The Press Box - Ep. 205: 'The Masked Man Show' With Dave Schilling

Episode Date: November 9, 2016

The Ringer's David Shoemaker and The Guardian's Dave Schilling discuss another inconsequential episode of 'Raw' (2:44), the future of the Cruiserweight division (7:35) and the upcoming 'Survivor Series' card (26:16), and then give their commentary on the Goldberg-Lesnar match from 'WrestleMania 20' (35:05). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Maskman Show on this auspicious Wednesday morning in Southern California. I'm sitting here in the studio with Dave Schilling. Keeping at 1600 is being recorded next door. That's about all I have to say about that. I think we need to move on to actually, you know what? Dave, how are you doing? Let's get that out of the way. I'm doing as well as I can.

You're wearing a Lakers shirt. The Lakers are maybe the most exciting young team in basketball right now. I spent all of last night at Staples Center, watching the game and it was a little comfort. That's right. Did you see Micah? I did see that, yeah. He was, yeah, what a scene.

Yeah, I'm not gonna, we don't need to dwell on any of these crazy stuff except, except Matt Hardy tweeted about getting thousands of votes. Probably he was joking. Rick Flair tweeted that he wrote himself in and like for a couple of North Carolina guys. line of guys. I don't care. Listen, this is not a political, this is not a pro anybody's statement, but fuck these guys. Because if you, it's one thing to not, you can vote forever you want to. You can, if you, if you care so little about the process that you're going to joke about it, and I'm more on the Rick Flair tip here, if you care so little about it that you're going to

make jokes about it, you can keep those jokes to yourself, you know? Yeah. It's like, I don't make jokes about soccer because I don't watch soccer. I don't care about soccer. So I don't just walk around making fun of like the fancy boys. is kicking the ball in the grass. You know, it's like, it's a stupid comment. I don't see the point in trying to get yourself over

with this election. That's just silly. Although, you know, Donald Trump got himself over this election and is, you know, one of the most powerful men in the world now. Anyway, moving on, happy post-election week, everybody. Let's completely forget about the election and geek out about wrestling. How does that sound?

That sounds like the best possible thing we can do right now. So a couple of heads up for the show. David and I talked about this. We are going to watch Brock versus Goldberg the original version from WrestleMania 20, vintage Brock Goldberg.

Why don't keep saying Brock? It should be Lesnar Goldberg, I guess, but I just want to say Brock Goldberg. Like, it's some imaginary, like, character from 1940s, New York. I don't know. Anyway, we're going to watch that in its entirety at the end of the show

and do a little commentary track or maybe just talk about other things while the match is going on. But anyway, But before we get into that, we have, I mean, a couple of wrestling things to talk about that happened outside. I mean, it's raw felt for like the third week in a row pretty inconsequential. I don't know what the point of watching it right now is because the raw side of Survivor series is set. Whereas Smackdown, at least there's like, here's some intrigue, who's going to be the fifth guy,

Baron Corbyn's out, Shane's in. But Raw is just like treading water in such a really depressing way. I will say, I think last week on this show I was discussing who the fifth spot, the fifth slide on the Raw team was going to be, right? They just announced Seth this week. Am I crazy? He came out. And the time, it all matches together in my brain.

But, oh yeah, and I missed the beginning of Raw initially. And Seth had already been announced as the fifth member or whatever. And I was just like, all right, that makes sense. Don't really need to rewatch that, whatever. But we did talk about last week. to talk about how, you know, the only other option was Sammy Zane. And they did make that sort of part of the storyline, which is, you know, interesting. You get the icy title shot at the pay-per-view, which would be a great match.

Put him over Rusef, like, that's a good, kind of clean-shaven Rusef. Yeah. Well, I hear some whispers that Rusef is going to turn baby face. Well, they, I hope it works. I hope it works. Because, I mean, we've talked about this any number of times. I'm totally on board with the post faces and heels era that WWE seems to be sort of dipping their toes into at this point.

But turning regardless of whether or not that's the status quo, being able to kind of turn your back on someone and flip sides, at least for the purposes of a storyline, it's still very consequential to the pro wrestling artifice, to the storytelling, right? And if you're in a world where nothing matter, If you're in this, like, nihilistic imaginary wrestling world, then it makes it really hard.

We're certainly past a point where Rousseff can, like, if Rousseff, like, saved Lana from, you know, getting beat up or falling down the stairs or, you know, crossing the road unattended, in 1985, we would just know we cheer for Rousseff now. But him saving her or defending her honor was the whole point of the Roman Rains program. Exactly.

And he was the heel. So what does he have to do besides, I guess, saving Seth Rollins from a Kevin Owens beatdown. Well, I mean, Seth Rolins helped out Roman Raines when they were turning Seth sort of babyface, and it didn't do much for Seth. Well, I mean, he's the last guy that you want to get babyface heat from. That's true. I mean, honestly, my fear is that Rousseff turns face by turning on Lana in a sort of offensive way. That seems like the WWE way.

Yeah. Anyway, happy for Sammy Zane. Yeah. Like, Sammy Zane versus, we both watched WrestleMania, part of WrestleMania 20 last night, and there are a lot of interesting parallels to what's going on right now. One, the kind of very vociferous brand split, just mumbo, or brand split like politics coming out of the announcer's mouths, you know, is nonstop propaganda for one show or the other. Yeah.

They were billing Goldberg versus Brock as raw versus Suss. Smackdown, even though these two guys were like entities unto themselves even back then. Yes, and both on the last day of their respective contracts. Right. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, it's like cheering for your like, you know, yeah, I guess it was like if it's like the World Series and like, you know, a guy on your team hits a walk off Homer and he's definitely not resigning with your team and you know you're still cheering.

Right. But still, I think that it should be stipulated that Raw versus Smackdown is never a good storyline. Like, it's fine if, like, we care about the wrestlers in the match. Yeah. And they've actually done a really good job at Survivor Series. It looks like they're doing a good job for this coming Survivor Series by making each team have storylines within the team. Yeah. Um, but in 2016, when, you know, ratings aren't great and probably everybody that watches Raw every week is a network subscriber and is a pretty regular Smackdown viewer. Like, no one's picking sides. Right. You're, either excited that there's more wrestling or you're not excited, but no one's just like,

I'm all in on SmackDown and forget Raw. Yeah, as a smart fan, you probably prefer the product of SmackDown. You prefer the stories and you prefer the characters. Yeah, Ellsworth. Okay. But that doesn't mean that you're cheering for them to win because you understand the K-Fabe of it all and that it doesn't, who wins and loses these matches in terms of the brand rivalry. is meaningless. There needs to be some sort of consequence or some reason that winning is important to the characters besides whatever loyalty they have to this made-up brand. Sure.

