The Press Box - Ep. 216: 'The Masked Man Show' With Dave Schilling

Episode Date: December 1, 2016

The Ringer's David Shoemaker is joined by Dave Schilling of The Guardian to discuss the Attitude Era moments on 'Raw' (7:30), the shock of the ‘Survivor Series’ (14:30), the legitimacy of Sasha-Charlotte among all-time classic feuds (23:10), and the Mount Rushmore of wrestling (41:25). They wrap up with a preview of this Sunday's 'TLC' card (46:12). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Today's episode of Channel 33 is brought to you by Seat Geek, the presenting sponsor for my podcast, as well as the only fan-friendly app for buying and selling tickets for sports and music. With just two taps on your phone, you can instantly buy Seekkeek tickets to an event, and you can enter that event just using your phone, no paper tickets. Drop your old ticket app. Use one that's built for 2016. Download the free Seatgeek app or go to Seekgeek.com.

And now without further ado, Here is the Maskman David Shoemaker. Welcome to the Maskman Show. I'm your host, David Chewaker, sitting across from me. The great Dave Schilling. The legend. The living legend, Dave Schilling. How are you doing, man? I'm doing good. How are you?

I'm good. I'm a little bit perplexed. We both just admitted to one another that we watched all of the weeks, W.W. programming today, this being Wednesday morning, basically. It's quite a marathon. I even watch 205 live. Yeah, I got a little bit into 205 live. I'm going to save my 205 live conversation for maybe next week when I can have a little bit more time to wrap my mind around where they're going.

But yeah, there were a lot of cool things that happened this week. Watching it all at once left me with this kind of just foggy-headedness about what pay-per-view I'm supposed to be covering right now. because they were like, first of all, book, not only were they, you know, actively booking the roadblock, colon, whatever it's called on Raw. TLC is this coming Sunday on SmackDown, but they mentioned TLC on Raw, which of course makes sense,

but it's just weird in reference to the fact that they're booking their own paper views, and they set up like the two biggest, they entered, I mean, they were setting up the Royal Rumble by entering Lesnar and after now Goldberg. is in, it's a lot of paper views. I don't think there's any analog in sports or entertainment for the sheer number of things that WWE has to promote at any given time. If it's the network as an outlet, if it's the programs on the network, if it's the

pay-per-views, if it's NXT, the Cruiserweight Division. It's incredibly overwhelming. And friend of the podcast, Latoya Ferguson, wrote in her Smackdown review for AV Club that she just is fed up with all the go-home shows and the sort of wrote sort of like way that they approach their programming. And I'm with you too. It's hard to balance all this stuff in our heads, but at the same time, we're savvy enough that as fans,

we should be able to at least compartmentalize it a little bit. Yes. I mean, and we're, yeah, I mean, but we're the most central target audience, right? So, I mean, maybe that target's the wrong word. We're not going anywhere as fans probably. We can wrap our minds around it, but this would sort of be like inviting your friend over to watch the Westworld finale

and just not telling them anything. You know, if you're like a pseudo fan, if you're like, you know, a casual fan trying to get into wrestling, like you must be so perplex to watch an episode of Raw. There's only one entry point per year for a new fan and that's WrestleMania. Sure. Because you can watch it,

you can kind of get it. get the angles, the characters are fairly set in their video packages that explain everything. And then here comes a rock. Triple H is here. Stone Cold makes an appearance. So you remember you have the touchstones of your experience being a fan. But if you tried to start watching wrestling yesterday and you're watching a Smackdown episode where James Ellsworth comes out and you've got this guy Bray Wyatt with this huge beard and dreadlocks

and Randy Orton is a bad guy. Like there's so much going on. I still don't. One of my pie in the sky, but actually it shouldn't be that complicated things I said about, I mean, it's not network specific. This is about www.com or this is about WWE. Is that at any moment in time, you should be able to click on the face of Bray Wyatt on the website and see a two-minute video package of everything that he's ever done. Yeah. But focusing on what he's doing right now, right?

A little bit of origin story, some of his big highlights, and then just like why we care about him right now. but there's just too much stuff it's funny Latoya's right I mean everything is hyping everything's a go home show everything's like having something else but it's also like the fact that it's so insular

I mean I remember the first I don't know it was the first time over the years there's always jokes about the like Monday night football where they'd be like promoting something else or it's even worse on football night in America on the network shows where they're promoting you know the big bang theories episode

or whatever and the video guys come, I mean, like the little, like, inset video comes on and, like, the characters walk across the screen and they're like, check out the Big Bang Theory tonight. And it's so silly, inherently silly to, you know, to hear Boomer Asias and promo a sitcom. But it's even, it would be even worse if it were all so as inside as wrestling is, right? If like they took 30 seconds out of it for after every play to say, hey, be sure to check out, you know, I even know what an example would be. Be sure to check out Aaron Rogers. charity work this weekend.

We're going to be airing it live on the NFL, on NFL. On NFL.com, like, sometimes what you're watching is what you should be paying attention to. Right, but that's just, I think there's an inherent, I wouldn't say use car salesman mentality, but something akin to it. In the wrestling business, I was listening to the Jim Ross podcast today with Broken Matt Hardy. And every 10 minutes, there, Jim Ross is pimping his show at the Royal Rumble or Matt. Matt Hardy's promoting total nonstop deletion. It's just part of the vernacular of the professional wrestling industry. And so as much as we are sort of numb to it, because we are kind of numb to it, we're still

smart enough fans today to know when you're being sold to. And I think that at some point, they're going to have to find a way to make the selling of the product a little bit more seamless to not be able to notice when it's happening as much because you've gotten to the point where they're selling so many things at one time that you have to notice it. Like when Gorilla Monsoon is promoting something in an old episode of superstars, it's one thing. It's like the pay-per-view is coming up.

Sure. But now it's four pay-per-views. It's five shows. It's overwhelming. And I know we can play about it. And Bobby the Rain Heenan was probably asking him why anyone would want to buy that. There's a certain sort of inherent, I mean, internal dialogue and humor that goes with that. with those old things too.

Yeah, it's true. Well, it's interesting that you brought up the WrestleMania entry point, always featuring the Rock and Stone Cold and, you know, Triple H, the recognizable faces of the attitude era because a lot of what we saw this week had, as JR, who you just mentioned would say, shades of the attitude era. We had a parking lot brawl. We had the Smackdown went off the air with the backstage brawl. they definitely loosened up the constraints on dialogue a little bit

Becky called Alexa a bitch during her backstage promo there seemed like there's just a lot more kind of going on like the fabric of the universe was expanding a little bit obviously the women's title match on raw which we'll talk about more in depth was all over the arena there was a you know TL I don't know if you would I mean it would make sense if they were kind of vaguely hyping TLC by having this false count anywhere no DQ match but it certainly wasn't explicit and it felt like it felt like you know um sort of a

minor uh shift in status quo i don't know did you did you pick up on that yeah absolutely i mean minus the uh you know the high spots that you wouldn't see those guys do it felt like a a rock stone cold raw main event and that there's the brawling through the crowd there's a lot of stuff that happens outside of the ring i remember you know in the 90s so much of those matches did not occur inside the ring. Yeah. And there's a whole division, the hardcore division, that was predicated on the idea that you would wrestle anywhere.

