Welcome to the ring, it's rich and atom.
Breaking down the fights with flair and passion.
Tag teams grappling, belts are clashing.
Finishes and factions catching action.
Hi everyone and welcome back to this week's episode of finishes and factions where it was live from Dallas, Texas.
And on this episode we were with Monday Night Raw as Richard just said in Dallas, Texas at the American Airlines Center which I believe was sold out on this occasion.
There was a full 15,572 fans in attendance this evening for one of the many times in history this wonderful location has held the Monday Night Raw one of 27 times along with two WrestleMania's, WrestleMania 32 and WrestleMania 38.
So what you're telling me is that Dallas, Texas has had WrestleMania twice in less than 10 years and they've never bought it over to the UK.
But Saudi Arabia might get it before us so it's fine.
We've got elimination chamber, we'll have to make do, we're the bigger fans but we'll stick to elimination chamber.
Yeah I know right. But back to this Monday Night Raw.
Well before we'd even got to a promo or a match we were treated to a VT from before the event even started where Rhea Bloody Ripley was being attacked by Nia Jax before the show even started.
And Rhea Ripley looked like she'd been hit by a train in fairness.
I mean Nia Jax isn't short, anything short of a train and when you've got something that big and that fast coming at you it's going to feel like you've been hit by a train.
She got pincers straight into a set of barricades as well so there was nowhere for her to go.
No definitely not and nothing about what she was hit by or what she went into is going to be forgiving in any way shape or form.
There's nothing about Nia Jax that's forgiving. I'm sure you have that one.
Sure after that occasion Rhea probably would too.
Yeah this is it. We had one of the thing to note before we get into anything else to do with the show.
We had a small change to the normal running order or the normal running team.
Ordinarily on commentary we'd have Michael Cole and Pat McAfee but this week Wade Barrett subbed in for Pat McAfee because I believe he was doing something to do with the NFL.
He was off doing something with the ESPN game day I believe for the college football.
Not 100% sure I wasn't paying much attention to that specific part to which game he was working on but I know he was working with the college football for this weekend.
But yeah just thought I'd mention that while we were getting into it.
Wade Barrett back on Raw though.
Wade Barrett back on Raw and I mean him and Michael Cole spent the entire night just sort of bickering between the two of them which honestly sort of reminded me a little bit of when Jerry the King Lawler and Michael Cole used to do commentary together to be quite honest.
Made it more enjoyable.
It did it offered some contention even between matches so one thing Wade Barrett didn't approve of straight from the off was Michael Cole's reaction to our first promo which was for main event J.
What an entry that guy had this week. He came in from the crowd again and the entire crowd. I mean I don't think there was that many people that weren't getting involved. Even Michael Cole himself was getting involved with the year.
The entire crowd was moving. It was incredible incredible entry.
There are seldom few superstars that have managed to elicit that kind of reaction. I mean like superstar legends like John Cena, The Rock they've always, I mean John Cena was always hailed for being a polarizing superstar.
He was Marmite. You either loved him or hated him. The Rock is universally loved and I don't even, I'd go as far as to say I don't even think The Rock elicits the kind of energy and reaction that J.
Who so seems to elicit every time he steps in an arena.
I don't think there would have been a bigger pop if they'd have managed to get Undertaker to do a take a Rooney than what happens when main event J.
So hits up his music hit. It is such a pop every time.
100%
Promo was shorter than his entrance and that was slightly annoying. Like I thought they put the mic in his hand and they've given him an opportunity to say whatever it is that he wants to say.
And he never really get that time does it?
I will go a step further with that and say that I think it's who he's in this promo with that sort of has that has that effect for it.
Because J. Who so comes out starts pretty much ahead of his main event Saturday night main event match this coming Saturday with Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship.
And I mean we may as well start calling Gunther Joe Hendry at this point because say his name and he will appear.
And they're both holding gold.
But yeah I mean while we're mentioning it but I haven't seen any of Genesis but I've seen all of the all I've seen pretty much all of the match results and it sounds like it was a phenomenal night.
There is a link to raw with that. TNA pay-per-view after Joe Hendry stripped Nick Nemeth formerly known as Dolph Ziggler of the TNA title he called out John Cena which was an interesting one.
So let's see what happens with that one. A couple of episodes down the line I'm sure.
Yeah that would be one hell of a match if we get it is Hendry versus Cena that. Yeah.
That would be an ideal.
Staying up late for that one. Looking the day off work staying up late pizza.
Yeah definitely. But yeah Gunther came out in this was sort of very similar to their last to their last promo they cut last week on Raw.
It seemed sort of very respectful at least to begin with.
All of Gunther's sort of jabs were almost like underhanded compliments to a certain degree they were they were trying to keep it very sort of civilized and.
I think Gunther criticised Jay for his entrance demeanor and just genuine lack of follow through as well as saying that Jimmy might actually be the more successful user which is insane.
I don't know how you can compare the two. I mean Jimmy's very talented but would never go as far as to say he's the most successful of the two.
It's funny how you bought rock up at the start of this conversation because Gunther actually has a cheeky little rock quotation in this promo as well.
At one point in the promo he says to Jay.
What are you going to say? He just kind of looks at me.
It doesn't matter what you say. People don't. Gunther doesn't believe in Jay and he believes the WWE Universe don't either.
I mean that wasn't met with the greatest reception from the Universe.
Personally had a few choice words to say about it myself. Those I can't repeat on the podcast even though we are an explicit based one.
I think that might be a little bit too explicit for the audience for aiming to.
Yeah, let's keep it at least semi clean.
But yeah, I mean Gunther goes even a step further in when he's talking about how much he goes and he goes out and helps out everybody around him.
Sami Zayn, Roman Reigns, all of these other names that Jay will rush to their defence for.
And just goes to call him and just calls him a useful idiot.
That's a word that seems to be thrown around a lot in WWE programming is idiot.
I'm hearing that a lot at the moment and...
It's a really poor choice of words as well. There are so many better words in the English vocabulary and the Spanish as well.
That they could choose to use but don't.
I don't know about you but I was hoping with this Netflix era we were going to go progress a little bit more from the PG style stuff where we get a little bit more.
A little bit more hard correction, a little bit more on the language, a little bit more of the old school proper wrestling promos.
Rather than some of the stuff we've been treated to in the last three to four years.
I think they're in a process of feeling out where the boundaries are because they are starting to bleed it in a little bit.
But it's not to the level that we would expect or not to the level that we grew up with at least.
But this promo basically...
I mean Jay does get his own back here.
And it is phenomenal that he gets his own back in this way just because.
He points out that while Gunther has had two very successful title reigns, it's a case that...
Jay is doing something.
...the main event in WrestleMania. Which is something that Jay Uso can always hold over his head.
Oh, and he was nowhere near as over than as he is now.
I don't think he's been over that.
No.
Yeah, so...
One thing that Jay Uso will always have over Gunther and it seemed to really push Gunther's buttons.
As much as a fighting champion and a successful champion that Gunther has been, he's never actually main event at WrestleMania in the few years that he's been with the company.
Which is actually sort of surprising.
But then there are so many talented superstars on the roster.
Not enough space over the WrestleMania weekend to be able to get everyone on.
There's so many that deserve slots that have had great storylines that haven't gone to Mania.
But they've gone to the roar after all.
They've kind of been pushed a bit further down.