At the very least, there's a cruiserweight match where the winner of the cruiserweight title match gets to have the cruiserweight title on the show and the entire roster moves. Right. So this is what's really intriguing. Now, I don't know if this counts as spoiler territory, but if we're going to talk about the cruiser weights, I'm not going to... We're going to talk about the cruiserweight division. So let's like, if for some reason, like,

then like you are so anti-spoilers that you don't go on the internet, maybe fast forward like 10 minutes or something. There's a new cruiserweight show debuting on the WW network. Cruiserweight only after Smackdown, immediately following Smackdown called 205. 205 live. 205 live. And it begins.

I believe the Tuesday after the Survivor series? They've telegraphed it in a really interesting thing. The one interesting thing they did was by effing up the storytelling process, by announcing the show before the storyline, because it really, the only question, the only way that this isn't so obvious is that, oh, this show was going to be there anyway. Right.

The fact that it's live, I think, sort of takes a little bit of the mystery out of the air balloon, whatever. But yeah, so I think that, I like the idea of entire roster shifting. Yeah. Because it doesn't matter and it's just fun. Right. Like whatever.

But it looks like what's going to happen is that we, okay, so the match is set up that is Brian Kendrick, the wonderful, who's having a pretty incredible run. I hate his finisher. But aside from that, I'm all in on the Brian Kendrick. Love his politics. Love his side. He has some really, really good ideas.

He must be having a great day today. Yeah, he's just thrilled. The Illuminati got their man. But yeah, so Brian Kendrick versus Calisto, who was always sort of weirdly the odd man out of the cruiserweight. I mean, the one cruiserweight that was taking up residence on Smackdown. Well, as much residence as you can take up by not being on TV. Well, at the beginning he was on it.

Right. He brought the U.S. title there, right? Right? Am I crazy? No, he already lost it. Yeah, he had lost the belt. Rusev took it to Raw, and he was drafted to SmackDown. Oh, of course. I'm sorry. And it's like, why the hell is Colisto on SmackDown?

He's the one guy besides maybe Neville who could anchor that division that's already over in some way. I think that... Has Neville WorkCruiser waiting at Ron Ra? No. He's not working any of the matches away from that. He might be too big. Apollo Cruz is another guy who fits that mold, but probably over 205. Yeah.

I mean, his leg is probably over two. If they're going to keep that sort of K-Fabe weight limit, then, yeah, I guess, I guess, no Neville. Yeah, I mean, my initial, I guess, thought process was that they kind of thought Colisto had the potential to be a Raym stereotype and sort of transcend that, and so they were going to let him be on his own. And then he cut a promo. Yeah. Now he's, now he is taking on Brian Kendrick and the winner, the show, the, the show, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. The show that the winner is on gets the cruiserweight division. If this was the plan from the beginning that we're going to put the cruisers on raw for a couple of months to get them a lot of exposure,

and then we're going to send Colisto to SmackDown to be the sleeper agent, like to be our sleeper cell that will eventually bring the Cruiserweight division to Smackdown, this is really brilliant. I mean, this is some advanced planning that we're not used to seeing from WWE. I don't think there was a plan at all. I mean, they've been pushing Talking Smack as that, like, last bit of Smackdown for months now. They were trying really hard with the cruiser weights on Raw. And Colisto hasn't been on TV until Tuesday.

Yeah. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me if that was a plan. He might have been cutting weight. You know, the 205 limit is legit, man. People will be really upset if he's a pound over 205. But, yeah, so that's a... I mean, that's a really intriguing storyline to me. Not more on the meta reasons or not.

But so if we, if indeed Smackdown, I guess the only other meta question is, if indeed Smackdown, if Colisto wins, Smackdown gets the Cruiserweight Division, they'll probably mostly keep it separate in the 205 live situation, but obviously they could have the big championship matches could still be on Smackdown,

they could do some storytelling, whatever. I'm sure they'll tease it. nonstop, just like, you want to see more of these flips? Watch 205 live. 99 a month, and you got it. Yeah. And it makes a lot more sense if we're going to do this show live and them be on Smackdown just for the travel and the logistics.

Yeah, I don't be just any way to do it. Unless it is basically like a house show situation where you're just sending four cruisers with each show so that they can hype the crowd, you know, in dark matches and stuff. And they're there. So whatever. That's all fantasizing. I guess one, my question is this. One, what does Raw do, I mean, to fill the 45 minutes that we're being occupied by the cruiser waits now?

And two, does this mean that, like, I know that we have the IC title is up for grabs? I mean, do you think we're going to see, like, a unification of the women's division at some point? Like, is anything up for grabs now? Yeah, I think so. I mean, going back to WrestleMania 20, you know, they were doing a lot of, sort of weird things to switch the brands up and they got rid of the IC title eventually and they merged it with the World Heavyweight title.

And there were a lot of things in that first brand split that made you think that there were no rules. Like drafts, whenever they felt like it and weird inter-promotional matches. And by the time you get to what, 2010 or 2011, the Super Show is every week and it's like there are no brands. It just, I feel like at some point

they're gonna blow it up again. again and they're going to go back well certainly they're going I mean it's a it's a never-ending cycle yeah I mean I just hope we don't get you were talking about this before we went on the air I just hope we don't get you know a announcer stable announcers versus announcers match at any point speaking of announcers Tom Phillips is officially joining the Smackdown Live announced team not replacing anyone they're just going to be four dudes on it now why not because Otanga you know isn't saying a ton of of stuff.

So I really thought my, I saw the news and I was like, oh, so that's bad news for a tongue guy, I guess. But yeah. Or, well, what about Moro? I mean, do you think that they are happy with his work? Is this a way to subtly get rid of him eventually? I mean, I think it's just a way to give Phillips reps. I think, I mean, he's good, but he needs, you know, he needs to learn what it's like to

be an announcer with Vince McMahon in your ear. Yeah. And to be promoting 80 things at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. I hopefully there was not any crazy. I mean, there's not any more conspiracy theorizing behind it

or, you know, any more dark motives. I mean, I like Tom Phillips a lot. Yeah, me too. But, I mean, there's, and Corey Graves has been, you know, a standout, Renee has been great. You know, the transition can't be easy from NXT, you know. And certainly, I mean, I think that what, I think that Tom Phillips has the hardest transition to make.