And that, like you said, open the world up. And that's something that we started to lose in the last, I think, 10 years. That idea that the wrestling storylines exist outside of whatever town they're in. Yeah. I think that's really important. I mean, we can take this a lot of different directions. Um, we'll get back, like I said, we'll get back to Sasha and Charlotte, but there was an ECW chant during their match. Like it was, there was, there was, the crowd could, in real time, felt what was going on.

But I want to talk a little bit about, about the, uh, Jericho Rollins parking lot or parking garage brawl. I mean, I always, of course I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. I always come back to, uh, Eddie Gilbert and Jerry the King Lawler brawling in the parking lot outside of the TV studio station where they, where they film it. And it was like, that was like the scariest thing I'd ever seen. You go back and watch it and it's like just, you know, punches and a couple of shoves. And there's a spot on a windshield on a car, whatever, but like, or on the hood. But it's not like it's the most, certainly there were things that happened in the ring that were scarier. A pile driver in the ring is scarier than most of what happened out there.

But it just felt so real that that makes it so much scarier. Right. And what you're saying is exactly right. if you see Ambrose and A.J. Stiles in the ring talking crap to each other every week, it kind of starts to feel like they don't really dislike each other that much because they've spent an awful lot of time together. Right. They're constantly talking. Yeah. And the fact that they went off the air with them, or I mean, the post-promote, the post-Ambrose Asylum beat down by A.J. Stiles was wonderful to push that forward.

But also just going off the air with them fighting. I mean, it just made it seem a lot more real. similar to the Rollins Jericho thing, because it's like, I'm interested in seeing those guys have a match, but it's very hard, if you would ask me a week ago, two weeks ago, I would have been very hard pressed

to imagine a scenario in which I felt there was any urgency to that match, you know? Well, you know, there's a tendency to start to think of these guys as chess pieces and not as actual combatants in a fight or actual characters in a story. They're just kind of moved. based on the whims of the booker.

But that only happens because they seem to exist within these narrative boundaries of... Yeah. Dean Ambrose has to come out during this segment and then AJ is going to come out and they're going to have a conversation and that's all they're going to do. And then when the conversation is over,

they're going to beat each other up but then they're going to never interact with each other again for the rest of the night or during the main event or something. It always feels so restricted. And similar to your experience when you lived in Kentucky, my thing of like, wow, this wrestling is bigger than just the arena was Kevin Nash throwing Ray Mysterio into the production truck like a dart.

There's the Cruiserweight champion Ray Mysterio. Oh, no! Head first threw him like he was a dart! Because Nitro was the first of the two to really do that on a big, on a grand scale on national television to go outside of the arena. And I think part of why they stopped and why it was good is because it happened so often in the 90s and early 2000s through to 2006 that they would brawl outside or what have you

that it started to feel stale. And what we think of as stale now was revolutionary back then. And so bringing a little bit of that back reminds you, hey, I remember this part of the show and I enjoyed it. It doesn't feel old anymore. Absolutely. New and fresh. I was thinking about this with the attitude era.

A lot of people online were talking about it this week. I mean, people are always talking about the attitude era online. But I think one of the reasons why it has as much resonance as it does is because it is a defined era. I mean, it was WWE woke up one day and they're like, we're doing a different thing now. And if it had just faded out, you know, if they're a little bit more organically than I think that, you know, we wouldn't have gotten tired of things in the same way. And we certainly wouldn't rhapsodize the era in the same way. It'd be more difficult to.

But when they made the move for PG, it was just, you know, it just changed so much of, it's not that, you know, the creative team shifted. So, I mean, they did change a lot during that period of time. But it was just that, yeah, they just, half of the playbook was just torn out and thrown away because there were certain things they were very reluctant to do. now it certainly feels like we're headed in a new direction. Okay, so we're going to talk about, we're going to preview TLC briefly at the end. We're going to talk, Charlotte, Sasha.

I have a weird question about Westworld for you that we definitely got to get into. But first, so we were talking about it a little bit of Raw. We recorded the TV, the TV, the Facebook Live Periscope panel during the, the Survivor series. Apparently it went really well. If anybody didn't see that, it's still on the ringer's Facebook page and you can go check it out.

I watch it every day just to see myself. And the last Mass Man Show podcast was the kind of our post-show wrap that repacket, reformatted for the pod. But I haven't sat in this room and discussed it at all. I think that the only thing that won't necessarily come up organically

in the rest of the conversation, The biggest thing, obviously, was Goldberg demolishing Brock Lesner in however long that I wrote about it. I should know how many seconds it was. But it was a minute and a half, was it even that long? It was something around 90 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. So now that you've had a couple of weeks to decompress, what do you think?

Well, obviously in the moment, I was really floored by it. I was marking out the whole time. But after, you know, some time to ponder, I think it's still a. an effective angle. Yeah. I'm excited for the Royal Rumble. Beyond the WrestleMania implications

for the title feuds, the main event feuds, there's the intrigue of these two guys meeting for the first time. I thought Paul Heyman's sit-down interview was great with that five o'clock shadow he was rocking and the fake tears. It was a classic wrestling moment.

That was really great. Yeah. He's the MVP of WWE. by far. But yeah, I mean, I think they executed it effectively. People that would never be talking about wrestling are talking about it. At the same time, I understand people's complaints that Brock Lesnar could have potentially jobed to someone who was going to be in the company past April.

Yeah. But that's just, that's not feasible. That's not going to happen. That doesn't exist within the realm of how that company functions. You know, the money angle is Goldberg versus Brock Lesnar. There's a personal issue there. They have a history. They're both mainstream celebrities of a certain caliber, Goldberg less so than Lesnar.

So that's where the money is. Lesner versus Kevin Owens doesn't have that same sizzle. No, I mean, and right, you can obviously make the case that putting Owens in that position would help Owens. And I love Kevin Owens, by the way. It is weird that Lesner is at once. I mean, his significance comes from his realness and his immediacy, right? I mean, for one, that he was a legitimate cage fighter and brings that area of legitimacy, but also just the feeling that anything could happen when he's in the ring.

