the top then what a weird match what a weird I was trying to make one of the strangest matches I've ever seen I said this to you before we started recording It was like everybody wanted to talk about that match But then immediately everybody's like you would get to a conversation and then it would just let it peter out because Like you can only say what the fuck so many different ways right

The weird thing that I was I was messaging with Sam Donsky ringer writer who was on the show last week and Sean Finacy or editor and I was like Here's the weird thing in the in the in the John Sina mat the Lesnar Sina match where he busted John Sina open we had the same thing where everyone was trying to argue over whether or not the, like, it was, we were all kind of like, yeah, it was booked, but how, was it supposed to be that much blood? Right. And then, so we had that repeated. Then, and I was, you look back at the Lesnar Undertaker match where the storyline coming out was whether or not the match had been ended early because Undertaker was just so hurt.

We had the echoes of that in the Randy Orton match. Yeah. At some point, you got to assume that like, either all of these things are accidents or they're all on purpose. And if they're accidents, why is Brock Lesnar employed? And obviously, he's a huge star. But like this is maybe an issue. I think that, but I just can't, I would lean towards it all being planned, but I just can't imagine the backstage conversation where, you know, Michael Hayes or Triple H goes up to Vince and they're like, hey, do you want to do another one of those like what the fuck endings?

The fans will just go home talking about this. Like I don't, I can't wrap my head around what the booking decision would have been. I mean, the only thing that I can think about is that, you know, I mean, of course Lesnar has a lot of like, you know, rumors and things. swirling about what did he fail at you know UFC and there's I was sort of like okay well how I think we talked about it if he wins at UFC then how do you play that and if he loses you have to play that what we didn't talk about was what happens if he like you know fails a drug test so in the sense that if he if he comes out and just becomes this ruthless madman who's like busting people open and seems reckless then we're all going to stop talking about

the UFC violation and we're just going to start talking about what the fuck is happening with Brock Lesnar, which is kind of what we're doing right now. But to me, I mean, look, I'm not saying that he wouldn't, but I don't know why Randy Orton would be like, oh, yeah, I'll take a severe elbow to the head and you can try to bust my head open. Like, just don't do it on my face, like, do it up here on my heads. You know what I mean? Like, I don't see a world where that happens, but I also don't see a world where Shane McMahon

runs out and gets an F5 that's not booked. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that was what, like, Donsky's message that to me. He was like, dude, Shane loves to take bumps. Like, that's his favorite thing now. Like there's nothing he loves more in the world. Well, and are we, like, are we on a way to a Lesnar McMahon match? Because he sort of, like, talked a little bit of that last night.

Like, I'm going to handle all deal with. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that match. I've heard grumblings about that. It would be so weird to me if that was a match. But, I mean, my fantasy booking would be just for Survivor series, have a traditional five-on-five except Lesner is just five. I have, like, Lesnar versus five people from Smackdown. Like, you know, have Shane and four cohorts or something.

Okay. Bring back the Mean Street Posse. Maybe they bring back Goldberg. Yeah. A little Goldberg. There was a lot of Goldberg chatter. I'm not sure. It's so weird that like everybody, the same thing happened with Sting when he showed up on the video game.

And Sting didn't come back for a year or whatever. Like, I can say with great certainty, I have no idea of Goldberg is coming back or not. I can say with great certainty that Goldberg's relationship with 2K has nothing to do with his potential relationship for WWE. Right. 2K is just, they're an independent operation and they knew it would like pop people to put him in the game. Right. Like that's why he's there. Right.

But who knows, man, Goldberg, he's 40 years old or something, maybe older. And every interview, he's, oh, yeah, he's probably closer to 50, isn't he? He's probably like 44. Yeah, but he's, but in every interview, he like, he's, he, he, he, he, I talk to him. He insists that he's, you know, like, ready to go. 15 minutes away from ready for the ring, you know? Well, I mean, look, so, okay, so, so, so, so Lesnar comes out, he very blatantly. I mean, it's blatant.