I mean, just to be a straight announcer making. that, I mean, like we said, promoting things, having to basically be like the stage director, you know, whatever. Like, there's a lot. That's a tough job. And he's on a good show to learn it. So, I mean, so good on him. Also, just like with the wrestlers get called up, man.

The hype on these beloved announcers that get brought up, you know? Yeah, there's so much appreciation for an XT in the fan base. And we went to the show at the Palladium last week. Yeah. And it's such a different vibe from a regular WWE show. People are chanting the whole time. It's a smaller venue every week and being able to deal with, like, the immensity of the pay-per-views and raw and Smackdown, the grind of it all.

It's a different beast. And, you know, I hope Phillips figures it out. I think he will. I think that the announcing stable in WWE has never been stronger than it is right now. Yeah, totally true. They have a lot of really talented people working there. Now, we, I mean, I talked about the NXT show with Steve Gazism, I mean, a lot last week. It was pretty great.

And you're right that it's a different, the crowd is a different sort of beast there. Maybe not so different, though, from the, was it the Glasgow crowd on Monday night that just wouldn't stop singing at Bailey. I really want to talk about this because I know it's frustrating. for the performers to have to talk over a crowd that seems totally disinterested in the work they're trying to do. Sure. But, I mean, that's sort of a part of the culture.

You know, the sports culture in Scotland and Ireland and England and Wales. People sing at soccer matches. Well, that Bailey chant, didn't that start in the UK? Yeah, I think so. I feel like there's some sort of, like, vague regional ownership of that that they were really excited to, because then it became a bigger thing. Right.

I could be wrong, but I thought, I think it feels like something that would be a European invention as opposed to something where you're singing a song as opposed to the sort of chance that you get in the U.S. My question is, what was Charlotte supposed to do? Because I think there's been a little bit of heat on her on the internet for not being good at corraling them and getting their attention and quieting them. But I guarantee you the Rock would have had a hard time with that. Yeah.

I mean, I think that you saw the, I mean, when the Rock made the big bailout for Roman Raines and then they got booed, there's a famous photo or famous image. Everybody remembers with the Rock's face just like, what am I doing here? What is happening right now? And partly it is that the Rock doesn't get booed. So to be in that position, that's the way everybody read it. I think that there's a second reading, which is that like the Rock could. feel that this is a different, that the crowd has mutated. The crowd has become a more self-aware being in the time since he, I mean, in the times that he's made his returns, he's held

everyone captive in this sort of like beautiful reminiscence of the past. If a new wrestler came out with like 99% of the Rock's catchphrases, they would not succeed. They would get laughed off out of the ring. So, I mean, all of that's just to say, man, I mean, we're in a, we're in a very different era of crowd response. And I don't think Rick Flair in his prime could have shouted that crowd down. Absolutely not. They weren't responding to anything.

They weren't rejecting Charlotte. They were very, they were kind of just feeling their oats. You know, they were just like, they wanted to see how long they could keep this going. It was an interactive experience that was sort of had nothing to do with what was going on in the ring, except for the minor hook that Bailey was there. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's sort of the NXTification of. of wrestling is, you know, people chanting 10

for seemingly no reason at NXT shows. This is actually a really good point. I mean, obviously it's not specific to NXT. I mean, ECW, I mean, you can go all the back to ECW, and I'm sure there's inclings of it before, but what WWE, one of the weird byproducts of NXT that WW probably didn't plan on was that, like, the sort of immersive and,

interactive crowd channing, like that we see at NXT that we saw at ECW, the holy shit chants, the can't see shit chants, the, you know, UF'd up chance, all that stuff. That doesn't work in an arena. Right. It only works in a small enough venue where if you start the chant, the dude 20 feet away can start, can join in and then everybody, it happens immediately. What WW is done with NXT by accident is create the petri dish for these chants to start and then put it on the air as an example, as it. template. So when people get called up to the main roster, then suddenly a basketball arena knows what to do all at the same time. They know these chants and it allows that sort of that sort of chanting to happen in a way that it would have been totally impossible before.

Now, you could boo. We're going to get into Lesnar Goldberg 1 at WrestleMania 20 and talk about crowd taking, hijacking a match. That's a prime example. But to do the chance is just next level stuff that could only happen in 2016. And the only way to, to, to, To deal with it is to change the way the program is structured. To cut these sort of 20-minute promos that really have no motivation. It was just Charlotte running her mouth to set up the swerve of, oh, it's going to be Dana Brooke. No, it's Sasha Banks.

Like, you could accomplish that in a totally different way if you wanted to and prevent these sorts of things from happening, where you just throw out performers and they run their mouth for a while. Of course the crowd is potentially going to get bored. Potentially is going to want to participate. They're going to have to find a way to modernize the product to make that sort of stuff either go away or function within the template. I don't disagree with that. It's interesting.

I mean, I'm trying to imagine how they could have done it differently. I mean, we've also seen, you know, really high-quality women's matches that the crowd just chant new goes and gets chanting boring. or not just women's any match. You know, the really over-eager crowds, you know, the actively chanting crowds, chant anything at any time just to sort of put themselves over. And that's part of the game, you know, like, WWB's got to be into it, and it's fine if you want to do that as a crowd member. So it's not like, like if you have a kid, and the kid is just not paying attention, right?

The kid's just like, just, you know, singing a song and dancing around. And if you say, like, you know, be quiet, sit down. maybe they'll do it for five seconds and it's right back to doing it. Like, you want to say the answer is just to just not do... I mean, you can't just like, in your... You can't just stop doing whatever you're doing to tell them to stop over in order to punish them, I guess, right?

If you're trying to cook dinner and the kid's annoying you, you don't just stop cooking dinner because eventually you just run out of things to do, you know, like there's nothing else. So, yeah, at some point you've just got to like, you've just got to let the madness happen and just get through it. Another thing they could have done

but they would never do because they don't have the leeway to change the script a lot of times, and that'll come back in Goldberg, Lesner, is they could have let Bailey talk. If Bailey had been able to say anything to that crowd, maybe they would have been satisfied. But because Charlotte had to be the one cutting the promo, and she had lines, she had to recite,

there was no way that they were ever going to, the crowd was ever going to get what they wanted. Yeah. Bailey just had to stay in there and smile. Yeah. I mean, right. If you actually had the power to change the script on the fly,

then you should have just had Charlotte beat the crap out of Bailey or something. You know, I mean, just change the, just switch things up a little bit. Right. Just have Charlotte be so incensed by the crowd that it's just, you know, she's just going to punch someone. We got to move ahead. Is there, I mean, that was a fun, well,

interesting, remarkable moment. let's say that. We talked about Sammy Zane going over. I mean, is the main event the Fatal Five way? Is it worth even discussing? No. They book a lot of these matches that really don't have any consequence. Ultimately, don't really move the story that much because they have to have a match

at the end of the show. Every match should have a reason for existing. Besides, we need to get these guys in the ring and they need to work out their issues. There's nothing worse than a raw main event that feels like you're watching the house show dark match main event. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's the, you used to read about those online and feel like you were,

you know, it's kind of, you wish you had seen it or whatever. I would love to see those guys in the ring together also. It would probably happen a little bit more. The matchups themselves were a little bit more sparingly used. But like, yeah, it's okay for the show to end with just a brawl, you know, whatever, and then have a match afterwards. But this felt like the match afterwards. Yeah.