Like, he might just decide to break somebody's arm. You never really know. And yet, we don't critique his matches based on work rate or any of the other real things that are involved. it's all this meta argument of what does a Brock, what are we owed in a Brock Lesnar match, right? I mean, and I don't, and I think this is actually of all of the fan, you know, the fan arguments of like what they deserve, this is probably the most legitimate one,

but the fact that we know that he's got a limited number of appearances on his contract, right? So every time he shows up for a pay-per-view match, that's one less pay-per-view match than we'll have tomorrow, right? I mean, to use one of his appearances for a 90-second squash match to set up a rematch in four months, does, like, that is worthy of a conversation. I think that it was actually really, I agree with you, it was a really well-executed angle. We were all kind of swerved by it, and that's pro wrestling. I mean, that's, we should be happy that we're field, that we should be ecstatic that in that post-show, we were all just staring at space, like, we don't know what to say. Right.

That's, I mean, that's kind of, in a lot of ways, that's pro wrestling at its best. But it is funny that Lesnar is this super real guy who is, and all of his appearances are criticized or critiqued based on how much value we got for our money and whether or not he put over somebody else that we really care about and what, you know, his value to the company in this sort of like oddly concrete terms. Anyway, you know, like I said, I agree with you. I thought that it was, you know, in so much as we've sort of, we have to come to grips the fact that Lesnar exists in his own timeline and he probably won't be doing a lot of carrying the belt or putting other guys over, at least until, you know, he signs his next deal if he signs it or whatever. I mean, I think that it's, I think, I mean, it was really effective.

And I'm, and Haman was great on Monday night. Goldberg did more for me at Survivor Series than I expected him to do. I mean, it was a minute and a half. but yeah I mean I think that I wrote about this right before Thanksgiving you know squash matches

are really can be really effective and the fact that we were all so crazed and the people were talking about it to such degree I mean who knows if it has an A-B correlation or whatever but Raw this week had the best rating

in a million years I mean not a million for everybody fact-checking this at home but it did like this stupendous rating and I mean I think that, you know, it's a lot like Lesnar beating The Undertaker just in the sense that, I mean, it wasn't a squash match at WrestleMania, but it was so unexpected. Yeah.

And it's so hard to surprise people, wrestling fans, in 2016. Well, Brock Lesnar is responsible for three of the most surprising moments in wrestling, and I think the last five years, which is beating the Undertaker at WrestleMania 30, squashing John Cena at SummerSlam in very violent fashion and making children cry and losing a Goldberg. That shows you his value in that what he does is that he makes, like you always say, anything possible.

Yeah, I mean, and in some ways it does exactly, he's the antidote to what you were talking about before, the sort of chess piece feeling where, you know, it's not just he's doing this program, and then we know exactly how it's going to segue into the next program. I mean, part of his power is that he's not an everyday talent. So when a pay-per-view matches over, he can take two weeks or two months or six months to reset. You know, it's like it really, there's a definitive end, even if it's not the end of the storyline.

It doesn't have to be an immediate segue into whoever he's feuding with next. But to go further down that line, yeah, I mean, you just, you don't know what's going to have. It's not this logical, like, halfway through Rollins-Owins, you just start. it just like occurs to you that they're moving towards Ron's Jericho. You know, and it's just like, oh, okay, well now I can kind of start booking this out in my head.

And I was actually talking my girlfriend about this yesterday, or this morning when I was watching wrestling, she was like, no, do you always know who's going to win? And I was just like, no, weirdly, that's the only thing I don't know. Right. Because winning and losing doesn't matter at all.

I mean, like, if you, if the point is that, you know, that Ron's and Owens are going to fight and then I know with 100% certain, that tomorrow Owens is feuding with Reins and Ron's is feuding with Jericho. It doesn't matter who wins. I mean, certainly it matters who wins the belt, I guess, but especially for a non-title matter, but you can have a DQ win.

You can have any form of interference or any schmazzy finish. You can even have Rollins win and then drop the title back tomorrow night. Like it doesn't, there's so many, like the winning and losing are the least significant, least predictable things, but also the least significant things when you can tell where the storyline is going. Totally. With Lesner, you don't always know where the story is going. storylines going, and that's what's so great about it.

Yeah, it's pure professional wrestling, and if you can divorce yourself of your favorites, if you can say, instead of me wishing that he would be jobbing to Seth Rollins or to Roman Raines or to whoever your favorite is, and just say, this is an interesting story just on its own merits, then you can see how this is the purest wrestling thing there is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and listen, I hope that Kevin Owens is part of my life on WWTV for the next decade. But, I mean, let us not forget that the two people who we, you know, online, smart fans like the people listening to this, like the people talking on this podcast, the people who we most desperately wanted Lesnar to put over were Daniel Bryan and CM Punk. Yeah.

And, you know, it's sad, but neither have been putting those two guys over would have been meaningless. Right. I mean, looking back from now. Yeah. There's an element of how important is this going to be? How much staying power does this person have? I believe that Kevin Owens is going to be around for a long time, but you don't know. Yeah.

I believe that Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose and AJ Styles and all those guys are going to be around for a long time, but you don't know. And so you have to pick your battles and you have to say, you have to, I think as a professional wrestling, Booker, decide who is a safest bet. Yeah, I mean, and that's exactly the case. I'll make a smooth transition here. That's exactly the case I made for Charlotte winning the title at Helena S. Because I've said it on the show, was that I really felt like as big as they were hyping up that match as a huge moment in women's history, that they were going to make the call as to who walked out of that, the champion, based on who they felt was going to be still wrestling for them in 10 years.

So when they showed the video packages, that person was still around. And Charlotte, I think, was the favorite bet, both injury-wise and, you know, just, you know, commitment to the industry. Not that I'm saying I have any reason to believe Sasha's not committed, but it seems like it's in her blood. Speaking of Charlotte, it's a little bit more ironclad. Right. But on Monday night, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the Queen City, as most of us, most wrestling fans know it, we saw Charlotte once again drop the women's title to Sasha. Now, I have two questions for you. One, are we, are we, can we acknowledge yet that this is a feud that we're going to be watching DVD packages?

Is this like, how close are we to like Triple H versus the Rock or like, yeah, I mean, just epic all-time feuds? And, or are we even close to there? And two, are we micromanic criticizing this feud too much in real time for the swapping of belt? for everything else. Is it possible that just like with Lesnar and Goldberg, you get a little bit of distance, you realize it was a good move? Is it possible that what they're doing

is actually going to be beneficial in the long run? Well, to answer your first question, I think they're definitely close to the pantheon of great feuds. It's going to take a few years, obviously. They've been doing this for, what, one year now? It's going to have to carry on a little bit, more in terms of like just the variety of the angles. Sure.

Right. So Rock and Triple H were, you know, wrestling each other when they were both in factions and DX and the nation. And then, you know, their heel face alignments change. And then Rock is a baby face and Triple H is a heel. And then that switches. And there's, you know, they were able to have great matches no matter what side of the coin they came down on. I don't know if Shire.