He, you watch it a thousand times. He hits him with an elbow in the forehead. Oh, sure. I mean, they took off the gloves first. Like, it was, that was the, that was the move. Like it was, they were aiming for that sort of a moment. Right. And it's brutal.

I mean, that's not a, that's also anybody that knows old school wrestling. That's not a pre-cut. Like, that's a, that was a gash that can only happen when a blunt object smashes into your bare skin. I mean, it's jagged. It's just like, he got opened up. There's no way of like prepping that. Oh, yeah.

Before him. I've seen Goldberg is 49, by the way. Oh, God. 49 he looks great um 40 the the uh i've seen like indie matches they're like a ring of honor match where they like there was there was after um when nigel mcginnis had got you know like like kind of stopped wrestling they stopped doing blade jobs in ring of honor but like the fans were still blood thirsty and there i saw a couple of shows where like the wrestlers were trying really hard to get blood the hard way right like it was like it's the old fashioned like rabbit punch down

onto the top of the brow to try to bust guys open. And you would just see, like, it was some of the most brutal matches you've ever seen because this guy's, like, legit punching each other, trying to get, draw blood. But, like, hopefully it happens in the first time. Anyway, the drawing blood, the hard way, is not a simple task. No.

It's a different story when it's Brock Lesnar's elbow, you know, onto the top of your head. But, man, he, I don't, there's certainly no way to, like, gauge that. I mean, there's no way to measure it. There's no way to say I'm going to do a minor incision on your head with my elbow. No, and here's what I'd, you know, okay, so I was at WrestleMania at NXT. You were there. Sure.

Joe Baller, Joe got busted open. Oh, yeah. And it was how many minutes of them coming in and trying to stop the bleeding because they didn't want blood? Yeah. Like they were literally like, can't have blood, can't have blood, can't have blood. You've seen the like, you know, there was the sloppy when Byron handed, what was it, Roman Reins handed him the blood pack a few months. months ago. Like, it's, it doesn't seem to be. Is that bad that's what I think of every time

Nas swallows, like the bags of, baggies of drugs on the night of? Like, it's just like someone slides a little packet over and he like gulps it down as everybody can tell what's going on, but he acts like he's totally incognita. Yeah. But so like they don't seem to have a bloodlust right now, which would make an intentional bloodletting seem far fetched. Well, it's come a long way in terms of that stuff since, since that Roman Rain's moment. I mean, I mean, I feel like we're definitely in a looser, more, like, grittier moment. Yeah. But, but yeah, I mean, I think that the, well, I guess the one piece of proof that we have

that this was legit is Meltzer's report, and I think some other people probably did it too, but believe Dave Meltzer over everybody else, obviously, is that about the Jericho of Leicester fight backstage where Lesnar, when Jericho came out, came up to like check on Orton or whatever to see if that was legit. and then they got into an accidental fight sort of, sort of misunderstanding, but sort of not. But it was eventually broken up by Vince,

who intervened to say, to tell Jericho, like, that's the way it was supposed to happen. So what's wrong with you is all the work. Right. Right. So,

I mean, on the one hand, if Vince just, if that was not a work, but Vince just wanted to break up the fight, that's what he would say. Of course, yeah. But it does see,

like the context clues of that story. And then you take Lesnar into your office and you're like, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. The context clues. there's that story though like lead me to believe that it was it was totally planned but like it i don't i think that at the end of the day that the thing that's i mean my crazy

the theory that i couldn't quite buy into is the most plausible one which is they know that they the most important value that lezner has to them is to make it seem like a real sport for five minutes right and to get people talking about it whether be it on sports center or ESPN's new wrestling vertical or just, you know, internet chatter and man, they pulled it off. Well, the thing that I always, you know, find interesting in these moments is like, like, a guy like Lesnar, you always feel like maybe he forgets sometimes that it's not UFC. You know, like when you watch him wrestle, you're like, I'm always like a little worried. He's got like a little PTSD and he just goes like, oh, I'm in a fight and like just starts fighting