SmackDown, on the other hand, if Raw feels a little bit, you know, inconsequential this week, I mean, and again, they're touring Europe. I guess we didn't make that really clear. The least important stuff always happens on these tours, right? Because... Yeah, it's just like, who cares?

But at the same time, it's like, I understand that you know what's going to happen. Like, if you're a hardcore fan, you read spoilers online, so you know what's going to happen. But, like, you know, we're getting close to Survivor series. Like, we know what's going to happen.

Yeah. We know, and this is 2016. Like, no one's dropping the world title on Raw, you know? I mean, I kind of feel like, and maybe it's just me getting older. Like, I don't look at the spoiler. I mean, I'll look at spoilers if I'm, if I have an option to do something different. And I'm just like, well, let me see how important it is that I watch this live. But the answer for me is almost never.

I mean, I just, you know, I watch it live like 90% of the time. But like, if I had something else going on, like, It would never stop me. There's just so much wrestling. Especially the go-home shows, where it's really just like that last little bit of hard sell. It's not, there's no intrigue to it. There's no surprises, say, for this, you know,

the Baron Corbyn, Shane McMahon thing. But that goes back to SmackDown being a better storytelling show. At least there were things, if you read the spoilers, you're like, oh, that's an interesting show, the Ellsworth stuff where he's going to be the coach or the mascot or something for the SmackDown. team, like there are pieces that are being put in place in this episode. Sure.

So let's run through it. I mean, the main thing, I mean, I guess we got, all of the big matches are set, right? I mean, the women's match now is formally set. The tag team, man, they should come up with some better name for this because this is like, it's just going to be a monstrosity. Yeah, well, how many actual people are in these, is it 10 on 10? Yeah, it's 10 on 10? It is, I believe that they had to hire some, like, some MIT mathematicians.

They figured out the maximum number of wrestler silhouettes they could put on the screen at one time in, like, one match, you know, versus graphic. And it was this many. So that's how many they finally filled up the screen. They have to build a bench so that, like, everybody who's not in the match can have a place to sit. Well, they used to have these old Survivor Series, like, tag matches. They had 10 on 10, or they definitely had some 8 on 8s. Yeah, I think 10 on 10 is the most that's ever been in a match. I don't know if, I mean, that's going to take up the full,

that will take up the full apron of the ring. Yeah, there will be no place for people to be when they're not in the match. This might be the worst, and listen, I'm not saying this is going to be a match you're going to tell your grandkids about. This might be the worst match of all time to have front row tickets for. Yeah. You're not going to be able to see shit. You're going to be looking at butts the entire, no matter where you're sitting on the front row. is going to be so prominent if you are the front row guy.

You're just looking at Biggie's ass the whole time. I'm just going to, why don't we just suggest right now the new day are the best opportunity, but like someone should just get tights that directly address the situation. Just like, hey, front row, how my tights taste or something like that. The, the, so anyway, we got that. And now the big talk, I mean, the big thing from Tuesday, as you mentioned, was that, oh wait, I'm just looking, I'm just, I totally forgot about the Dolphzir versus the Miz match. The 900 Smackdown is, they're making a really big deal of it.

Undertaker's going to be there? All those sort of milestones they try to promote. And I get it, it's a ratings draw for some people. I don't know who it's a ratings draw for. It's sort of like, unless you bring back, like the Undertaker is a draw. Like obviously if you're going to do an anniversary. No, no, no, the things that they have are big draw. But the celebrations are only for WWE.

It's like if somebody who you don't like that just throws himself a giant birthday party every year, you know the party's going to be fun so you go, but you're like, why does this dude throwing himself these douchy birthday parties every year? You're 47 now. Your birthday suck. But yeah, but if you know the party,

if you know there's going to be fun people there, you're going to see your friends, you're going to see maybe some like, you know, a giant zombie mortician from the old west that you haven't seen in a while. Like, that's, it's cool. But so the big news was that they're going to, was that, was that Baron Corbyn has presumably K Fabe been eliminated from the Survivor Series match before the bell to bell

eliminations take place and was replaced by Shane McMahon. You know what's funny is they spent all that time saying, Smackdown's not going to be about the authority figures. It's all going to be about the opportunities for the tech. Allen. And who is the fifth guy in the biggest match since the brand split? Shane McMahon. Well, okay, so let's talk for one second about Baron Corbyn.

Does it, I'm not the world's biggest Baron Corbin fan. I hope that he works out because I think he's definitely got a place. But it felt kind of right for him to be in this match. Like he was the one person in the match. Well, I guess he was Braun Strowman on awe. Braun Strumen's a little bit more of a force of nature. but he was the one guy on the SmackDown team that felt like, all right, this is the spot

for the up-and-comer. And it really signified something about him. It made me, it did for him what like none of his matches or feuds were able to do, even though that was their intention. Right, do you know what I mean? Yeah. It didn't quite get him over,

but it like really signaled that WWU was ready to put him over. Right. And, but now he's written out of the match. Is this a net positive for him? I almost think that it is, because now it's in my head that he's at least in the conversation. And also, it gives him a real motivation to beat people up when he comes back. Yeah. It's like, oh, I got screwed out of this.

You replaced me with Shane McMahon. I'm going to go on a rampage. Like, that would be a great angle for him. I don't see that happening necessarily. I think this was just a swerve, and that this is all leading up to Shane versus Brock at WrestleMania. Just to have Shane go out and wrestle and remind people that he can sort of throw a punch, kind of. That's not the top of his arsenal. No.

Is there, I honestly don't know the answer to this. You know how YouTube has like the 50 best moves of fill in the blank every wrestler? Do you think there's one for Shane McMahon? I mean, it must be, right? It has to be the Van Terminator that he did. No, but they do like the top. The signature moves? But they do all of their moves, right?