Charlotte can be a baby face. I know that Sasha can be a heel. Yeah. But Charlotte's baby face run in WWE was not good. Yeah, I mean, I think in some sense it just takes her playing a heel long enough and winning all the smart fans over, you know, sort of the... I mean, not that she hadn't won them over, but she kind of established her cred playing a heel for a long time.

I mean, listen, if it was, you know, if she got into a feud with Stephanie... Yeah. And Sasha ended up siding with Stephanie. I mean, Charlotte would be a very effective baby face in that situation. But yeah, I mean, obviously, this feud isn't to that. I wouldn't argue that it's in the pantheon yet to use your terminology. But it's really, for some reason, I was just watching that, watching the title match. And I just felt like it just had that feeling like I was watching one of those great old, like, star building matches.

They're 100% on their way. And I think, you know, in five years, we're going to look back at this and say this was the beginning of this amazing Hall of Fame caliber feud. And in some sense, you know, I don't want to belabor the women's revolution never ends point. But in some sense, the winner, like, the winner of this feud is the division if it can get to a point where I think the only way that you get to Sasha and Charlotte being, get to the point where this feud is on that level is if you can take six months feuding with other people and come back and find each other like you said flip heel and face

and the women's division has to gain a level of kind of certainty, I mean, and permanence to the point where you can have you know, Charlotte versus Bailey and Sasha versus Nia Jackson and have those happen for three months and have Charlotte and Sasha not interact and then have it be more important when they come back

and have, and like I said for both of those feuds to warrant, you know, spotlights on Raw every week. But yeah, I think that it's possible that I feel like they're on the way. Yeah, well, to answer your second question, and to sort of piggyback off of what you're saying, you know, I think it's good that they're switching the belts so much because one thing that it does for both of them is that it establishes legitimacy in both cases. They're both getting clean wins.

They both look strong. They're both putting on these five-star matches. So when the division is ready to expand, you've got your two pillars. But if you don't have both of them sort of trading victories, like they're the Lakers and the Celtics in the 80s, you don't have those superstars that can then go off and work with the Emmalinas of the world eventually whenever she premieres. Ornaya Jacks. Sure, really better. Yes, please.

I'm done with these Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition promos. So you need those people who are going to have these great matches. And now that we have that foundation, hopefully they can start to split them up. And I feel like they're the seeds being planted for Sasha versus Bailey at some point because they're interacting so much like their best friends. And we know that they can put on a great match. Charlotte and Dana Brooks splitting up at some point is probably going to happen. So I'm hopeful that we can take a break from this.

I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying their feud. Right. But I think the general consensus with wrestling fans is we've seen this match a lot. Yeah. I think that's legitimate. I mean, maybe I need to start watching wrestling every Wednesday. Like I just wake up and watch six hours. Because I did feel good about wrestling this week in a way that I haven't in a little, you know, I mean, I was pessimistic or whatever.

But I even liked the Seamus Cesaro thing. Another attitude era kind of throwback. We're going to get out of the arena altogether. And it was hammy and it was silly. And like I said, my girlfriend was there. We were laughing. Like it was, this was not one of those things where your girlfriend laughs and you're just like, okay, but let me to explain to you why this is important.

Right. It was like I was laughing too. This was silly. But it's another one of those, you know, birds eye view things. This feud, the best of seven series felt interminable at times. Since they've been, you know, made into a tag team. There certainly has not been a lot of, you know, it certainly has not been a straight line to the top,

and there's been little in the way of momentum at times. But I enjoyed the segment on Monday, and in retrospect, like, I'm happy we've had all that, they've had all these matches together and, like, they, you know. It actually felt like a real bonding moment. I feel like a fool for saying that, but I was like, oh, that actually worked. I kind of want to see what they do from now on.

Yeah, sure. I think in some sense it works because Cizaro is more, believable as a as like a solid friend than as like an international playboy and so like when he just like ordered the guinness at the end and then just stared at it by the way it did not drink that felt real in a way that like that you know the the martini shake and not stirred just felt so unnecessary that was my one moment where I wanted to throw a brick at my television yeah um this is another great example of like wrestlers and regular clothes are always cooler than wrestlers and tights now wrestlers wrestling in regular clothes not always cooler I mean no Sean might Michael's in jeans, wrestling, Triple H and a street fight is not cool. No, I mean, I was actually thinking more in terms of wrestlers who just always wear their clothes. Oh, like a Dean Ambrose. Yeah, yeah. Because he doesn't have an outfit.

Bray Wyatt, although Bray Wyatt's a little bit different. He has a sort of wrestling uniform. Yeah, and he has a couple of them, but he has, you know, it's not that far away from Spandex. He also exists in the dark dimension, so, I mean, he doesn't have to wear clothes necessarily. So we'll get to TLC in a sec. but just to take it a little bit further down this rabbit hole. Are we too? I mean, I say this as someone who has a weekly wrestling podcast.

Are we just too hard on these things because they're happening in real time? I've written about this, and we've talked about a little bit before, but I felt just sort of bad about, you know, just being kind of being that sort of fan. You know, I mean, it just seems like, partly it's because it's written, you know, these things are written on the fly. Every week there's a different script. But we as fans beg for this high-level long-term storytelling. You know, we want Westworld.

And then when we see an episode, we just criticize it as if next week will never exist. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, is this just a symptom of being a wrestling fan? Yes and no. I mean, I think that on some level, wrestling has always had complex storytelling because it's never ending. Sure. It requires-stories are endless.

Exactly. Yeah, people are constantly changing allegiances, and you have to keep track of who is upset at who at all times, who's been upset at who in the past. So it's almost sort of like the way that people are interacting with shows like Westworld now on Reddit and whatever, you know, whatever think pieces, the common section of a thing on Vulture or whatever.

We've been doing that with wrestling since the 90s. Yeah. We've been dissecting. dissecting this product and getting into the real minutia of it for so long that it's, of course, it's more complicated than you really give it credit for. Well, yeah, okay, we talked to this a little bit before the show started, and this is my question. It's like, is there a thing that wrestling can do to achieve the sort of immediate, like,

interest that Westworld has? I'm not talking about necessarily expanding the fan base. I'm just saying, is there a, is there a, is there, they're a wrestling equivalent of, with no spoilers about Westworld, but is there, is there a wrestling equivalent of, you know,

that big reveal on a, on a, on a TV show that sends everybody to Reddit to say, how can we figure this out? Like, let's put all the pieces together. How do we get here? And what does it mean for the future? And your point is well taken.