You've only got a certain amount of space, I suppose. You can't have everyone.
No, this is true.
But yeah, and just the last sort of closing thought on this promo as it goes is that you might not have spotted it, but I certainly did.
Jay got some colour on him after the fight that broke out with this. Did you happen to see that at all?
I didn't, but he did get hit with a title belt though, so surely that will cause a little bit of injury to the face.
Yeah, this is true.
There's not the smallest guy in this, so if he's hitting you with that, it's going to work.
Yeah, this is it.
Which was actually really surprising.
Gunther is actually quite famous for how hard he does his cross-body chop.
He's actually pretty well famous for it.
I saw an interview with Gunther recently where somebody asks him,
like, have you ever been chopped as hard as you chop others? And he actually says, yeah, there was one guy that I can think of who chops probably harder than me.
And that man is actually on this card as well.
It's Penta. Apparently Penta chopped Gunther once and drew blood on one chop.
So that is one hell of a cross-body chop.
That is the case. I feel sorry for Pete Dunn.
Yes, but we will get to that.
I think J.Cott is up and coming in that little exchange of moves at the end as well.
Yes, he got a bit of a beatdown laid on him, but he hit Gunther with a hell of a superkick to send him out of the ring and to leave his belt on the middle of the ring.
Like, J.Cott had held that hostage for a while. It could have been interesting.
Well, you can't hold it hostage for too long, because we've only got to wait until Saturday for them to meet.
But maybe. Yeah, that's it. San Antonio, Texas.
So we're going to move swiftly on to the next promo, which was the new day.
And legendary Hall of Famer JVL was backstage as well, who was the special commentator for their match against Ramastere a little bit later on in the evening, or for Kofi's match against Ramastere a little bit later on in the evening.
So yeah, this really confused me because obviously last week we were told New Day was returning to in-ring action.
I assumed this meant that they were going in as a tag team.
Yeah, which is why I was really confused myself when they both came out and I was expecting, oh right, okay, so you've got Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston here.
And then it was like, oh, we've got Ramastere coming out. It's just like, right, cool. Who's going to be the fourth person?
And then, yeah, it was at that moment you kind of realized, oh, wait a minute, it is just Kofi, it's just Ramastere.
Yeah, it wasn't until Xavier Woods stayed on the outside of the ring and all of that lot that I, because even when it was just Ray that came out, I genuinely thought it was going to end up being some kind of handicap match or something like that.
That was an option that could have been.
Like a tag on one, which you very rarely see now. It's not a match type they like to use.
But yeah, no, with that promo, they new day end up bribing or trying to bribe JBL with two dollars to try and be more sympathetic to their side.
And two bucks, they're going to get you fast. Not with JBL. Not with JBL, but JBL ends up almost seemingly to be on Big E's side.
But he does explain later on when in the match that actually I'm rooting for them, but the way you put it across was just it came across all wrong. So I can sort of understand Kofi and Xavier being quite upset by it.
While we're talking about it, this bleeds into the first match of the night, which was Ray Mysterio versus Kofi Kingston.
So we've got Ray's entry to start off with. This really is starting to bug me. We say this every week.
We think we're both having the same opinion here. They bring a superstar out to the ring and then they cut to a promo or they cut to a VT.
And it just it makes life very difficult, especially for us taking notes. Imagine to watch it as well. Sometimes it's like, right, cool, we're getting into a fight. No, I might as well go make a cup of tea.
We still got a VT to do and then possibly a promo and then then we actually get into the fight.
Yeah, this is it. I mean, we've been doing this. We've been doing this podcast now for this is the third week and we still haven't took them.
I still haven't learned the pattern of how this what how this works, how they're going to how they're going to do it because just when I think, oh, this is when they're going to do it again.
It turns out, oh, no, this isn't how they're going to get it again. It's it's actually going to go. It's actually going to go slightly differently.
Maybe we should email the production team and ask them for their setups. We can go right. This is how the episode is built. We can now use that.
Yeah, I think we we might have to grow our fan, but if we grow our viewer base or listener base in this case, a little bit more before we can do that.
But yeah, what was it? I've got down here. I can't remember if it was a VT, but I don't think it was an actual promo or such.
You had the WrestleMania came between. Do you have notes on that?
Yes, you had the WrestleMania in Las Vegas, VT, which was the wasn't particularly long just kind of showcasing this still got tickets left for WrestleMania and where it is.
Las Vegas, Nevada this year.
And then we kind of had JBL's entrance as a Hall of Famer in his home state of Texas for the commentary.
There was a classic line and I heard in here that I really thought was quite funny was asking whether limo with the horn was claimed it was still in the briscoe's brothers body shop.
So I wonder if that's where Kofi's $2 were going to start off with. But yeah, you never know. But that was nice to see they bought that storyline back just as a reference piece at least.
Yeah, so the VT in this case was basically it was just a WrestleMania is in Las Vegas, Nevada. There's still some tickets available and a visual package of arena and what was going on there.
And followed up by JBL's entrance as a Hall of Famer in his home state of Texas to do a guest commentary slot on the match between Ray and Kofi. And I did find it interesting in this section.
Michael Cole asked him where his limo was and he responded that it was in the briscoe brothers shop being repaired.
I'm guessing that was after John Cena did a number on it with a Batista in a baseball bat.
Do you know I'm not 100% so I'm not 100% sure why it would have been in the shop. He did make a bit of a joke about the fact that it would be it's all down to inflation or something along those lines.
I wonder if that's the Kofi's $2 are going to go straight in Eric Prescott's pocket.
Kofi takes the $2 back.
But the one thing that sort of shocked me about it is obviously normally when you've got a superstar that's bought out as the hometown hero they're normally bought out to quite a bit of crowd reaction.
And I was actually quite surprised as to how little crowd reaction we had for JBL coming out. It was actually quite underwhelming and I can imagine if this affected JBL at all.
I can't imagine it did but it would have been quite disheartening for him.
Especially when you see the pop that Rey Mysterio got in his hometown and the pop that Bailey got in hers too. They were massive, massive pops.
And yeah JBL wasn't...
The only thing that you can sort of console him with is the fact that both Bailey and Rey Mysterio got those pops for being active superstars which JBL while he still wrestles he does still make appearances in the Indies.
He is not an active WWE superstar. He just holds a Hall of Famer contract.
So that is the only real consolation that you can give to JBL to such a lackluster reception in his own hometown.
I don't know maybe it was the arena or something like that. It just felt like quite an apathetic reception for him moving forward.
Yes we had JBL come out who was guest commentator for the Rey Mysterio and Kofi Kingston match.
I've got a couple of bits and pieces for this match but I mean two high flyers, high energy even though they last faced each other.
I think they mentioned it was something like 16 years ago or something like that.
It was an insanely long time since the last time these guys faced each other in one on one match up.
Two veteran high flyers and a new day at least.
On paper it's a great match. If there was such thing as fantasy wrestling on paper that would be an absolutely phenomenal match.
There is such a thing as fantasy wrestling. It's called the WWE 2K games. They're generally all pretty much the same but it works out quite well.
Kicking ends of a moray in the nuts on nose many many years ago.
Yes, drinking copious amounts of alcohol if I remember correctly. But yeah, what did I get here?
Mysterio really wasn't taking any shit in this. I mean Kofi was basically running typical heel maneuvers trying to keep out of Rey's way as much as possible.