Oh. There is like a, literally like a 25 best moves of Seth Rohn's video. And it's like, there's some, you're like, oh, he does do that arm lock. Like, you know, whatever. It's not. There's no way there's 25 moves that Shane McMahon can do. There's like the punch. Yeah.

There's the Van Terminator. There's the, there's some other stuff, right? Albow drop. Yeah, lots of elbow drops. He does have decent elbow. Taking bumps is, it should be a special move. Getting your ass kicked is every single clip of Shane McMahon. So what do you think?

Now that Shane is in the match, that's a little bit. but more added surprise. Also, James Ellsworth, as you mentioned, is the mascot. We're going to see a James Ellsworth, Braun-Strauman potential stare-down. Oh, my God. They haven't seen each other since the infamous match. No, they haven't. That's money. Just print that money right now. That's the rematch. That is maybe the biggest moment of the Survivor Series. And Shane being there really does change the tender because if you look at the match, there are I'm going to just list the

list the people that are in it right now Kevin Owens okay I'm going to list the people that are in it and you say after each one yes or no if they have the chance to be the last person standing okay ready Kevin Owens yes Chris Jericho no way Roman Reigns absolutely

Bronze Stroman yes Seth Rawlins yes AJ Stiles yes Dean Ambrose no

Bray Wyatt no no Randy Orden. No. Shane McMahon. I mean, maybe. That's a yes. I actually think that maybe they would be dumb enough to have Shane be the last man standing.

Totally agree. All I'm saying is, Raw is loaded with these potential last men standing. Smackdown has, I mean, I think my Smackdown scoring might have been a little different than yours, but I think that I would have, if I could have given like half-stars, like half-yeses, then I think it would have evened out to about one and a half or two. Shane McMahon has given, I mean, has up Smackdown's, like, potential for, like, last men standing by, I think it's doubled it. Like, it really makes it a lot more interesting.

And I think that Shane is, because this is WWE, Shane is in some ways a more compelling, and not compelling from a storytelling point of view. Compelling is, like, I'm compelled, I'm convinced that that could be the outcome. Yeah. I am more compelled by that possibility than most of the wrong. people. Yeah.

I don't think this is a moment where you put Owens over, although mainly, maybe it is. I could, I basically think it's Rollins, Reigns, or Shane at this point. I think it's, you always have to assume that one of the world champions has a shot to be the last person, just because they have to keep them strong. And I don't, I'm not going to go too much into spoilers here. There's no real reason to, but they have already announced the next raw pay-per-view's main event. Yeah.

They announced it like the day after. like someone leaked the house leaked, whatever, like the house shows featuring this matchup came out. So I think that if anything, that might be the, that might signal a slip

to the last person standing. But all that said, the main event, the biggest moment at Survivor Series, I don't even think it's a question, is going to be Lesnar versus Goldberg. That's certainly what WWE is getting, anytime there's a promo segment

every week dedicated to this in a video package and whatever else, you know that's where they're going. So, let's just watch, let's watch WrestleMania 20. Yeah, if we must. We're going to watch this on Mutant, and, you know, you guys, follow along on the network, consider this a little mini director, not director's commentary, but snarky fan commentary.

All right, I'm about to push go. I just turned it on, and Stone Cold just came out on his four-wheeler. This is, we're watching this in real time, well, 12 years later. And Stone Cold is now doing circles around the ring. I got to tell you, I'm one of the world's biggest Stone Cold Steve Austin fans. At the time, I could not have been a bigger Steve Austin fan. I don't know if I, what year, this is 2002? 2004.

2004? So, yeah, I was bald at this point. So, like, this must have been, like, there's no one that could have made me prouder than this recently retired, double knee-braced bald man. I have to point out really quickly that the back of his shirt is basically a Confederate flag. Yeah, I didn't age well. No. But yes, yeah, with a skull.

I mean, this is basically like a white supremacist shirt at this point. Yeah, I mean, there was always that kind of undercurrent to Stone Colds. It was never explicit until this shirt. I saw Peter Rosenberg this weekend, and, you know, his incredible love for vintage WWT shirts. I'm just going to buy him that shirt. send it to him. Yeah, he'll enjoy that a lot. I just want to get, I watch the look on his face when he has to decide whether or not he can wear it. Okay, Brock Lesnar is coming out now.

It's so weird to see him without Haman. Heyman is, Haman was the Smackdown Commissioner at this point, I believe. Yeah, it was Smackdown, whatever. It was him and Bischoff at this point, I think. Yeah, I definitely, he was, Paul was representing Smackdown. Because this was post-horrible NWO reunion angle. Brock is beefier than before Oh, I was gonna say about Stone Cold

As much as I love the guy The driving around on ATVs I thought that was dumb at the time it was happening Well, it saved him from having to walk Yeah, I guess that's true I was never particularly, I liked that Like the beer truck was funny once, the milk truck Nothing else was funny

Yeah None of that, I mean I get it, kids loved it, whatever But like driving around that ATV just seemed And it has to be at ringside the entire match I think, I don't think they'd drive it away It would be a weird distraction Well, Lesnar stole it at one point during the buildup to this feud. I think that what's the, if you're watching this,

definitely go back and watch, like, the promo package before it. Because what you'll see is this is mostly an Austin versus Lesnar feud that Bill Goldberg was just sort of like snuck into. I mean, obviously he's a huge star. But, I mean, and his making, and the idea was that he was going to make this match huge. Okay, sorry, we'll take a break. We're watching Goldberg come out of his dressing room right now. With no entourage, by the way,

That was a thing they really missed out on, was having the security guards, and there was no buildup. They just treated him like a regular wrestler. Yeah, and he's basically walking around backstage. It doesn't have that tight hallway vibe of WCW. That's just like he's walking by craft services. Yeah. It's like, why is he so far away from the ring at this point?

Yeah. You should be at the guerrilla position and just come out. What do you think he's doing in his, I was going to say, what do you think he's doing in his dressing room, that he has to, like, wait, say there to the last minute, but I don't think I want to know the answer. He's hitting himself in the head. All right.

Yeah, maybe so. Or maybe he's just like finishing an episode of the Golden Girls or something. He just like wants to get every last minute out. He loves B. Arthur a lot. Yeah, well, who amongst us does not. But yeah, so this is, I mean, the feud is very strange. Like it's part of it, obviously, is WWE's awareness that both of the main, both of the wrestlers in this match are gone the next day.

the sort of meta thing whenever anyone talks about this match it's that the crowd just turned their backs on it they just started chanting all kinds of nonsense because they too knew we were talking earlier about crowd awareness and chanting they too were aware that both of these guys were gone the next day

there's like seven guys at ringside that you will see that are just constantly flipping off both of them just right there they're in the bottom left-hand corner. They're just furious. Yeah.