It's like, we're kind of already there. We've been there for a long time. I think that where wrestling suffers from is lack of faith in the writers and the ability to criticize, because it's happening in real time and it's not a it's not we don't have 10 episodes in the can and let's just see how it

ends you know let's see what the author is figured out but you know authorial integrity I think is a real thing and I'm not saying that we should you know mind wipe ourselves and pretend and and all go ahead blindly believing that Vince McMahon will always make the right decision for the

WWE but in some sense it would be nice if we could do that if we could choose to do that you know what I mean There is a long history of those sorts of like, oh my God, holy shit moments in wrestling where there's a plot twist or something and you want to consider if there was foreshadowing or whatnot. We sort of see where the foreshadowing is because we've been watching wrestling so long. And you look at West World and how people are interacting with that. On the internet, a lot of those plot twists are things that people guessed.

You know, they were like, oh, yeah. I can see how this is going to happen, and I feel like this is a sign that this is a thing, you know, dancing around the truth of Westworld so that you don't get anything spoiled. But, I mean, I can also think back to, like, the reveal of the higher power. Oh, yeah.

You gotta do that again. We need another higher power. Or Rikishi running over Stone Cold Steve Austin with his truck. Or who is Vince's son? Yeah, there's so many of those, because it has a basis in the soap opera tradition of there are cliffhangers. Yeah. In the same way that, you know, prestige dramas have these splashy cliffhangers and this naughty storytelling.

But the problem with wrestling doing it oftentimes is that the execution, the sticking of the landing doesn't happen. Stone Cold Steve Austin was not originally supposed to be run over by Rikishi. It was supposed to be Triple H. and I think Hunter got hurt or something happened and they changed the story to be Rikishi and then that bombed and then they reconded back to Triple H. Actually, Triple H hired him to do it. And then the higher power was supposed to be Cyrus, right?

Yeah, there were definitely, there have been a couple of different rumors about that, but yeah. And so then you watch wrestling and it's like Vince McMahon is the higher power and you can't go back and say, wow, they've been laying all this pipe for this reveal because Vince McMahon has been devastated that his daughter gets crucified or in this black wedding with The Undertaker.

Why would he do all this stuff? Yeah, I mean, part of it is just the, like, WW has been doing a better job and engaging with sort of the Internet. Absolutely. And that kind of stuff. And so, I mean, and a lot of ideas that people like me have floated, they're doing stuff like that now. There was some point where Becky gave herself a nickname

during her promo on Tuesday night. What was? It was something really silly. Oh, she called herself the Honey Badger. Oh, right. Which was like, that's like a five-year-old reference.

Yeah. But I did, but there was a point, there was, I don't know why it made me think of it, but it was like, it seems, it's so dumb when it's like Kobe Con,

so, no offense, I know you're a Lector's fan, but when he, like, gave himself the Black Mama nickname. Sure, of course. Like, if you're on wrestling, like, why does WWB not just start,

like, a Twitter, a Twitter account with some, like, random, you know, cartoon face, on it and just start tweeting it at her calling her The Honey Badger for like a month and then you can just be like people online

have called me the Honey Badger, there you go. It's like I just feel like there's there are ways that they can engage with the internet just kind of drop hints about things and they're like you know I guess you have to you do have to be running longer term storylines. Yeah and it's so hard to keep up with that stuff if people get injured.

You know we were talking about Finn Baller getting hurt and how that changed an entire half a year of wrestling storytelling. But it led to some of the greatest I mean some of the best storylines they could have done because they're having to figure it out on the fly. Yeah. I mean, Seth Rons face turned, it wasn't handled as seamlessly as it could have. But, like, I'm more interested week to week when I feel like W.A.

doesn't have their plan set in stone. Yeah, that's, you know, I think one of the things that's underrated about wrestling storytelling is there is an improvisational aspect to it. And a lot of the best episodes of Raw were probably written that day. as opposed to like, oh, we're going to have a year's worth of storytelling planned out, and we're definitely going to do Daniel Bryan versus Triple H at WrestleMania or what have you. You can have vague ideas about it, but it's fun. The best parts of the Daniel Bryan, and I wrote about this before Thanksgiving too,

because Daniel Bryan being squashed at WrestleMania when he fought Seamus was the reason that, I mean, a direct result of that was Daniel Bryan winning the title at Russell. Mania two years later. Yeah. Now, you can, he could have done it without that, but the groundswell of just sheer, like, abject, just animosity towards the WWE that that match generated. And they knew what they were doing when they did it.

Now, I don't know if they knew the degree to what they were doing, but that led to it. And, and, but the, but the better point is that if you want to read the entire storyline of Daniel Bryan from that moment to winning the championship as a coherent storyline, It's a really beautiful, it's a really beautiful story. Yeah. Some of the most compelling parts are parts that I don't think that the WWE had any decision, you know, had any volition when they made the decision.

You know, Daniel Ryan not being booked on an episode of Raw here or there when he was like theoretically, when you look back on the rise to WrestleMania, like those are the most compelling moments, but they're like actually not real moments necessarily. Right. They weren't planned as far as we know. But yeah, I think you're right. We're part of the story. That's the hardest part about doing professional wrestling, writing, I can imagine, is unlike writing a regular TV show, there are people that are actively cheering and booing everything.

And even you and I and every person who talks about wrestling or writes about wrestling on the internet for a living or just for fun or whatever, anybody who's doing it, who's a commentator, has their favorites. Yeah. And that means that there's going to be, you're not going to be able to look at it from you can't be. From above.

It's true. And there are, yeah, in some ways you have too many options. I mean, I think on Westworld, you can have your favorite character, but you can't,

there's not a lot of dissension. Like I hate Bernard is the worst character ever to be on television. No one's saying, anyway. But I am interested in the sort of immediate, like, so tweet at me at, at David Shoemaker. You could tweet at Schuemacher. You could tweet at Shilling.

It's at Dave Schilling. At Dave underscore Shelling. Dave underscore Shelling. And see, if you have any ideas about like things that, what could they do on Raw that would send you to, you know, squared circle on Reddit or wherever to try to help you and your compatriots to figure out what is happening. I don't know if there's a mystery deep enough that can make it on the air that's deep enough for, you know, the wrestling internet not to solve in five seconds. Yeah. Even if it's a Bray Wyatt storyline or something that has a super. natural aspect to it, we know where it's going.

Do you think Bray Wyatt is going to turn out to be Wyatt on Westworld? That's my working theory right now. I'm definitely hoping that that's the case. Let's talk about CLC. Before we do, I have a couple of, I had two funny notes, funny in my own mind, notes about the women's match that I didn't get to mention, but I like how Flair is referred to as one of the greatest of all time. I guess the Undertaker in W.W. Lour is bigger than Flair.

I wonder right now if WW is forced to say their Mount Rushmore who it would be. Oh, man, that's a tough one. Let's just assume that Hogan's out. And I'm not saying Hogan's out forever, but probably wouldn't be put in the Mount Rushmore today. So we're talking about the K-Fabe Mount Rushmore as opposed to the shoot one. I don't think Rick Flair makes it. Not sure he does. He's given so much the business and he's given enough to WWE that they can claim him.