people because he's brutal. But then you remember, like this guy's trained for years and years years. He also knows what he's doing. He may be a UFC fighter, but he was a professional wrestler before that. And a real wrestler before that. Right. So. Yeah, it was a, it was a, it was a, very strange moment in the show. And I think, I mean, for a way, I mean, that was the end of the show, right? Yeah, that was it. That was a, that was a strange, well, whatever. I mean, it was. Well, and then to not even, like, remotely address it, like, other than, oh, we find him $500. I mean, Randy, you know, Randy did his thing. I don't even understand the $500 thing. Is that, has that been reported as, it looks like it's, is that being reported? They said it last night

on Smackdown. Somebody said something about Shane, or I think Shane said, oh yeah, you find him like $500 or something. Yeah, but then like other people are reporting it as if it's real. Right. Well, again, it's the, I think it's the world we live in. I don't know who to trust anymore. If I can't trust Forbes and Rolling Stone, then who am I supposed to trust? Let's be honest. But, you know, I think maybe you're looking at a thing, which I don't know, man, because if we're going to do a brand split, then let's do a brand split. Like, I don't want to be wondering, oh, is Shane and Stephanie, like, what are they planning against each other?

I don't know that I want to follow. You want to keep it separate? I don't keep it separate, yeah. Because then, like, why are we doing separate pay-per-views? And then, oh, we're, well, we'll come together for Survivor series. In the last brand split, didn't, like, the Rock went, like, number two and then, like, basically retired, like, a week later or something. Yeah, something like.

Sometimes you just have to use people as, like, placeholders to, like, move the other pieces around in the way that you want to move them. Right. But yeah, okay, well, speaking of the brand split, we got to touch on the other championship match. What was your feeling about, about Dolph Ziegler and Dean Ambrose? Always a bridesmaid.

Always a bridesmaid, man. Well, they certainly didn't, they didn't book it or perform it in a way that made you feel like it was going to be the match of the night. No. Look, I am, God, I went so quickly from being Team Ambrose to just being really, I think.

Whoa, really? I feel like Ambrose might be the worst champ we've had in five years, four years, five years. I just don't get it. If he's going to be the gritty sort of lunatic, then be a lunatic. Don't be a buffoon. And he's sort of starting to trend towards like being a buffoon. It's like more about like playing like I'm a lunatic than it is just sort of being unhinged. He definitely had a buffoonish period, and I feel like he has come out of it.

Dude, he came out last night in the Mohegan Sun thing with, like, a giant foam hat, and basically seemed like he was drunk ringside, like, talking through the Dobsigler, AJ Style's match. You're right. You're right. So I just don't know what's going on. So, like, what are we doing? Are we the comedy brand? Because if we are, that's fine, but like, let's just go fully there. But anyway, I don't know that Ambrose is the champ for much longer.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that I think that they got to leave it on him just to legitimize Smackdown. Like, he's, he is that. He has the role of legitimizing the show and keeping the belt legit and legitimizing myself. I feel like they're sort of a package deal for a while. I thought that I was surprised that there wasn't that that AJ Styles. I mean, I, is there we have to do spoiler award? No, there's no spoiler alerts after live Smackdown. Now it's a live smackdown live. If you didn't watch it, it's your fault. It's it doesn't surprise me that AJ Stiles is next up to bat. It does surprise me that they wrote Ziegler off, I guess just because I, watching Sunday, I got the feeling that,

you know, I was hoping for like a formal Ziegler heel turn and I don't need full on heel turns like smack an old lady heel turns, but if anybody needed one, it was Dolph Ziegler. Sunday night felt like like they changed the booking at the last minute to,

it was like, it felt like a thing. we've seen before where like a match sort of underperforms and then the the original version of the match happens the next night on raw. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like they were just like, go out and have a good match, but like we're going to save the storyline implications for Tuesday. Right. And then Ziegler was obviously still in the mix, but it was one of those weird, I mean, the way that they booked it where it was like Ziegler had to win to get into the championship match. It just felt like a foregone conclusion that he wasn't. My favorite part was, AJ, if you win,

then you're in the match against Dean Ambrose. but Dolph, if you win, then you're in the match with AJ and Dean Ambrose. It's like, well, then the first part doesn't really count because if AJ loses, is he not in the match? Like, I don't understand. So basically, AJ's in the match, no matter. And at that point, I was like, oh, there's no way Ziegler's going to be in this match. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, yeah.