I actually got a bit of a mis-move by, I'm not going to call it a botch because it's the one thing that if you ever listen to any professional wrestlers talk about social media influences who talk about wrestling,
the one thing they hate, the one word they will hate to hear is the word botch because they're very much of the opinion of,
well if you think you can do it better, go right ahead. And I am not going to sit here and say I can do anything that Kofi Kingston or Rey Mysterio have done, will do or can do any better than the men themselves.
So I avoid the word botch if I can at all. But yeah, we had a section where Xavier Woods was actually ejected from ringside and Rey Mysterio very much steals a win.
So a nice little exchange with the sunset flip of the Santon though.
Oh 100%, I mean lots of, from what I can remember of Monday Night Raw, sunset flips were very much favourites in order of the day.
Yeah it was the move of the week, there was a few hit in different matches, some later on as well.
Yeah this is it. But yeah, after Rey Mysterio steals a win, New Day set after Mysterio, obviously not happy at the fact that they've been shown up again.
And we have…
The LWO came running out to save Rey's ass, which was nice. They certainly did, it was nice to know that somebody had Rey's back basically.
Cody had to have it last week when Kevin Owens tried to hit him with that pile driver, so it's the second week in a row that he's won a match, he's been beaten down before it and someone's had to come out and rescue him.
Something that we don't see very often is how the New Day behaved next, so they did the typical heel manoeuvre, they ran off into the arena, sort of, what, scarpering off like a couple of scolding, like a couple of scolding.
This flank out through the crowd to come back in to attack LWO from behind was pure genius.
Oh, 100%? It's a wonder we don't see anything like this at all.
What me?
You saw the camera running off and it was like, right, they've gone, it's time to pick him up, get him back out of the back, he's done.
And then, boom, straight away, I was going to make a cut for Tia at that time, oh crap, I've got to run back in and write about that.
Yeah, I took the note of they were very much attacking like a pack of hyenas, because hyenas, when they are attempting to attack something of a larger prey, they will use an attack and retreat format and go in, attack, do some damage,
retreat before they can sustain damage themselves. And this sort of, this seemed to be something that the new day we're trying to put to use in that, in Ring, which, yeah, 100% complete genius move and not something we see every day in WWE.
But something you don't see every day, just to throw this in there, completely out of context. My kittens just walked into the bedroom door with a bog roll. That absolute nut job is just walked in with a bog roll.
Okay.
Completely random.
Yeah.
Very much so.
Yeah, sorry about that guys. I just couldn't, I had to shout out on the...
No, fair enough.
I think after the beatdown and stuff at the end, and the LWO coming out, it has possibly set up something between New Day vs LWO.
But it leaves me thinking that New Day is still a man short. So are they going to recruit or are they going to...
I'm not sure what's going to happen, but it's going to be an interesting one, I think.
They've already burned the bridge with Big E, so even because I've seen something today itself from a fellow creator on TikTok who theorized that potentially Big E could end up making a return for the Rumble.
It's not outside the realm's possibility, it wouldn't be the first time that we've been told that a superstar has an almost life-threatening neck injury that keeps them out of the ring for all eternity for them then to come back.
Just thinking of a few.
I believe Christian had a fatal neck injury who's now competing in AEW.
Edge?
Edge.
Exactly the same.
He's now competing in AEW.
I mean, to listen to Kurt Angle go on and on at the Olympic gold medal that he won with a broken freaking neck.
Stone Cold?
Yeah.
Another one?
That was more thanks to Edge in fairness.
Either way, winning with a broken neck, you know?
100%.
But yeah, so it's not outside the realms of possibility for that to happen in my view.
I don't think it will, but it's a bit of fun to theorize about.
Oh yeah, definitely. Always a bit of fun to theorize.
Again, keep things moving forward.
We went onto a penta recap up next, kind of setting up for those match a little bit later in the day for Pete Dunn again.
Kind of, you know, a little bit more about how he's the worst kept secret in the business for that period of time.
A little bit of his debut against Chad Gable last week and actually to be fair, we both agreed it was a half decent match.
The promo afterwards we both struggled with with the language barrier and his, you know, for him being mainly a Spanish speaking wrestler where I don't speak Spanish.
I don't know about you.
No, I don't either, but it was more of a case that I don't think you necessarily needed to be able to hear what it was that Penton was talking about for it to make it a certain kind of event.
We went from that into another backstage section as well.
Yeah, so we had a backstage interview with Bailey next, I believe, all about a match with Nia Jax later on in later on in the night.
She's also been the second woman, I believe, to declare herself for the Royal Rumble this Royal Rumble on February 1st.
And as soon as Bailey had pretty much announced herself for the Rumble, who should show up?
But the Samoan steam train herself, Nia Jax, obviously fresh off the attack of Rhea Ripley earlier in the night, feeling pretty bloody pleased with herself, I would imagine.
I completely missed that bit out of my notes, apparently.
Oh, right. OK. Yeah, basically just some very, not over the top sort of heat building for their match later on in the night, realistically.
So not a massive amount missed there, but still pretty...
I had that done before New Day, KML.
Is that when they were talking about the pro ball riding guys?
Possibly, yeah.
Yeah, I've got that in that section now.
So this is again, this is what happens when WWE programming decide to stick promos in the middle of match entrances.
Yes, the one I had was with Chad Gable backstage with American Alpha, and in fact he still had a problem losing to Luchador's.
Now he'd lost to Penta, he'd lost to Dragon Lee, lost to Rey Mysterio, and that he was going to go and talk to Dom about how to deal with Luchador's, which I thought was idiotic, because Dom wouldn't know a Luchador, how to deal with one if it came up and slapped him in the face.
Actually I'm pretty sure his dad did slap him in the face a few times when he fought them.
Well, yeah, I mean, given half an opportunity I'm pretty sure everybody had slapped Dom in the face.
But yeah, so I had that one down as my next running order, the rest of American made are basically gold hunting, they are going after any and every title they can possibly get their American made mitts on, which I mean realistically most of the locker room is doing that as well.
So everyone's going for gold, it's mainly a season, everyone wants to try and get to that main event and wrestle mainly here and you've got more chance of doing that if you've got gold in your hands.
Oh 100%
That's of course Kevin Owens, because gold in your hands means fuck all if you're Kevin Owens.
Well yeah, this is true, but
We digress.
It still doesn't seem to take the hint with that one unfortunately.
Anyway, we saw a little bit next from Sammy Zane backstage as well he's making an appearance from SmackDown to come to Raw for the night.
And then we had another little sort of, I want to say it was backstage, it wasn't, it was more up in the crowd with Karri and Cross and Scarlet.
So I have lovingly started over referring to these types of promos as arena view promos or arena side promos just because they take place in the crowd and it's basically just an interview segment.
It's a really good section though, I've been quite enjoying having them up there, it's different, it's better than you'd standard in the back sort of area.
Oh 100%
Interesting to see the first brawl we have up there.
Before we talk about what the actual content of the, before we talk about the actual content of the promo itself, which was a decent promo, don't get me wrong.
I feel remiss if I didn't mention about what the hell Scarlet was wearing in that.
I felt like I had to pay a premium just to watch that promo, I'm not gonna lie.
I mean you're probably paying for a few other premiums anyway so what's the extra direct debit every month?