How many slots are we getting? Let's just say the top four. Top four, okay. All-time wrestling. Undertaker. Okay, so. Let's say starting, let's say, start. I always start to start with the Hogan era, even though Hogan's involved.

Let's start with like 1985 to present. Yeah, I'm not going to bring in Frank Gotch or Bruno San Martino. Yeah. So if Hogan's out, Undertaker, Rock, Austin, Triple H. I don't even think Brett Hard and Sean Michaels. Randy Savage. Who do you take out? Why?

When you take out of, whenever I would do this before, I would put. When Hogan was in, I would say you only get Austin or the Rock. Interesting. Because there's no way, they occupied so much the same space. That's true. I mean, and I said that, like, I think Austin is the answer. I think the Rock has done more in the past five, has done enough in the past five years to make it a really compelling, to make it really compelling argument in his favor. I mean, just that that two-year Sina program is something that maybe people didn't love.

Well, actually, it was three years because it started at WrestleMania 27. or 26 or whatever. That was meaningful for the business. And his fame, you know, outside of the ring is not an insignificant thing. But also. You could put Andre in there. I mean, there's a lot of people. I mean, Undertaker, like you said, it's...

If you only get four, then you have to just say one from each era. Yeah. So you have to say Austin, Sina, Michael's, and then Savage instead of Hogan. Or Undertaker goes back a long way. That's true. You could almost put it. You could almost pencil. Undertaker is your

Survivor Series 90? Yeah, but that's before like he debuted before WrestleMania 7? Yeah. So that's seven years into the WrestleMania era.

You have to pick somebody who I think had been around for all, you know, the formative wrestlingans. Yeah. Savage wasn't there for one and two. Yeah, 90 is when he debuted

in the Survivor Series. 90. I just double-checked this on Wikipedia and the subheading on Wikipedia under World Wrestling Federation. The first subhead is Western Mortician. It's just the name for that era, which is really great. All right. So tweet ads if you have any ideas, if things that WWD could do to, like, really go next-level

internet sleuth and make you... Because I would do that. Like, that's... I'm more interested in the West World Reddit page than any wrestling Reddit page. You know? Like, I want... Like, I like to, when I'm online, I like to, like, read theories and figure stuff out. And that exists in wrestling that people like, fantasy book and say, like, maybe this is what they're trying to do.

But it's just not the same, you know, it's just because there's, I guess, like I said, authorial integrity. It's not what it could be. Right. All right. Now. Oh, also, here's my other note. If we're still calling, I thought we weren't calling the crowd the universe anymore, but during the women's match, they kept spilling out going to the crowd. And Michael Cole would say they're entering the WWE universe.

That's never going to go away. I think maybe they were teasing, getting rid of it, or, like, trying to see it. My only question is, if that's, if we're still calling the crowd the universe, then shouldn't every universal championship defense be a false count anywhere a match? That's a great idea.

I mean, that would certainly make the belt more interesting. Come on. I'm into this. And it would be great for Owens because Owens has that hardcore background. Yeah, oh man, he would be, he would be great. Is there anything else from Raw that we need to touch on? I don't think so, right?

New Day is definitely getting a little boring. Are they going to bring demolition back? Demolition is the number two tag team on Raw right now. I wish it was like the video game WWF superstars where they had to go through a litany of tag teams and then at the end it's the Legion of Doom. Of course, RIP, Hawk. Yeah, I don't know where this goes.

I hope that it ends up with the revival debuting on Raw and taking the belts from them like the week after they break the record. Huh. All right. There's some fantasy booking we can all get into, I think. All right. Now to the pay-per-view talk,

this is not roadblock into the line talk. I'm glad you remember the subtitle this time. I wrote it down. But if this is an indication that they're basically dispensing with all of their insignificant pay-per-view names, then I've been long an advocate of that. If everything is a roadblock,

just like everything is an NXT takeover or whatever, that's fine. Let's just focus on the ones that matter, like the ones that have longstanding names with tradition, like tables, ladders and chairs, which is this Sunday. Oh, boy. Somehow. It's funny that this got split up. I mean, obviously not everything can be a show for both brands, but TLC was right on the verge of being like, it was like the number three or number four pay-per-view. And then now it's just a Smackdown pay-per-view, which is not to diminish Smackdown.

but in some sense it's a perfect smackdown pay-per-view because almost all of the fudes that we're seeing play out onto this pay-per-view or feuds that have been like working they've been working on for months yeah it's time for gimmick matches for all of these almost all of them it's feel like they've really earned

chair shots in a way that WB almost never accomplishes so let's run down the card real quick and we'll just talk we'll get to our picks and if there's anything in here you want to talk about it on SmackDown, we'll start from the bottom, and I'm immediately going to have things to talk about on this, but this is the last match on Wikipedia.

Heath Slater and Rhino versus the Wyatt family for the tag team championship, or the Wyatt family being Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton, dude, that main event on Smackdown, the finish to that main event on Smackdown was just stupendous. Yeah. To have, first of all, to have the confidence to book a match in your main event spot on your go-home show

that actually changes the card for the pay-per-view was ballsy and made me much more interested in that whole feud. Yeah. But man, that finished from the moment that Gable went out, basically, was just great. I mean, Jordan looked like a million bucks

standing next to Orton and Wyatt. But the whole thing was just immaculately choreographed. And, yeah, nobody looked bad. But putting, you know, Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton in this match, I think, is a good spot for them. Do you think that they win? Well, I'm thinking back to our Survivor Series picks and how poor our record was. Like we said earlier in the show, winning and losing doesn't matter. But, you know, do you see that, do you think that they will eventually have those to have the titles?

I think it's the smart move. I think that there's enough traction with this angle. I didn't think I was going to like Randy Orton in the Wyatt family, but I really like Randy Orden in the Wyatt family. Yeah, I mean, Randy Orden was great when he was with Edge. Randy Orton was, I mean, say what you will about it. I mean, evolution was really good. Say what was the other one, legacy.

Yeah. But Randy Orden and one other guy is interesting. We don't give him enough credit for being so versatile. He's had like nine different gimmicks. Variations on a theme. none of them have been drastically different, but they've been different enough that he always feels fresh.

Remember Randy Orton with young Seth Rollins and sort of being both being part of the authority? Like, yeah, he's, he's really, he's capable. And I think those two holding those belts could, I mean, talk about legitimizing titles. They might never defend them, but I mean, I would love to see those guys, having those guys walking around with belts

is a good move for, is a smart move for WWE. It's really important that Bray Wyatt succeed at something. He's never held a title in WWE, which is remarkable to me because he's been one of the most consistently over-marketable, interesting characters they've had in the last five years. So this isn't ideal. I think an intercontinental title run would be interesting

or a world title run would be interesting, but there's people ahead of him. There's people that have momentum, and he's not going to break through there. but the tag team division feels sort of open enough and amorphous enough and doesn't have that clear hierarchy that this is a perfect way for this view to or this angle to continue. I think that's true.