Which makes no sense to me. Then why did he main event SummerSlam for the Smackdown brand? Like, what are we do? You know, the poor guy. Like, I'm not saying he can't hold the belt, but. I don't know. Yeah. I'm confused.

It'll be interesting to see what they do with him next. You know. And I just want Ambrose to go back to being like a real true badass that like yells and kind of seems crazy and beats the hell out of people. But it's just, I don't know, man. It's not working for me. Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting to watch Smackdown going forward. I mean, now it looks like Orton and Wyatt are paired up.

I mean, there's the sort of, the smaller roster on Smackdown makes it fun because you can kind of do the, you can kind of do the, you can. and kind of draw the lines and chart out like who's going to be fighting who and it's and it's it's less wide open but then you know the downside is it's less wide open and you kind of like it might sort of get stale if they don't book it really carefully after a few weeks between every well I guess they're they have a paper view in two weeks now right is it two or three uh I think it's three we're gonna have I do like that uh I like the the Wyatt Orton you know I was like when I saw Bray last night I was like oh right you didn't have anything to do at SummerSlam.

literally forgot that. Yeah. And that's a problem. I thought he would be involved in that championship match. In the World Title match because he'd been very involved to it up to that point, you know, or at least to make an appearance. I was shocked by that. Yeah, that was really weird.

So jumping back to the rest of the card really quickly, I mean, is there anything to be said about the New Day versus the club match? I mean, that was just sort of, it was what it was. Oh, well, AJ Styles versus John Cena was the match of the night. That's the one match we haven't talked about. Yeah. Ending with John Sina seeming to finally give up. I was out looking at the merch table after that,

and I joked with the merch salesman to ask if the never give up shirts were half off now after. And they totally no-sold it. It's weird when you go to these shows because of all of the things that happen in a sports arena, my guess is that pro wrestling probably has the greatest number of arena employees who are into the product. Right. You know, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of, there's a huge number of, you know, Demi Lovato fans at the Barclay Center staff, but like, it's like, you know, 10% are very passionate about her. Weirdly, it's like 50% of people at Barclay Center employees are wrestling fans.

And they're asking you what's going on or following it on their phones. Like, it's really funny. That's got to suck the worst. Like, you're a wrestling fan and you have to work the merch table during SummerSlam. That's got to be the worst feeling because it's right there. Well, the merch people that I talked to were not wrestling fans. It was all like 16 year old girls. It was the guys selling beer that were all wrestling fans.

And like the guys giving you your hot dogs. The AJ style scene a match for me was the surprise match of the night because I was not in any way. That was going to be my sort of go make some dinner match because I just, I feel like they've wrestled so many times already and I just didn't know what else could be gained from it. It was a hell of a match. And has any, have any two guys ever had,

had a run of great matches in three months, like to have a feud that's that good and that's straightforward and to have like, have they had three like match of the year candidate matches in that span of time or just two?

It doesn't happen often and it doesn't happen often for Sina. I mean, I hate to like, I don't want to disparate Sina. Sina's a lot, I mean, Sina's a really good wrestler, but yeah,

as far as like matches that just in ring, like ring work wise that you're going to remember in six months. Like this has been a crazy few for them. They were good. They were good. And I think, you know,

Sina gets a lot of shit for burying people, and he put Stiles over. I mean, that last match, I think, was just, when Sina walked out, I was like, all right, well done, well done, because, like, for an older guy, you literally were just like, hey, buddy, it's all yours for a while. And they're playing off of it, you know, AJ's saying he's the face that runs the place now, but, like, it was a big deal. It was a big deal. So, John Sina is actually the parallel to the rock from the last brand split.

where he just comes over to legitimize Smackdown and then disappears for a while. I mean, Sina seems, like, has it been reported what it's going on? It seems like he's off to report some more reality shows or something. Yeah, something's got to be up. And how great is that for Sina to build the entire program around the fact that he never goes in it,

that he's like, he's there all every week. And then he actually leaves afterwards. Yeah. Like, what a great, I mean, I'm done wishing for the scene right, he'll turn, but like, what, I mean, he's a liar. I'm never, I'm never. He's a, John Sina is a liar. You heard it here, folks.