It depends how much they're charging me.
But yeah I got very much, it very much felt like with all the black, the leather, the chains, it felt very sort of dominatrix-y, which I'm not sure if that was the point but yeah other than that.
It kind of worked I suppose.
Yeah, but yeah we didn't have any words at all from Scarlet herself.
It was all Carrie and Cross is doing and yeah he's basically named a couple of quite high profile next targets for his little regime.
Sammy Zane in that list.
So Sammy Zane was the only one that didn't seem to really fit that picture.
Obviously Seth Rollins, Seth Rollins, CM Punk, both very much main events you've heard.
It's a true to be fair and I'm kind of hoping at some point he'd interrupt on this love triangle between the three and turn it into a fatal four way somewhere just for a laugh.
But yeah I'm not quite sure where it's heading, especially with Sammy Zane.
But there was one upside to this promo. No Miz. Thank God.
No. No Miz at all in Raw this week, which if you're a Miz fan is a disappointment.
If you're not a Miz fan it's a fucking relief.
No, we're seeing the fucking best guys I'll tell you.
100%, at least he weren't wrestling.
But yeah I mean I feel like WWE have potentially left themselves at a bit of a loose end.
I think the move to move the Wyatt Six over to SmackDown was not a planned move.
I just don't see it being a planned move in any way shape or form.
I feel like potentially there was some scheduling conflicts or something along those lines for the Wyatt Six to have been moved to Friday nights.
Hence the interruption to the program between Carrie and Cross and the Wyatt Six.
But nothing has sort of officially come out. It's just a suspicion.
But it seems to make sense to me at least why they're now seemingly trying to inject Carrie and Cross somewhere else.
They do something similar with Severed Limbs sometimes.
They will attach it to a different part of the body to maintain blood flow until they can get the part of the body it belongs to
into a place where it can actually be reattached back on.
And that's what I feel like they're doing with Carrie and Cross and Scarlett at the moment.
They're trying to transplant the person else's feud.
Yeah a little bit.
The fact that two of the people that they've named are Dianne Punk and Seth Rollins.
Both of which are involved in a bit of a three way mega feud which has seems to have been going on for a hell of a long time.
Maybe they're setting up for what happens after the feud ends.
Maybe they're doing what I've suggested. Who knows?
Well, somebody will know.
They brought Sammy into that list with Carrie and Cross which was nice because that led quite nicely into Sammy Zane doing an in-ring promo.
Well, no, it brought Sammy Zane out to the ring and then they brought us a merch VT which was beautiful.
You can check out all their merch at the Appropriate website which is www.shop.com
and then they threw some past highlights in from previous Raw's and other house shows in that specific building.
The one they example this was from June 1st 2010 where Wade Barrett faced David O'Tunga in an NXT, I believe it was a main event but I'm not 100% sure.
So that was when they pointed out that Wade Barrett in that very building was the season one winner of NXT when it was more of a reality show than a wrestling promotion which is what it seems to have evolved into
because he was in the final two with David O'Tunga and Wade Barrett came out of that as the winner.
Then they slung a bunch of the NXT developmental guys together forming The Nexus which later became a big part of CM Punk's character
and it started off as a feud to which he then became their leader as such.
I seem to remember one year the Punk led Nexus was holding pretty much the WWE ring hostage on Royal Rumble Night because they'd all managed to play in the numbers game against anybody that was there.
Yeah, pretty much so they were playing the numbers game against anybody that happened to come into the ring against them.
It's certainly so very close to it but there's no friends in the Rumble as we are consistently told because it doesn't always work out that way.
I think from there, from those little VTs, I think we went into the in-ring promo for Sami Zayn, the ultimate underdog, the eternally bullied superstar it would seem.
With the greatest entry music in the world.
I think that may be subjective.
I think his entry music is brilliant, it's definitely a very big hype fest and we got to listen to the crowd singing it back at him in the ring as well.
It's nice, it gives him a bit of a personal touch with the crowd and the crowd get a bit of one time with the rest of it.
That took me off guard, I will be honest, I didn't think Sami Zayn was that over but apparently I was wrong.
Not a bad thing, I'm glad to see he's gaining some popularity with the fans and I'm hoping it culminates into some real opportunities for him at some point.
He didn't beat around the bush in his promo and we're not going to beat around the bush here with what you said.
He pretty much jumped in and said, I've been in spoken to Adam Pearce and I'm in the 2025 Royal Rumble and Seth Rollins told me to stop helping everyone else
and I started thinking about what I wanted.
He goes on to say, as a 14 year old his dream was to be a pro wrestler and so many people get to live that dream and some people don't.
He's lucky enough to be in the upper echelon of that dream where he's a WWE superstar and he believes he's one of the best tops hand in the company.
The only difference between him and Nerm is he hasn't had a championship.
Which is about right but this was when we had one of the staple interupting superstars at the moment.
We had KO come out to the ring with his winged eagle champion Slung over his shoulder.
He got booed pretty hard again but he deserves it.
He is.
I can sort of understand from a character development perspective within this storyline why they are utilizing him the way they are.
But I do feel like they're overexposing him quite a lot.
Maybe this means that after this bit has been done for him maybe he's going to be taking some time out.
They're basically just trying to get him the screen time to be able to tide him over with money.
Because while Kevin Owens has never been spoken about in the same conversation as John Cena and The Rock and all of these other high earning superstars over the years.
It's a case that he does do really well and he's a very frugal man.
He's not silly in any way shape or form with his money.
So we could just be seeing it being played as getting him some extra ring time so that he can go off and have some time to be with his family.
So maybe who knows I could be making all of this up.
But yeah it's a bit of a formal promo I think between the two of them they just didn't feel like there was a massive connection which is weird considering the history they have.
They've been wrestling with each other and against each other for the last 25 years.
Kevin Owens for me it was I think that's sort of how it was meant to come across or at least that's how I perceived it because Kevin Owens was coming out for his own self interest.
He was talking about the fact that him and Sammy have been best mates pretty much since their arses with a size of shirt buttons and it's a case that.
Yeah I don't know.
But yeah it's a case that they've been mates for 25 plus years.
They've competed with each other against each other.
They've won championships together.
They've won championships from one another.
They basically came up through the ranks together.
They certainly did.
But again Kevin Owens wasn't out here to reminisce.
Kevin Owens was out here in my view to sort of yelp Sammy into potentially assisting during the Kevin Owens Pody Rhodes ladder match scheduled to come up pretty soon at the Royal Rumble in Indianapolis.
In Indianapolis on February 1st.
And I'm sort of hoping at this point that Sammy just leaves Kevin to it.
There's been a mate and there's been a mate and there's you've got to get to a point at some stage where mates and mates and they'll always be there for you but a true friend will tell you when you're fucking up and some I think it's going to fall down to Sammy to basically say Kevin get your head out your ass.
It's not this isn't doing what you think it's going to be doing.
Because he is living in La La Land at the minute.
It is.
And then it was you know at one point it was busy talking about them having this this match at WrestleMania.
You know if Sammy helps him beat Cody in you know Kevin will help Sammy win the Rumble.
But we know we know that everyone thinks he's a white.
Yeah we know from experience and we can hope that sort of Sammy remembers that there have been many occasions where Kevin Owens in the past has made promises like this.
And he just doesn't he ends up reneging on them.