I think they bring legitimacy to the division. In some sense, I feel like them holding the tag belts makes them feel more legit than if they were holding one of them, you know, Bray had the IC title, just because Bray can still be considered a main event caliber wrestler. hold half of the tag belts because they're just that good, right? And it elevates the other teams. It does. It elevates the other teams.

They've been doing a really good job with this slow simmer on American Alpha, you know, just waiting until they're exactly ready. And then if the end of, if Wyatt and Orton do win the titles, like, getting the titles off of them is easy. At some point, Randy Orton turns on Bray and they dropped the title, the belts in that at that moment to American Alpha. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Or Luke Harper turns on. Sure. I mean, any number of things. could happen, but like, if they prime American Alpha to take the titles off of Wyatt Norton, then suddenly American Alpha are in K-Fave. They're everything that we smart fans like to think that they are. Right. All right.

So I'm going to guess why Wyatt Norton win only because Slater and Rhino, as great as they've been, just don't seem like they haven't put them over as world beaters so far. Although, why not? I mean, they could always drag it out for another month. They're not on Smackdown a ton. not really filling up a lot of airspace. They're not doing a bunch of promos or angles or anything. So I think it's probably run its course a little bit.

They don't seem to have any interest in moving them up the card. Yeah. So them carrying the belts around is superfluous. Maybe if they just, maybe they should just have like a blood feud for two months or something after they drop the belts. It'll be, if they're not holding the belts, if they, if they compete in the Royal Rumble, I think it's going to be a. really interesting how big is Heath Slater's pop moment when he comes out.

Yeah. Because I'm always interested in his level of fame. All right. Next, Coliso versus Baron Corbin in a chairs match. This is my sign match of the month. That mixed tag match on Smackdown, I couldn't help thinking, like, why not? We talked about the attitude era enough in the show, but why not just straight up run back the Sean Diesel gimmick and let Baron Corbyn follow Dolph Ziegler around and be his muscle?

Like, just, like, they're playing those characters anyway. Dog? He's not accomplishing very much alone. And he was in a tag team match last night anyway. Is there any way Coliso wins this match? Wait, wait, it's a no disqualification match. So no. It's a chair's match.

Chairs match. No, I don't think so. I think it would be foolhardy for him to go over against a much larger man. It just seems like an interference. He has the advantage of the chairs, but I just have a hard time imagining that booking. Which means he'll probably play. He's going to win. Nicky Bell versus Carmela.

Carmela kind of compelling promo on Tuesday to, and there was a nice run-in by Nikki. She hit that spear hard. Yeah. I've heard a lot of conflicting opinions about Carmela on the internet in the last couple days. I was fine with it. It's a little weird that she's bringing John Cena into it

and talking about her fake breasts and these kinds of things. Like, I'm going to hit you in the chest so hard that the Bella twins are going to go under your back. I thought it was a gray line. Great line. I thought it was visually. unpleasant, but I guess it's supposed to be. She handled that

how you do enchant super well. Yeah. That was a perfect way to shut them up and to get heat. I think she probably is going to lose, though. Because she's won most of the matches, I feel like, in this feud so far, and he's kind of dominated

Nikki. Nikki deserves a win. That said, Carmela probably should be the one to win the blowoff, and I don't think this is going to end after this. It feels like it should, but I don't think it's going to. I'm right with you. The Miz versus Dov Ziegler in a ladder match.

This is part of the Sean, I mean, the Sean Michael's comparisons for Ziegler will never end with, as long as he's wearing those tights. And throwing super kicks too. And engaging in ladder matches. I'm excited about this match. I think this is going to steal the show.

They were so good in their last big match, and they, I mean, they bring the best out of each other in a way that, you know, it goes beyond two friends wanting to make each other look good. Like their chemistry is really, gotten to a weird second level of late.

And ladder matches are the best of all of these matches as far as just it's not necessarily closer to a pure wrestling match than the other ones, but it's less schmassy. It's a wrestling match

with some cool spots. Yeah, there's something about the ladder match to me that feels like the ultimate upper mid-card feud blow-off match. I think it's just because you think the ladder match,

you think, Sean and Razor. And then Sean and Razor volume two. Yeah, and that was like the ultimate upper mid-card match. That and, you know, you go back to Savage Steamboat, those sorts of... Well, it's also the ultimate, like, smarky match because they had the first one. And then, like, remember the second one was just Gorilla Mansoon, just showing up right before the event and just being like, forget what we had planned. You guys want to see this other match again.

Right. I mean, it's just, like, it's like, it's fantasy booking. All right. Who do you got in this one? Oh. This is weird. This is another sort of Sasha Nicky, Sasha, Nicky, Sasha Charlotte situation.

Or they could just keep going back and forth forever? Yeah, but I want something else for the MES. I love the Miz, like I love a young child, like my son. I just want to see him succeed all the time because I think he's such a great heel, but I don't think they have big plans for him. Are these two guys next in line for the title? Is one of them going to get the world title spot

if they don't, if AJ and Dean don't keep feuding? To me, they're going to continue with this through the Rumble. With AJ versus Dean? Or Seward and Undertaker, Sina or something. I don't think they're going to elevate anybody before WrestleMania, especially not Ms. and Ziegler. As much as I like both of those guys, they feel like the dudes who are your honky-tonk mans of the world

or your Razor Ramones, who never quite get to that level. Sure. though the Miz had his cup of coffee in the main event at WrestleMania. I guess Dolph, I don't know where to go with this one. Yeah, I'm going to go Dolph too just because I don't have as much confidence in the rest of the baby faces on the card, and they always factor in to balancing it out. Speaking of which, Becky Lynch versus Alexa Bliss.

I mean, this could go either way. This is a tables match, by the way. I'm so excited for this match. I just am like irrationally into this feud. And it feels like, again, they've sort of earned this payoff, and they've earned a tables match. Both of their characters are very well defined, and they play well against each other,

because Becky is just like such a pure white hat baby face who is, you know, plucky and works hard and believes in herself and slaps hands with kids and wears silly glasses. I love her glasses. I don't mean to impugn her glasses. Shilling is actually wearing god. I'm really a steampunk guy.

You guys have no idea. I wear a lot of leather chaps. But Alexa's great with her because Alexa is the opposite of that. She's a perfect heel. And like I said before, I mean, to me, she's the MVP of the brand split. 100%. She is, you know, grab the brass ring since the brand split as well as anybody who's not named James Ellsworth. You know, I mean, it's been really impressive.

I feel like Alexa's going to win. I don't know why, but I feel like Alexa's got to... There have been so many title changes. How many of... Cruiserweight title. And we've predicted two already tonight, so... It feels like a lot... Maybe you're right.