But these guys just... This is MS. We're at Madison Square Garden, WrestleMania 20. This has got to be... I would say probably like a top ten markiest crowd in WWE history. Or smarkiest crowd. Sorry, that's the wrong word.

So this is the wrestling cap... The WWE's wrestling capital of the country. This is a show where they coronate Chris Benoit World Heavyweight Champion. Yeah. crowd went nuts. They loved, and then Eddie comes out, and they have their embrace, but they have to sit through this junk. So we're starting the match off with this stare-down. Brock Lesnar

looks momentarily perplexed. Like, he has that rock, that rock lifting Roman Rain's arm face. He's like, what are we doing here? They're both looking to Austin for, well, they're both sort of, you know, have issues with Austin. So storyline-wise, they're all kind of keeping their distance. But But in terms of what's going on in the ring, they're all just sort of trying to figure out how to deal with the crowd, who is, if I, we're watching this on mute, but was blaring a you sold out chant about, a you sold out chant about this point. And I think Jerry the King Loller hilariously chimes in of the sold out chant from a sellout crowd or whatever. Like Jerry was, Jerry and J.R. were maybe not at their peak, but it was really, it's really fun to listen to them. J.R. did his best to sell this as being worthwhile. You know, the slobber knocker sort of verbiage from him.

You know, it's just two bulls going at each other. But they're literally just standing and looking at each other. And I think at some point, Lesner or Goldberg says, you know, fuck these people or something like that to the other guy. They're obviously upset. They have animosity toward the crowd. they're not going to do any sort of improvisation in this match. This was probably the plan was,

let's do a really epic WrestleMania 3 stare down. That's what I was going to ask you. So I was watching this, I watched this yesterday with my girlfriend, and she was like, this feels so real. And I was like, yeah, there was an interesting vibe. I was like, but explain it to me. And she was like, it feels like these are two really big, tough guys that are both aware of the other person enough

that they just don't want to start fighting yet. Right. Like, it's sort of scary. Yeah. They're both just monsters that have never really faced someone like that. And it does sort of have that vibe. But so my question is, do you think this is a planned epic stare-down? Or is this?

This is 100% planned. Or is this we're reacting, we're just pausing until the crowd wears themselves out. Or is some of both? I think that- Right now, Goldberg and Austin are staring down. Oh, there's an Austin-in-shy-in- Right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Austin is.

There's us guys together. They're so upset. Oh, my gosh. Oh, now they're the camera. is just on them. They were behind them for a while. Yeah, the cameramen are not shy to go on the people who hate this match. Part of me wants to say that this was Vince's idea to bury them.

Like, we're going to sell some tickets because people are excited to see these two guys wrestle. Yeah. But we're going to just sell them down the river by letting them bomb in this match. But how is that different than what they're doing now? And maybe it's not. I mean, there came a point when Lesner is not holding the title. I mean, in Lesnar's current run, when he hasn't, when he's not been the champion. he just existed in a parallel universe.

I've written about it. We've talked about it a million times. And I think that on some level, like with this coming up, with this upcoming Survivor Series, yeah, it's a big top match that doesn't really have any bearing on anything else on the card.

Right. And it's going to get some other people in there. But I think that that's a sort of, that's been a tenant of WWB booking for a while. You know, it's like Big Show versus Akibono or whatever. You know, when you have these like big, weird matches, you know, you do sort of just like siphon them all. You're like partition them off.

They're threatening to do Big Show versus Shack at WrestleMania next year. Yeah, that's a real, that's a legit, I mean, that's a legit consideration. I think that there's, you know, they basically have one celebrity slot to fill. And there's been some, there's been some talk about, you know. Ronda Rousie might be. I was going to, a certain fellow is headlining MSG this weekend. Oh, okay. But yeah, that could definitely happen.

I just don't think Shaq's been, like, as big as he is, is not someone that, like, an imposing physical specimen for a few years. He smiles way too much. They're doing another collar and elbow tie-up if you're not watching this. This is the second one. If there was a real referee in this match with a headset on, I guarantee you there would have been Vince or someone saying, get them to do something else.

But because Austin is a participant in a character and doesn't have a headset in, he's just letting them flounder. You know what? I agree with you about the lack of headset, et cetera. That said, I made this note later on. Austin is a very good referee for a wrestler being a referee.

Like as this match goes, he's got the ring position just right. He's got a nice slide into the pin and a crisp count. You know, like he's got, he actually can play the role of referee. Yeah, that's something that Dean Ambrose definitely didn't show me any attitude for when he did it in the Ellsworth Stiles match. And I think it's Lawler's who says at the end, Austin didn't do anything. He was a much better referee than we thought because they thought, you know, there was a lot of buildup of, will Austin do something crazy or get into a fight with one of the guys?

He just does the match as the referee. Yeah. The running shoulder block contest is a great big man versus big man tradition. This is a classic old school Hogan Warrior style match. Yeah. Except that they hate both of them. I've never been a fan of the face smushing screaming at each other. No, it's very peculiar.

Now they both go off the rope, oh, and they both go down, although Brock took a little, tried to shine on that bump a little bit. Yeah, that was, the selling in this match is really. poor, but Brock has never been good at that. I totally forgot, by the way, they mentioned this earlier in the match, that they actually refer to Goldberg as an MMA aficionado. Right. In this, which is, you know, kind of, I thought that was sort of like stapled onto, tagged on to his backstory after the fact.

Yeah. But yeah, no, that's a, that it's interesting that they mention it, and that it obviously it means a lot more now. Brock Lesnar had never even been inside an octagon at this point, so. Let me ask you this question. how do you see the style of the second match being? Is it going to be drastically different from this? It has to be, right?

I think instead of those collar and elbows, they're going to be just doing straight up MMA, just, you know. Like matwork. Yeah, they're going to do, they're going to go for some takedowns. Or they'll probably book it just like an MMA fight. Probably do some stand-up, and then Lesnar with the takedown. Then everyone's going to be really shocked when Goldberg reverses out of it. And, you know, something like that.

There's going to be tons of suplexes. One thing you notice here in this match, zero- Oh, here's Goldberg with the guerrilla press, which is just insane. And then he turns it into a spear. Yeah. That was one of the only legitimate pops in this entire match. Yeah, I remember that happening,

and the moment still got me up out of my seat when I was watching this yesterday. And that's a real shame of Goldberg's last run is that the thing that got him over, the thing people loved about him, was him doing crazy stuff like that. Being strong. Being strong.