He doesn't follow through and Sammy's aint the one that loses out.
So we're hoping that he takes some of Seth Rollins words to heart starts thinking about himself rather than thinking about others and makes a move for his own betterment rather than rather than trying to help out somebody else.
Because again like Gunther did with Jey Uso he's been told that he's been told that basically he's there for everybody else but doesn't really take care of himself.
Yeah and he's not had a lot of help from everyone that he's been looking after you know.
Like he's got a bit of assistance from Cody last week but probably the only one who's really kind of had his back when he needed it.
So we'll see what happens.
Yeah this is it.
Moving on from that one I've got on my list here.
The next thing that we had was a backstage interview with the Irish brawler himself, Seamus holding that shaleighly.
And yeah basically his entire promo was based around something that I think we've pointed out on this podcast previously in previous episodes is that Seamus has had an absolutely phenomenal career.
I mean six months after debuting he pointed out.
Yeah I mean six months after debuting in the WWE he'd won a heavyweight title from John Cena himself.
Which at that time no easy feat.
No definitely not.
100% old Cena that we're seeing on his retirement tour.
This is the guy who was there week in week out as the face of the company carrying it on pretty impressive shoulders as he likes to claim every day or every week.
Yeah this was it but the only title he's never managed to hold, never managed to claim is that intercontinental champion which is a championship that most of the superstars that reside within the
within the Hall of Fame have definitely won a time or two in the past.
I think if we went back through some of the wrestling superstars currently residing within the WWE Hall of Fame we'd find a number of them who are former IC Championship holders and have had probably not impressive reigns but still reigns with that title.
There aren't Hall of Famers that have had some pretty impressive IC title reigns as well.
I hate to use his name too much, I'm not a big fan but the Miz has done wonders with the IC title over the last decade and bring back some respect to the title.
Yeah definitely.
But it's not long before this promo too is interrupted, this time by Bron Breaker.
I'm always a bit of a mixed opinion of Bron Breaker, I mean he's obviously done very well for himself and do you know what, no disparagement to the guy.
He's a bit of a Goldberg in my opinion.
He's just like his dad, can't cut a promo to save his ass.
Oh 100%.
Can't cut a promo to save himself.
But he gives it a go in the end.
Or could have saved himself some time and not put this bit in with Bron Breaker or if they were going to do this they could have let them have a bit of a longer scuffle.
There was a shove and I think that was to the extent of what it was that we had with that one, it just didn't seem to.
They could have let that go a little bit longer or they could have not put that piece in.
It didn't really change much for what's happening in what, three days for Saturday Night Main event.
Well you say that.
Beforehand I don't think it was, and it's announced later on in the show, following on from this promo, that at Saturday Night Main event Bron Breaker will face Sheamus.
As Bron Breaker is the current holder of the IC title, they've seen fit, the WWE gods have seen fit to grant Sheamus an opportunity
to get in the, acquiring this elusive belt that seems to have eluded him for a majority of his career.
So yeah, we get that one, and that one pulled out the bag there for it.
And again, I have in mind the...
You say the WWE gods have gifted Sheamus.
Sheamus actually beat Kaiser last week for this opportunity at Saturday Night Main event, so that's kind of how he managed to get back there.
I don't think that was the point of that Ludwig Kaiser match.
That was a personal draw, if I remember correctly.
That wasn't for an IC title shot because in the next promo...
So if I got the next IC title shot and then one of them was the number one contender for that.
No, I think that's just how it seems to have worked though.
That might be my bad thing guys.
But...
The next promo was the Bayley VT about her history with Nia Jax.
Just kind of showcasing, building up a little bit more for that match later on in the evening.
And then you have the Ludwig Kaiser promo in the crowd with Jackie Redmond,
where they had a bit of a recap about that match with Sheamus.
And Ludwig is fine with the fact that he lost the match and he will get there eventually.
But at the moment there is kind of no one for him to worry about, so he's not too worried at all.
And then he uses Sami Zayn as an example.
He's busy with doing other things.
Bronbreaker again, he's busy doing other bits and pieces.
The other name he mentioned was Penta.
Penta is going to be welcomed by him very soon, but wasn't going to give us any more details on that one.
Yeah, I think Ludwig Kaiser's attention has been drawn to Penta well and truly off.
Especially listening in on this interview, a renaissance with him.
I believe as well we went from that interview into Raw's rather silent tribute to the WWE Hall of Famer Bob Euker.
I didn't realise it was a silent tribute to be fair.
I actually had to stop and make sure my headphones were working.
I thought they'd become unplugged and then, yeah, trying to turn the volume around.
And when they finished, we started getting the recap on, rear-ripped, you get attacked by Nia Jax again.
I almost blew my eardrums out of my arse off.
So that definitely made this next match memorable for me, because my ears were ringing and my eyes were having to work twice as hard.
Yeah, so there was no sound whatsoever with it.
I can sort of understand why you might have felt that it might have been like a technical fuck-up as, as it stands,
this week was the first week that I've really seen Raw seems to have been manned by some of the guys from NXT this week.
As far as the technical crew goes, because there were a number of little bits and pieces that just seemed to, I don't know,
sort of really took me out of, took me out of the experience when I was watching, which these technical faults have a tendency to,
which could just be a me thing, but yeah, not a, not a great showing on Raw's technical behalf, because we had some problems, but...
It wasn't the only problem.
No problems.
Either.
No.
I'll recap on that one a little bit later on.
So we got to see that Roxanne Perez was at ring side, which was nice.
I've seen Roxanne Perez at ring side.
Definitely.
I just, I'm not going to lie, I just like seeing Roxanne Perez.
I mean, between that and the fight, there's definitely building with Bayley.
We've seen all of them in the last, you know, what this is the fourth show in a row that we've seen both her and Bayley kind of either looking at each other,
nor either you're having some sort of interaction with each other.
So this one's being pushed pretty hard as well, but...
Yeah, the commentary team are talking about this quite a lot with, especially more to do with Bayley than Roxanne Perez, but Bayley does definitely seem to be putting in some,
some positively solid air miles with WWE at the moment as she has appeared.
She did all three shows last week and she's been on Raw this week.
So that's four in a row that she's appeared on.
Yeah.
And we've got to figure that at some point burnout is going to, it's got to set in at some stage.
I mean, if you work that much without having a day off, I mean, there's being a role model and then there's being a mug, basically.
Making a little bit of extra cheese just to pay off those Christmas stats, but you're like a bit of overtime in January, don't you?
Well, yes, I suppose.
But yeah, we, as you've alluded to, we, this went,
this went into a win in singles matches, the second match of the night, which was Nia Jax versus Bayley.
We've got a few stats on this one beginning before the match kicked off as well.
So I think in all the times that Nia Jax and Bayley have met, I believe it was just one-on-one statistics.
They fought 13 times in the last decade.
And Nia's actually got the edge on this one on a seven-six in their past meetings, which I wouldn't really have thought about it because of the dominance that Bayley's had with titles and stuff.
Don't tend to think that Nia would be overclassing her in that one, but Nia has also had some pretty dominant runs herself.
So maybe not as memorable as Bayley's, I think, but she's definitely had them.
Well, Nia's always put across as a very dominant superstar in her own right.
It's not something that we generally tend to shy away from with, I think it just comes down a lot of the time to Nia Jax's size.