Maybe you're right. I feel like this is a big moment. TLC's a big moment for them to try to get people's attention, like, raw... I mean, like, not raw. Like, WW did it the Survivor Series. But, you know, we said that before, and obviously it only... It doesn't happen. They don't go to shock you in every match.

It feels natural to put the belt on Alexa. continue this, but I think it's staying with Becky Lynch. Speaking of surprises, now, you know, after the Survivor Series, there were a lot of predictions, ours included, that The Undertaker might get involved with Ambrose since he was sort of culpable for the loss at the Survivor Series. If they're going to actually make anything of that, I feel like a shocking Undertaker appearance at TLC is the way to do it. Yeah.

You kind of think you've already lost most of the momentum that would have come from. Undertaker blames that loss on. Well, they won the match, though. Or no, no, but Ambrose screwed it up, right? Well, Ambrose did the tandem power bomb on A.J. Right. He was eliminated. Yeah, he helped raw.

The Wyatt family, you know, they were the sole survivors. But still, I guess you can reverse engineer a feud just by saying, like, the Undertaker's upset about the brand loyalty or the lack thereof. Still, I'm not so into that storyline, but if something's going to be made of it, they've got to do it. What is an undead grave-digging mortician figure care so much about a blue t-shirt? I don't know. It beggars belief. I mean, I guess I find it hard to imagine Ambrose is going to win.

But again, I don't think the odds are dramatically in Stiles' favor. And it does feel like this is the sort of night where they would just do, even if it's not connected to a specific storyline, They would do an Undertaker or John Sina appearance just to goose the crowd a little bit, you know? So, I don't know. I think this is a good, it's a good looking card, man. Yeah, I don't want to see Ambrose Stiles again. I don't think that they have a ton of chemistry together.

This is the best run up to a pay-per-view they've had. This is the storylines finally, I mean, James Ellsworth is useful, and the whole thing is just felt just about right, but you're right, I'm done with it. Yeah, I'm happy to see them both move on to other. things. Yeah, for whatever reason, it just doesn't quite click. So I hope AJ wins.

I can see Ellsworth maybe making a fatal error as he does a run-in. Because he's guaranteed to do a run-in, I think. But I think this is, he moves on, AJ moves on to something else. What if Ellsworth joins up with AJ Styles? Oh, heel turn? That's a very attitude error move. It's like, this makes no sense. He basically murdered.

Just having died his hair around and just do like a little nage gimmick with AJ where he just like, oh man. Yes, this is perfect fantasy booking. This is what I want to hear on this podcast. Yeah.

And Dean Ambrose should just join the Wyatt family too. I want the Wyatt family to be all like headliners who are just like, they're just going to like amass talent and then just bulldoze people. That's a classic wrestling angle

is an unstoppable stable. We haven't seen that in a long time. Yeah, they're reluctant. Other than the shield. And they were all rookies. So like at heart, like they booked them like they were unstoppable. But, you know,

I think what made them, when made that a palatable decision was, the fact that... They were squashing undercard guys. Yeah. Yeah. Squashing undercard guys.

Anyway. All right. So, what's your pick? I'm going to go with AJ Styles. Yeah, I don't... A title change would be just for the reaction. Yeah, and there's no reason to. Royal Rumble, I think, needs a fresh matchup.

They need something else for AJ Styles to do. What do you think that's going to be? Here's the prediction that really matters. If it's not Ziegler and, it's not the Ms. Are we rolling back John Cena? Undertaker? My ideal would be Sina Stiles 3 because I want to see that again.

Sure. At WrestleMania, that is. So I'm going to just from my own edification say Undertaker because he promised he was going to be a part of SmackDown. He has not appeared since the 900th episode. And he also promised that WrestleMania would not. not define his legacy anymore. So he has to appear at a pay-per-view. Right. And the Royal

Rumble is a perfect time to do that because they have to sell 50,000 tickets in the Alamo Dome. An Undertaker versus A.J. Stiles allows the Undertaker to give A.J. a rub, going into WrestleMania. Yeah, and I don't see him being in the actual Royal Rumble because there's

only 90 seconds between entrances and his entrance takes like five minutes. Right. So, an Undertaker, Lesner, and Goldberg in the same Royal Rumble, that's a lot of beef. Yeah, yeah. Listen, TLC's on Sunday.

Royal Rumble is at least eight days away. I don't even know how hard it is. Yeah, no, I think it might be on the next Sunday. By the way, I know that we, I keep joking about this, but as many of these things as there are, it's like we keep coming back to, it's the lack of surprise, you know? It's like there's not, there's too much

that we're just, it's so ingrained, in us. But like if there were a day where I just got like a push notification from the WW app that were just, that was just like, by the way, AJ Styles challenged Gene Ambrose to a match of this house show at MSG, we've got our cameras on it, watch it in 30 minutes. You better believe I would like leave whatever I was doing to go watch it. Yeah, because that's something that's outside of the norm. Yeah.

But at the same time, we went through this card and there was no like slam dunk, this is definitely happening. Sure. It feels like this could surprise a little bit. No, this is going to be a fun match. I mean, a fun night. I mean, I'm totally into it. The only, I mean, yeah, there's no, nothing is obvious except for, I mean, we'll all say Baron Corbin was obvious if he wins.

But, like, yeah, I mean, honestly. Calisto might honestly win that. I don't know. I think it's, yeah, the only, like, it's, none of these things are as much of a sure thing as Linda McMahon getting a position in the Trump administration. And even that is very up in the air. We don't have to talk about that right now. This is a play. This is, yeah.

Podcast. Wrestling and politics podcast. That's what my contract says. Anyway, thanks for listening. This was a long one. Thanks for hanging out, Dave. Do you have anything you want to plug? I'm at Dave underscore Schilling on Twitter

and my basketball podcast, Roundball Rock, every Tuesday. I talk about basketball with some funny comics. It's great. How's basketball going for you? How are you enjoying the season? Very bummed that the Lakers lost to the Pelicans. A lot of injuries.

Nick Young. RIP, hurt his ankle. He's in big. Some ACL, I don't remember what it is, but I'm happy. I'm satisfied that they're at least a competitive team. They're one of the sweetheart teams of the Ringer office right now. And I'm enjoying the Knicks being bad. That's fun.

Yeah. I haven't, living in L.A., man, the one really nice thing is that I just don't ever think about the NICs or the Nets, really. You're a very lucky, man. I get to sort of add them out of life. Although, Porzingis did have, Porzingis has had some moments of them. Watching him play basketball is, it's like watching Sean Michaels versus the Undertaker at WrestleMania.

Go on? It's just, it's always fun. Oh, yeah. You turn it on and it still works no matter what. Yeah, it's true. All right, well, thanks for turning this podcast on, and we'll see you back here next week, Humanoids.