And then they never really let him do that. They've turned him into a vanilla baby face. It's funny when you look at WWE, it's like, WWE, Vince McMahon clearly loves these very strong, very muscular fellows, right? From Ryback to Biggie, I mean, just look at the people that have gotten the, that have, you know, gotten pushes Roman Raines too. Rusev. Yeah, but very few of them ever get the chance just to beat look strong.

Is that because they're not true? They don't want them to show other people up. Why is Big E not doing a Gorilla Press? I just think it's not part of the template for these matches anymore. They have to be vulnerable. They have to sell. You can't just have a guy other than Braun Strowman who has been getting the opportunity to just show off how huge and big he is.

But the way they booked Goldberg, and I watched, I think, I forget what it was Armageddon or something, the pay-per-view where Goldberg beat Triple H finally for the World Heavy. weight title and he was selling a ton for Triple H. Goldberg. Yeah. Why? He should have squashed him in two minutes.

Yeah. I think that that's the really interesting thing going into Survivor Series because I think that Brock Lesnar is going to have to sell for Goldberg. Yeah. Just to make the match feel like it matters at all. But at the same time, you know, there's always this question as to whether or not Brock Lesnar is aware that he is in a fake fight. Right.

You know, which makes it really intense and interesting to watch, but it's also. Even here he looks actually mad at Goldberg. Yeah. Here's some... Well, he's also reacting to the crowd. I mean, the crowd has been shitting on them for so long that at some point you just got to wonder what the point of existence is. Yeah, this is the most existentially dire wrestling match I've seen.

This is a looser little triangle lock here than a John Cena STF. Yeah, he's not really putting much into it. It's impressive looking from this camp, from the low camp, camera angle, but when they get in close, it's like, Goldberg could just like, you know, someone could easily get out. He could be trimming his goatee right now. Yeah. Why did Goldberg shave the beard, by the way? He looks so cool with the beard, and when he comes out for this match with just the goatee.

I don't know. And Brock Lesnar has that sort of goatee, which is always my favorite Brock Lesnar. Evil Brock. Mm-hmm. I would have never pegged Brock Lesner at this point for a guy who could grow an awesome, monstrous beard. but the feet is paused for us so we might be getting a tiny bit behind

but yeah Brock Lesnar had a really badass beard for a while in UFC I gotta say when it paused I couldn't tell the difference Oh yeah there it is and then another shoulder tackle Yeah when this is the second time we've briefly paused

Our stream is briefly paused which is I'm gonna very I'm not blaming And he's back to the headblower Oh my gosh. I honestly think this was the plan the whole time. Wait, it's not a triangle. It's like a crocodile alligator choke or something. I mean, I'm going to have to tweet a more El-Ranallo to tell me what the name of the move is.

But this is great. If Brock Lesnar can hold it together, and I say, I mean that it's in the best possible way. If Brock Lesznor can keep it together enough to have this sort of match, then that's going to be, I think, a positive. I mean, I think hopefully it'll be better than this, but to sort of stick to the script to this degree is, is, I think, a best case scenario for Survivor Series. What's really interesting is that... They just ran into each other again, and Brock barely sells it.

I feel like Austin is 100% calling this match, though. You think so? Yeah. Yeah, and I think, yeah, it looks like they're looking to him for some guidance. Do another shoulder tackle, brother. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's just like,

Austin is aware that they're working with a pretty limited, not that either of these guys are limited wrestlers, but they planned probably very few things for this match. Now they're trying to figure out how to stack them to make something that matters. If they had worked really stiff in this match, they could have turned the crowd. I think that's what's going to happen.

At Survivor Series. Yeah, there's going to be blood. I think there's going to be a great moment of Goldberg, you know, walking out on his own power, covered in his own blood. And the kind of thing that is like a, you know, a cowboys exit and walk off into the sunset. Has Goldberg comment?

I mean, Lesner, Austin busted Lesnar open, by the way, in the lead up to this match. Right. One cool thing about, one interesting parallel between this Lesnar Goldberg feud and the one that's coming up,

or the one that's going on right now in 2016, is that the storylines don't matter at all. Not at all. Like you were talking about them being in separate universes. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. Like, the storyline is the best,

bare minimum that needs to be done to put these guys in the ring together. Yeah. Goldberg costs, Lesnar the title, Eddie wins the belt on the Smackdown or some pay-reviewers. Yeah, it was a Smackdown, I think. Yeah, I think it might have been. And then that was it. He's going for the F-5. But as they're getting in the ring, and obviously there's backstory to the one that's going on now,

there was, you know, that ESPN segment and they're, you know, whatever, and all the Heyman promos, all I'm saying is by the time they get in the ring, All of the storytelling they've done to get us to that point is totally secondary to the fact that, like, this match is happening and the crowd is reacting to it for different reasons. Right. You know what I mean? Austin, in this one, and, you know, I don't want to, you know, get ahead of ourselves too much. But, like, Austin is retired as this match is happening. Is that correct?

Yeah. And he is clearly the sheriff of Raw. Yeah. Yeah. And he's clearly the most important person in this match. Yeah. Not, I mean, for a very legitimate reason, he's going to be there tomorrow. Right.

Now we're doing... Oh, that is the weakest. That was the weakest shoulder. Brock just ran into the goalpost, I mean, ran into the ring post, and Goldberg did a really ineffectual somersault out of the way. I mean, just a silly one. And that's, you know, it's shades of what happened to Goldberg himself earlier in the match. But this is in-game, boys and girls. nice good-looking jackhammer

Austin with that nice slide one, two, three like do you think technically that this match was any worse than Hogan Goldberg on Nitro? Ooh, that's a really good question. Do you have an answer to this?

Yeah, my answer is it's not. I mean, they're both bad. It's just that Goldberg was the hottest baby face in wrestling at the time and it didn't matter that the match sucked. don't mind this Lesnar Goldberg match. Watching it yesterday, I was pretty much into it the whole

time. Now, it's 13 minutes and 45 seconds or something. Like, there's not, it's, it's an appropriately short length. Right. I was just bothered by the lack of selling. There was no real story being told in the match. It was just these two guys bouncing off of each other for a while, and then Goldberg gets the win. That is, that is correct. What is Austin trying to do? Let's he, like, helping him up? Well, here's the thing. Austin is, Goldberg is celebrating right now. This is probably the most interesting storytelling segment of the whole match because we have to go from Austin.