She is an impressive, she is an intimidating figure.
But she's part of the Samoan Dynasty as well, so she's got that heritage where they're all big, big people and yet they're all 100%.
They probably hold more gold in that family than any other wrestling family in history.
Yeah, very much so.
But yeah, I mean, going straight into the match, I mean, Bayley seems to start really strong.
I think a lot of superstars seem to subscribe to the thought that if you can get, if you can rock Nia Jax early.
Is that the case?
No, it's not because what you have a tendency to do, what we seem to see is superstars basically knackering themselves out before Nia Jax has really got a head of steam going.
Because sometimes maybe the best approach.
After the first, so like 5, 10 minutes, you could see that Bayley and her work rate the last week had taken us a slight toll.
And as with every Nia match as well, you've kind of got a thing, she's a powerhouse, you're not coming out of that unscathed.
You're going to get beaten, battered, bruised and you're going to be feeling every single slam that you get.
Oh, yeah, I mean, it was very evident.
I mean, Jax quickly took control of the match and whenever Bayley seemed to get some kind of advantage going,
she then got distracted by Roxanne Perez in the crowd who hilariously managed to get herself kicked out of Raw
and managed to kick a member of the audience out of their seat.
As she was sat with, I assume, I have to assume this wasn't just some random member of the public, otherwise I feel like we'd have heard a lot more about it.
There would have been a lawsuit incoming.
Oh, 100%, but I still found it funny the fact that somebody managed to get kicked out of their chair.
But it's so much so to the point that I made a massive note around it to signify that I had to at least mention that once.
I mean, there's a few bits that I pulled out.
There was at one point Nia Jax headbutted Bayley in the tits in the midair.
I thought that was quite well played. Bayley didn't look too happy when she landed on the floor like, ow, that wasn't supposed to happen.
What are you doing?
Yeah, I can imagine something like that is going to hurt to be fair.
I can imagine someone has a voice word after that match as well.
Do you want to do that again?
Are we going to go for real? There won't be a script next time.
Yeah, this is it.
I think statistics flown around during this match as well, which I picked up on in the commentary team.
That Nia Jax was the first woman to enter two Royal Rumbles in the night, which I thought was quite impressive.
I know she did appear in the men's rumble a few years ago, didn't she?
She took an RKO from Randy Orton.
Yes, I think so in one of the rare moments where WWE experimented with some men's and women's mixed wrestling.
It doesn't happen very often, but they do have double experience.
Another statistic they mentioned was that Bayley won the Royal Rumble last year.
She holds the record for the longest Royal Rumble survival within our three minutes and a second.
Yes, something along those lines, I believe.
But while we're focusing on statistics, if I remember correctly, I didn't note this down, so it's possible I'm going to get this wrong.
But I do believe that the Royal Rumble has a lot of experience.
I do believe that Nia Jax holds a joint record with Rhea Ripley for the most amount of eliminations in the women's rumble matches.
So I think that was mentioned by the commentary team at one point as well.
But I'm actually quite impressed that you're taking note of the statistics, Rich.
It's unlike you, that's normally a me thing.
I got that into this week's episode, so I got to it a little bit later than you did due to some IRL stuff going on.
But my notes this week were actually quite intensive.
I was having fun.
I really enjoyed this episode of Rawr.
You can normally tell that I've enjoyed an episode because my notes pop off.
But when it's a little bit of a quieter Rawr and I'm not having quite as much fun, my notes get quite brief.
Yeah, this is it.
But no, as I said, it's good to see you enjoying it.
The other thing that I mentioned about or that I noted down about this, other than the fact that Bayley's looks to aggravated quite an old injury in her shoulder, which Nia Jax does take advantage of.
But Bayley does quite an impressive sunset flip into the corner ring post at one point during this match.
And I mean, to do a sunset, again, it's that move. It's the move of the evening. It's the sunset flip.
But sunset flip on the apron into the corner ring post on Nia Jax is quite an impressive thing to be able to do.
There are not many superstars that can say that they've managed to do that too well.
And I know that up by using Nia's own move against her with the annihilator off the top rope into the corner as well was a little bit cheeky.
Yeah, I don't think that has quite the same impact when Bayley does it.
I'd rather receive it from Bayley than Nia Jax. It might be easier to learn to take that move from Bayley than it would be from Nia.
I mean, yes. But yeah, I mean, I found this match to be really compelling.
It's something that I really struggled to take my eyes off of.
Victoria was really well told here. And yeah, 100%.
We did get to see a couple of high flying moves as well.
I've made note here of Bayley pulling Nia off the top rope where she kind of pancake flops onto the floor and then takes a running knee.
And then I've got a some moment drop from the top rope that gets counted into a sunset flip power bomb for a two count.
Again, we're bringing back the sunset flip and it's definitely been a move in the night.
And there was a quite tasty little elbow drop from the top rope as well for a two count.
But yeah, Nia managed to take the win with a pop up some moment drop and a sent on.
Followed by an alignment and a nile later from the top rope for the three count.
I mean, you're not kicking out if you've got Nia sat on your chest.
Not unless you've got Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman.
I think Brock Lesnar and Braun Strowman is struggle if I'm completely honest with you.
Because again, she cuts an intimidating figure just Nia Jax.
But yeah, Nia Jax picks up the win.
My favourite part of this episode wasn't even a match. It was this section.
So the section he's the section he's referring to.
We had something we had.
We did we had real Ripley come out after this match having been attacked by Nia Jax right right before the show started.
And she came out and she was out for blood.
Oh, she wanted payback. She was not happy at all that Nia Jax put her hands on her at the start of the show.
So she wanted to make sure that Nia Jax knew that that don't happen to mommy and mommy was going to make sure she knew it knew it well.
Oh, 100%.
And yeah, we've, I mean, realistically, two absolute titans of the women's division in Raw.
Slashing like that and is just phenomenal.
I mean, we had we've got that all sort of culminating at least in a new match being set at Saturday night's main event.
That is Nia Jax versus Ria bloody Ripley.
That was agreed by Adam Pearce after Ria stood on the announce table, grabbed the microphone and just screamed it and I had to fight.
So it's going to happen.
And yeah, I think that was me.
I think that was either going to be a sanctioned match or it was.
It was it was a sanctioned match or it was going to end up being a parking lot brawl at the end of the day.
Which I mean, either one, as long as they get it on film, I'm happy to sit and watch it.
It's that that is no, no skin off my nose.
Saturday night main event being no DQ if possible, but that stipulation has not been thrown in there yet.
Any stipulation.
I don't think there is going to be a stipulation for it.
If I'm completely honest, I think it is just going to be a quality match.
They'd have to throw something in there to make it look good.
But I think this is the birth of a feud.
We've got two, as I said, two absolute two absolute monsters of female superstars.
They both need something to do.
And yeah, I mean, they are without they are without anything going into.
And going into.
The road to WrestleMania, I mean, they keep teasing that Nia Jax is going to go after Tiffany Stratton after cashing in her money in the bank against her.
But that has yet to materialize.
I've got a feeling that Nia Jax is going to end up competing for Mami's title at WrestleMania.
I think this is going to build into a bit of a program between the two because it's not something we've got to do.
It's not something we've seen.
So thus far, at least to my memory, is Rhea Ripley and Nia Jax going one on one.
So that could lead to a hint that Nia winning the Royal Rumble.