David Shoemaker calls out John Cena. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm never going to give up the Cina heel hope. But I don't know if this is the time, but I thought the throwing down the never give up armband was pretty good. I was talking to somebody after that show. And, you know, we were kind of having the same thing. Like, Cina can't ever, Cina's already the biggest heel. Like, what could Cina do to get more booze? And I thought, the answer is Daisy Duke jeans.

Like, if you just cut the George's really, really short. Speaking, I'm wearing my jorts today in honor of John Sina and Stone Cold, but mostly, John Sina. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think those, I think those jorts are a little bit too tight to do, to do the Hurricane Rana off the top road. Yeah, couldn't do it. So, Sasha and Charlotte, I mean, that was a really great match. And I'm glad they booked it exactly the way that I fantasy booked it to have Charlotte win clean after a really good match. The announcers still, there's still this weird tension between, obviously the announcers know what's happening, but then they just, fail to call, like to tell the story in the way that, I mean, maybe I, maybe I wasn't paying

enough attention, but they were certainly talking about how Charlotte had the hurt, I mean, how Sasha had the hurt shoulder or the hurt back. Right. But like, it was the way that, I mean, Charlotte Rolling Her Over was just a beautifully designed ending, you know, it was, she was still in pain, but Sasha just didn't have the energy anymore. And Charlotte's just twice as big as her, you know, I mean, that, like, that would make, that would make a lot of sense if like Brock Lesner did that to Heath Slater, or Daniel Brian, I guess, right? Brock Lesnar just rolls over on the guy and he can win.

And that's sort of what Charlie did. And I thought that was a really well-told, I mean, a really well-designed story, if not particularly well-told. But the, I mean, I think that that's a perfect move for the women's division. Now Sasha can chase all the way through WrestleMania to try to get it back. I'm just happy, I was really expecting Rick Flair run in. When you ban Dana Brooke, you know, it's like either she's going to sneak in or or, you know, Rick Flair is going to come back.

I thought they did a great job with that. Yeah, I do too. Like I said earlier, I thought the match started off pretty sloppy, and I was a little concerned because they always, those two always work so well together. And I just didn't seem like something was just off from the get-go, but they, maybe it was just nerves, I don't know, but it, it's, I think it's got to be some nerves because it's, I mean, at this point,

the expectations for women's matches are so high. Well, I've said this before. It's hard, as someone who's a long-time wrestling fan, it's hard to remember the dark days when it was just tits and ass. and people couldn't even do a move. I mean, there's still people like Eva Marie. And every time there's a big match, I mean, they just, they bring it to such a degree.

Like this might have been like a four star match or a three and a half star match, but like that's like the low end of the spectrum, right? I mean, it's, it's really nuts to, it would be like if, you know, if there were only 12 big minns matches a year and like five of them were Savage Steamboat, Like every time you go out there, you're just like, wait, we have to do that? Like, crap. And I mean, and don't get me wrong. I mean, the Finn Baller, you know, Seth Rollins match, they really brought it.

That was, that was, I mean, they're going out there with that same level of hype. But the expectations are just slightly different in the women's matches. Well, and I think, too, that, you know, I was thinking about the fact that these particular women, I mean, Sasha and Charlotte, you know, the women's revolution, so to speak. Because when you look down the line at NXT right now, I mean, other than Nia Jacks, who's now up, and Oskah, who will be up soon. She's great, man.

Oh, I love Oscar. I love Oscar. I guess a baby matchup, which we totally skipped over. Another definite highlight of the weekend. Super instant classic. I'm excited to see Bailey work with just about everybody on the main roster, but like... I couldn't agree more.