First of all, Austin being a good referee, as you mentioned, I mean, a calling it down the middle. Mention that Lesnar just flipped off the crowd, which is an iconic moment, I think, in his career. Absolutely. And not the only time he's done it, right? And he sells that stunned it really well. And Austin stuns him. So this is what's the great, this is really great, I mean, this is really great, I mean, this is great writing because you have to get from a match to, from the match, which Austin calls down

the middle, to Austin going over. Which is the most important thing here is Austin, who is no longer a wrestler, comes out looking like a million bucks in this. Now, I'm not going to, I'm not going to, okay, now Goldberg is back in the ring. We got a quick pause on our, on our feed. Goldberg's back in the ring. For what reason I ask you? To drink a beer with Stone Cold?

I don't think Goldberg's a big beer person. I, um, not with that physique. Huh? I don't think he drinks a lot of beer. Oh, not with that physique? Yeah. I mean, who knows? These guys, at this point, he's working out so much.

He could probably do it, have a couple of Steve Weisers, or at least like Stevie Lights. Goldberg's pouring beer down his throat, celebrating with Austin. Let me tell you something you should never do. Never celebrate with a beer with Steve Austin. Unless you're Earl Hebner. Yeah. Well, listen, I would do it, knowing that there was a very good chance. I would get stunned because I want to talk about it.

Oh, there we go. And Goldberg does just a terrible job selling the stunner. He just flips over. You got to bounce a couple times like the rock used to do. It's funny because the crowd, yes, you're absolutely true. Like Lesnar did when he took it just now. They cannot

have expected the crowd to shit on this match to the degree that they did. But that said, this whole end segment was booked ahead of time. Yeah. So they knew that the ending was going to be like fuck the two guys who just had the match. You're gone.

We're putting our sheriff over. Yeah. It's so strange. I mean, they had to. You have to, that's the cardinal rule of professional wrestling is if you're leaving the territory, you're going to end up on your back. Exactly. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.

I don't think that the decision is strange. But it is like the, like I said, when people talk about this match, the thing they always talk about is the crowd turning on the match. The crowd didn't turn it. on the match so much as they were just predisposed to hate the match and everybody knew they were going to hate the match because they booked it for, I mean, they booked this as a match that everyone was going to boo. Even if they didn't know to what degree.

Yeah. They were prepared for it. I mean, they knew it was going to happen. The match turned on them. Yeah, that's a good way. And who's the next person who comes out, by the way, Vince McMahon. It's just, I really think that this was booked in a way that was slightly vindictive towards both of those guys.

Vince was probably like, you know what, if you guys are going to ditch me, Brock Lesnar, after I spent all that money building you up into a superstar, you're going to go play football. Well, I'm going to have my number one guy take you out. Yeah. And the crowd is going to hate you. And Goldberg was never a Vince McMahon favorite. Why not stick it to him too?

I don't remember if it was that Goldberg wanted to leave or if Vince decided. he did not want him to resign. I forget what the circumstances were. You know, I do too. I don't even remember. I think that, I mean, I think it was a specific contract situation. His contract was up and they were just like, nah. Nah.

Yeah, I mean, who knows? Who knows? He never worked a single good match. Goldberg never seemed that interested to resign. We can go back and look this up. I think it was pretty mutual. He never seemed that interested, period. Yeah, that's the thing.

The biggest moment he had was when he speared the rock after a, WrestleMania 19. Yeah. This is my favorite, by the way, my favorite Taz, where he's pretending he's responding to someone off to the screen. Taz was just like, Taz was playing an announcer during his heyday in a way that very few people have done. This sort of Bobby the Brain Heenan, like, I'm not that, like.

I thought he was really good. It's a shame that he didn't stick around longer, but I think he was just sick of events in WWE, like a lot of people get at some point. Yeah, well, you know, these things happen. I'm getting really sucked into this paper view. Now the world's greatest tag team is on, we've got to get out of here.

It's going to be interesting to see how many parallels there are. I bet they'll do the big stare down. I bet they'll do a lot of references to that match at Survivor Series. But everybody, I hope everybody watch it because it's fun. I mean, it's a fun match, even, I mean, just to watch the crowd, just to listen to the crowd. It's a fascinating case study in where wrestling goes wrong. And like we talked about earlier,

a foreshadowing of where we are today. Absolutely. with the belt getting booed and all kinds of people getting in that Charlotte situation where she can't talk over the crowd. People chanting for CM Punk or chanting for Hulk Hogan. There were Hogan chants during that match. It's crazy.

It is. It's absolutely nuts. I think that the line of the night, came from Jerry the King Lawler, which is not something you expect to hear, but when he said, he was talking about the crowd, he says they want to see someone get hurt. and frankly I do too.

You know, it's just like, everybody was just so, like, literally, like, the best case scenario was Stone Cold Evasen going in the back and getting one of his Stone Cold semi-trucks and just driving through the ring. Yeah, yeah. And props to both of those guys for, for J.R. and Lawler, for selling it as much as they could without making it seem like it wasn't tanking. You know, they had acknowledged the crowd response in a way that you don't usually see. in WWE these days where they accept that this is not working because they had no choice they had to

well I mean yes but you know a lot of times you say WWD I mean WW has been in similar situations and you just ignore ignore ignore you know hold your breath and wait for it to end and that's you know that's not exactly what Charlotte did on Monday but I think that

I think that you know we're in a different era with a little bit less freedom or you got the segment short like they did with the Brock Heyman promo in Minnesota. Yeah. Where this is like, oh, we're just not going to finish this promo. It's like we've got enough footage for our video package in next week.

Like, that's all we need. Yeah. Anyway, well, we got to get out of here. Guys, I hope that, you know, this is a little fun moment, a little break from the, from the, you know, tensions of the week. Yeah, see you in hell, guys. Oh, yeah. Everything is going to be.

Well, at least we have the WWE network. Yeah, I'm just going to bury myself an old, uh, uh, uh, uh, Saturday night's main events. Listen, I live in California now. We've got recreational glaucoma medicine is okay. Oh, baby. WWE network, and I think I'm set. No matter what happens, I'll be

bunkered up with pro wrestling. What could be better than that? Listen, thanks for listening, guys. Shilling, thank you for coming back. You're very welcome. And, you know, anytime you want to get hurt, or you want to see someone get hurt, whatever.

Where are you going with that? I have no idea. I'm so sad that you can. couldn't finish that. Listen, we can't all be Charlotte Flares in cutting promos. See you next week, humanoid.