But that's just a guess at any point.
You have no idea who's going to win the Rumble.
So that one up for a WrestleMania match couldn't theory have Nia winning the Rumble or winning it elimination.
We could.
And there's loads of there's loads of ways into WrestleMania with and and at the moment, Rhea Ripley is holding at least one of them.
So we've we only time is going to be able to tell at this point as to how this is all going to play out.
But I think we're going to have a lot of fun talking about this in the future.
So we went from from that absolute monster sign in to a VT recap of the Priest versus Balas Street fight from from last week, which I mean, if you didn't see it, go and watch it or even better.
Go back and have a listen.
Yeah, we we covered it quite extensively.
We then went from most of your most popular podcast services and Spotify.
So wherever you go for your wherever you go for your podcast needs, make sure you go and find us.
Take us wherever you're going.
We want to go to.
So we know where you're choosing to listen to us as well.
Oh, definitely.
Definitely.
And wherever you choose to follow us on, make sure you turn those notifications on so you never miss an episode.
If you want to get in contact with us and talk to us about some of the stuff that we've spoken about, you can drop us an email.
It's factions and finishes at gmail.com.
So moving on, we've got a backstage promo next, which was the Judgment Day and Chad Gable.
And this was something that Chad Gable alluded to earlier in the night that he's going to Dominic Mysterio of all people to help him with his lucha libre problem.
And and yeah, Chad Gable is handed the note of somebody who we are who's going to help and he says something quite ominous on his way out.
Out of this promo that he's going to something to the extent of he's going to go and fight, go and tackle the dark magic problem of his of his inability to defeat lucha lucha superstars.
And it's been quite a bit of speculation around what that could mean.
Maybe it's a hint at who he's who he's been given the name of.
One name that's been mentioned is Alistair Black, otherwise known as Malachi Black, who is currently, I believe still under contract for AEW.
But I could be wrong because he could be making his way back to WWE for that one.
But there are a few names that have been floated to be making the way to WWE at some point from AEW.
But until I've seen a little bit more, I'm not going to jump in on those rumors.
No, which is I think is very, it's very smart at this stage because at the moment we don't have it.
Well, I don't watch as much AEW content as I used to do, but I have seen on social media that AEW do seem to be facing some very real problems at the moment, which is quite concerning.
But I'm not going to go too far into that one, just because I don't know an awful lot about it.
But something else that happened within this promo after Chad Gable bugged us off basically, we get.
So it was originally slated that Balor and McDonough were going to be competing again for the Tag Team Champions.
But obviously after the Street Fight last week, Balor is in absolutely no condition to be competing for anything apart from his next breath, maybe.
30 Dom did offer to help out if needs be. Which I think was actually taken up only because it would mean Carlito having to actually lace up his boots and wrestle a match, which I'm not sure he actually has in him anymore.
No, a lot of Carlito's appearances are definitely more of a manager than a performer.
Definitely.
It's interesting to see how quickly he gets gassed in the rumble because he seems to be one of those superstars that always gets a rumble moment.
Yeah, it won't be a long moment. Let's put it that way because I just don't think it's in any form of in-ring shape at the moment.
But I've got a feeling that this is, as much as it didn't necessarily seem like it, I've got an odd feeling that this is slating up to be more cracks in the judgement day.
I think we are officially witnessing the downfall of judgement day in their current form at the very least.
With Finn Balor laid up after facing the priest in a brutal Street Fight last week, we've got Dom taking his place.
JD McDonough didn't seem entirely convinced that Finn Balor would be okay with it, as Finn Balor is not Dom's biggest fan.
He's not Liv's biggest fan recently either, but Liv really just doesn't seem to care.
I mean, even Liv is being quite passive-aggressive at the moment in that way that I think most men will encounter at some point in their life is that it'll be...
Or you'll have your other half telling you, yeah, everything's fine, everything's fine, but it just isn't.
So we went from dealing with a new day to getting a bit of a recap, I suppose, from Lyra Valkyra about the women's intercontinental championship and where she's going to go as champion.
And it looks like she wants to try and build a legacy with that as a fighting champion, so it'll be interesting to see when we get to see her defend that for the first time.
And who that will be defended against realistically?
I don't know if I can order for that title yet, so I'm hoping there's going to be a number one contender match between two other superstars for that title, and then we'll see that title defended maybe a couple of weeks time.
Maybe, maybe, but we'll leave that for just a moment, because what I found to begin with, at least, to be quite an odd little VT, that Martin Luther King was one of the most important.
Yeah, it didn't make any sense to me to begin with, because I had to look up if it was like, is this like a Martin Luther King Day sort of thing, but I don't think it was Martin Luther King Day.
I'm doing more in the fact that I think because February is Black History Month, and obviously WWE have a lot of very talented black superstars that work in sort of different communities that it was building towards advertising that is how I looked at it.
Yeah, that was what I took from it as well in fairness, it was a bit confusing to me to begin with, but that was sort of the conclusion that I drew as well. It was very much showcasing how inclusive the black community, WWE has and always will be with just the pure plethora of talent that is black, essentially.
And yeah, I mean, really nice little bit of a history lesson for anybody that didn't know a massive amount of Martin Luther King.
But this fed into match three of the evening, which was the men's singles match between Pete Dunne and Henta, which, do you know what, it's not as explosive as Penta's first match for it as far as the action that Penta was actually involved in.
Once we'd had Pete Dunne's entrance before we even got to see Penta, we had Seth Rollins backstage talking to Sami Zayn for a few moments, basically just appreciating what, Sami appreciating what Seth said to him last week and Seth kind of going,
yeah, you know, I got a bit of respect for you, I'm almost kind of rooting for you, but if we meet in a rumble, you're going over that top rope, Sami's response is very much like, I'll get you first.
And then it was a bit of healthy friendly respect.
I had a little bit of a talk about respect, and the one thing I found brilliant about this that was pointing out by Wade Barrett a little bit later on actually was that while he was busy talking about respect, the production team turned his microphone off.
Well, they didn't just turn his microphone off, they decided to go to an advert break, which was, I don't know if that was actually meant to happen, I'm convinced that was a botch, which I know I said towards the beginning is a word that I avoid, but this isn't a wrestling botch, this is a production botch.
Someone got fired.
Oh, somebody's going to get their ass kicked.
No, definitely not. I mean, I think that whoever it is, it probably prefer getting their ass kicked by Mark Henry to be quite honest.
But yeah, I mean, I got a bit of a soft spot for Pete Dunn as it goes, I mean, he's a fellow brummy, I can't be mad at that.
And you know what, in this match, I think we saw a lot of Pete Dunn, which again, I find anybody that I would challenge any rest, any true wrestling fan not to be impressed by Pete Dunn's performance against Penta.
We know how good Penta is, we saw him against Chad Gable, and if you've viewed any of his matches that he's done outside of the WWE, you'll know how good of a superstar he actually is.
But Pete Dunn is a former NXT tag champion, he's a former NXT K champion, plenty of gold himself and he's probably one of the top younger British superstars to still be kicking around.
Yeah, and there were a few spots in this match that I really picked up on. One of the big ones that I don't think anybody could have ignored was the fact that at one stage Pete Dunn tied Penta's mask to the second rope.