But mostly because, like, I don't quite have an opinion on Bailey. Like, I've watched so many matches, but I'm interested to see, to sort of take a look at her chemistry with the women on raw, you know, just with a, with a keener eyes, sort of, you know? Well, that's sort of what I'm saying is like this core group of women who are really, really incredible performers, wrestlers, whatever you want to say, I'm curious to see how the next generation coming up, are they going to take that ball and run with it? Because, you know, I also have some of the same complaints about the men's division.

I don't know who the next big superstar out of NXT after Nakamura and Joe get out of there. will be. Now, granted, somebody always sort of rises to the top, but I just think that we're at a zenith right now where we have a lot of really talented people who are right in their prime, 29 to 35, who are just killing it. I mean, Charlotte and Sasha Banks and Bailey, but also, you know, when you look at guys like Finn Baller, Kevin Owens, I mean, you know, Nakamura, Joe, like those guys, it's just going to be interesting to see how, like, what we're in here. Are we in a rebirth where everybody's going to continuously raise the bar or are we in just a particular like fat point where we just have a one group of really great people do you know what I'm saying yeah I know I know exactly

what you're saying I mean it's there they're it's it's it's gonna be a really interesting next year because I don't know if Billy Kay or whatever the hell her name is I don't know if she's the answer no you know but then the the the one uh the what's her name saber no that's the what's the girl's name that just debuted at nxte oh uh she was incredible I know exactly you're talking about. I'll pull it up right now. But yeah, I mean, there's, I think overall we're an interesting spot. Like you were, I mean, the, but a lot of it has to do with, I mean, you look at the ages of people.

You said, you know, people are in their primes. Yeah. But Finn Ballers 35. Yeah. I mean, that's just it. They have all, part of the result of bringing these guys up from the Indies or over from the Indies. Yeah. Is that everybody's in their prime right now.

Yeah. So we're either in, like, we're already in the middle. of the glory days of professional wrestling and we're not quite aware of it. Would you say we're in the middle of the glorious days? Oh my gosh. I was just looking through my notes. We got to get out of here soon. I was like, what have we not talked about?

And the number one downloaded soundtrack song on iTunes right now is, yeah, is Bobby Rude's new theme song. I mean, how great is that? I will tell you this much, you know, if you have watched them in T&A at all to like see this new take on a Bobby Rood character. is pretty amazing. Yeah. I mean, he's sort of,

like, I still can't not think, look at him and think, like, he's Triple H's Mini-Me. Like, he just has that. Do you see the picture he tweeted out,

actually? He tweeted out a picture of him as a security guard during one of the, like, raw matches with Triple H, like, DX. And he was like,

you know, you come a long way or whatever and, like, to his debut at, uh, debut at NXT. Oh,

that's really great. Um, but yeah, so I'm going through, so, he, that was a great debut. The fan singing along to that,

song was just one, was definitely one of my highlights of the night. So, yeah, highlights of the weekend. Let me see what, is there any, that, uh, Virgil actually had the tweet of the weekend. I made a note that I had to see this. Yeah, during the women's match, he tweeted, uh, Mula looking up from hell, smiling tonight, Sasha and Charlotte tore the roof off the place, which is like, like, like,

somebody had to write that for him. That was like, yeah, I'm not sure if Virgil's running his own Twitter account or not. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, it was, the, the, yeah, I'm just going through everything now. It was, it was a really good weekend. I think that, you know, my, if not that, the best weekend, I mean, the best tweet of the weekend was Seth Rollins is, uh, you really let me down tonight Brooklyn. Yeah.

Because it was real and heartfelt and also just like, what a great heel line. You really let me down tonight, borough of New York. You know, I mean, it was just really, it was just spectacular. Yeah. Um, so we got to get out of here. I'll really quickly say, get your early predictions. The final four that are vying for the new universal title are Big Cass, Seth Rollins, Roman Raines. Wait, who's the fourth one?

I've already lost it. Kevin Owens? Kevin Owens. What's your prediction? I mean, I think it's got to go back to Rawlins, yeah. It is really interesting. I mean, unless you like, you know, in case of emergency, break glass. and put Roman Raines back in the main event.

Yeah, I think we're either Rollins or Owens, but I can't imagine, I mean, as much as I don't really like Jericho, like it's kind of funny at the same time, so I like to maybe see where it goes for a little while longer. But I don't want it to last for a long time. You know, I just like to maybe see a couple, like one more feud with a group of people. Between Jericho's, that was a really fun match to the pay-per-view. His new character is just my favorite heel.

He's stupid. And like fighting, and him like legit fighting Brock Lesnar back stage. This has been a banner week for Chris Gerr. Yeah, the big. Best week ever. Yeah. And then, and then last thing is on the, on Smackdown,

we got AJ Stiles versus Dean Ambrose. You said earlier, you don't think Ambrose is going to hold the title for that long. Do you think, you think AJ is going to come out on top? I'd like to see A.J. come out on top, but I don't see it happening in backlash. Yeah, it is very soon. Yeah. it feels like everything I mean it seems like

Maybe Dolf Ziegler interrupts the match You know maybe he comes in Maybe he earns his way back into it Who knows? I mean that's a weird It's a weird premise to set up a three way And then dump him out To go and especially to start off the segment With him beating the hell out of AJ

You know started off Smackdown with AJ Sort of gloating and then and then Dolf sort of Attacking and then attacking for the rest of the show I think that I just can't get like We are going to see that belt wrapped around AJ Styles' waist sooner rather than later Like, we just need, like, he's earned it in every way that a wrestler can earn it. Yeah.

And the only thing, the only thing he's missing right now is to say former, be able to say former champion about him, you know, like, or champion, but like. I will say to Dolph Ziegler's credit, by the way, that that match between he and AJ last night was superb. I mean, it was a great match. Better than the Summer Slam match he had with, with Ambrose. For sure. And so I think he deserves, he deserves to be in that conversation and deserves that shot.

So we'll see if he works his way back in. It makes no sense otherwise. I think that we're getting towards a girl. I mean, the stable of wrestlers they have on SmackDown has a good, interesting chemistry. And I think as they spend a little bit more time together, it's going to be fun. You know, those guys plus Wyatt, plus Orton, even. I would probably rather see a Smackdown House show at this point than a Raw House show, just because, like, I think there'd be a lot of fun matches.

Yeah. Like, just bell to bell, you know, it'd be a lot of good stuff. Well, listen, thanks for coming by, man. Thanks for having me. I don't even know if we got through everything. I know to St. Germain's not here. I'm going to have to like... St. Germain is just chilling out in New York City. Ducking me.

Yeah, seriously. Number one contender, right? He had a lot of smack to talk this weekend. I'm not afraid of you, St. Germain. Well, we're going to have to schedule this match for the non-due distance future. Yeah, sound French. He's actually Irish, which is the word, which is, yeah, I don't even know how that works. An Irish guy with a French last name.

There's nothing worse. I'm coming for you. Wow, you heard it here first, folks. Thanks to Tate. Thanks to Joe and Isabella. Is there anybody else I need to thank Tate? No. Okay, then well, thank you, Steve.

What's your Twitter handle? Ask Steve Kazee. I'm at David Chewaker, and you really let me down tonight, humanoids. Thanks again to WW2K17 for sponsoring today's episode. You get ready to be taken to Suplex City with WW2K17. WW2K17 is back again. They're the defending champion of WWE video games. And this time, they got Brock Lesnar on the cover.

And they got Ben Simmons. playing it. 2K17 has amazing graphics, amazing gameplay, and the biggest roster you can possibly imagine. Everybody's on there. Ben Simmons creates a wrestler called the Wild Animal. He is a wrestler called the Wild Animal.

He is a short and very muscular. He gives himself like a mullet. So, WW2K17 allows you to build Ben Simmons, which is really incredible. Pre-order your copy today and receive playable characters of Bill Goldberg two different versions and two WCW arenas.

WW2K17 hits the shelves on October 11th, pre-order now, and you too can design the wild animal.