It lasted about three seconds because apparently Pete Dunn doesn't know how to tie a knot, but that's beside the point, I mean, what a way to disable a high-flying superstar, but especially a lucha libre style superstar by tying his mask to the ropes.
What a genius move that was.
Brilliant. I thought you were talking about a different spot than I'm looking at life.
Why? Which one did you think?
Well, did Pete Dunn sell that Mexican destroyer?
See, I was coming to that. That Mexican destroyer came out of nowhere and the sell on it was...
It was perfect. He sold that so well, it was unbelievable.
Yeah, and we got treated to a Penta driver as well. I mean, Pete Dunn was in control for a lot of this match, but Penta's comeback was hard, it was fast, and everything that came to it was come to a halt.
I will say, even with Penta taking the victory in this match, Pete Dunn did himself a lot of favours. The way he wrestled that match is definitely like...
There should be a push coming for him with the quality of wrestling in that match.
I don't think the loss would have hurt him. I think it's just being set up like a match with Penta on your card. It wasn't the first one they've had. They did meet in 2017 in a one-on-one match.
But yeah, that did a lot for Pete Dunn as well as a lot for Penta.
I think coupled together with the production botch that we mentioned earlier on about Pete Dunn's promo being cut short, I think they've inadvertently going to have set him up fantastically for a bit of a run.
I'm not sure who that run's going to be with or against, but it will be interesting to see if they play that out properly.
But again, keeping things moving forward, the next thing we had was a VT package for Logan Paul, which is actually somebody I've been looking forward to, but not always for the best reasons on this podcast.
We've spoken at length before off recording about Logan Paul and how he's got the golden ticket as far as WWE goes. He's not done any of the work that any other series are.
He's not written someone a big fat check to get where he is. Right. 100%. A big fat check and he has bought everything he's got.
If they ever put that guy in the Hall of Fame, they will completely kill what that Hall of Fame is made like.
Disrespect the memory of every last one. Disrespect the memory of every last one.
Yeah, it's not the...
And the body of work he's produced, don't get me wrong, is a hard worker and he puts on a very entertaining match.
There's no... the issue that I take with it and I'm surprised that more superstars have not spoken out about all more professional wrestlers in general.
If you are a professional wrestler listening to this podcast, I would love to hear your thoughts on Logan Paul in the comments on our social.
Just get in touch. I'd love to hear it because Logan Paul to me is not done. He's not paid his dues.
He's had a US title reign, which... don't get me wrong, again, he put together the body of work to get there, but...
He's not done the indie shows. He's not travelled the road. He's not learnt the hard lessons.
And I don't know, to every single superstar that hasn't had anywhere close to the push that he has had.
And they've chosen him over everybody. Yeah, it just rubs me up all the way the wrong way.
But that VT package was basically saying that Logan Paul is a Raw roster superstar, full-time Raw roster superstar, and he debuts on Raw next week.
I mean, if that gives you a reason not to watch it, but to listen to us for the highlights instead, I think that's a bonus.
Oh, 100%. We'll follow that bit, so you don't have to.
Next week's Raw is in Atlanta. So you've got Logan Paul's debut.
War Raiders are going up against Judgment Day for the Tag Championships, and the Saturday Night Main Event, Cody Rhodes, Laddermatch with Kevin Owens are having their contract signed live on Raw with the Heartbreak Kid, Sean Michaels.
So that's actually not a contract.
I was going to say, yeah, it's taking place at Saturday Night Main Event. There is a contract signing being moderated by the Heartbreak Kid.
So we know that's going to go seven ways from Sunday.
Yeah, so that's eating a sweet gin music, and I'm really, really hoping it's a cannibalism.
Yeah, this is it. But yeah, we went to a rather unconventional arena side interview with the Second City Saint CM Punk, and as he, unlike any other superstar that's ever done any sort of a promo of this kind, let alone arena side,
he got his entrance music, he got an entrance to go with it, because he walked in from the arena, he entrance from the arena lobby, and just went out there and did what CM Punk does best, ran his freaking mouth.
And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people theorizing that he may have dropped a small spoiler for a quote unquote surprise entrance on for the rumble with a comment he made about one Hulk Hogan potentially needing his dusty ass thrown over the top rope.
Yeah, I must admit, I made no about that specific line.
Yeah, so he kind of basically just says that seeing punk comes alive under pressure and not competing with his best.
He's not seeing John Cena around. Roman Reigns needed punk's help it. War games. There's no friends in the Royal Rumble.
Yeah, the fact that he's not hoping to open up to the rope and kill Hulkamania again. It was brilliant.
I think the Hulkster managed to kill Hulkamania a long time ago.
It's happened to rumble a little bit of disappointment I think. WWE don't need Hulkamania or the Hulkster anymore. I think he needs them more.
Well, 100%. But we went from that CM Punk classic pipe bomb interview into another interview, but this one took place backstage with the War Raiders themselves.
Now, somebody made a reference earlier in the show to the fact that the War Raiders have been plagued by injury recently.
And they sort of acknowledge this right from the get-go in this little...
I think it's just standard, oh, I've been told I've got a career threatening injury.
Each match we do is going to be the best we do because we got injured and it could be our last match.
We've seen it so many times with Edge, with Christian, as we see it's a bit earlier in the episode, getting a little bit bored of the whole, whoa, it's me, I've got a hurt thing.
Yeah, this is it. But yeah, War Raiders don't seem particularly concerned about their match with the Judgment Day.
I don't think they've got a massive amount to worry about, if I'm completely honest.
If they've got to worry about his dirty dom, then just kick him in the plums and he'll be done.
See, this is the thing is that are they playing on the injury angle as a way to for the War Raiders to legitimately drop the titles to Judgment Day and feed into a judgment,
a dirty dom fin bala feud when fin bala is fitting off to return.
This is, these are the sort of inner machinization.
Yeah, this is what I mean. I say it's all playing a part into the doubt.
I think we are witnessing the dissolution of the Judgment Day.
It's happening before our eyes and some people may not even realize it yet.
Well, many a faction have been taken apart in faster ways. This just seems to be killing Judgment Day slowly.
I'm not sure, apart from a couple of the stronger wrestlers, who's really going to benefit most from it.
I think we'll soon see with that one. But as I say, it's just a theory at the moment.
It's a theory I believe pretty strongly in, but a theory nonetheless.
We went from here into match four of the evening, which was a women's tag match, which was
Yeah, we had Zoe Stunk and Shayna Baszler, accompanied by Sonya Deville versus the remaining members of Damage Control.
I didn't get a lot from this match, a lot of notes. I'm not going to either or feel that I picked up on.
So normally my notes consist of just a couple of maybe three forward sentences just to sort of jog my memory as to what it is that I'm referring to at the time.
This one actually had me writing full frigging sentences for me to know exactly what was going on.
I mean, to give a bit of backstory, there is a bit of a feud going on between Damage Control and PFC at the moment on the back of PFC,
subjected Kairi Sane to an attack last month during the Intercontinental Tournament, which saw Kairi Sane being out of action and is yet to return.
But yeah, so there is a bit of blood between PFC and Shayna and Damage Control at the moment.
And do you know what? The thing that really took me out of it for this, and I don't know if it's been a very long time since the last time I saw Shayna Baszler actually getting the ring and do anything,
but she took a very relaxed stance to this match. It felt almost lazy to a point.
She didn't feel like she wanted to.
The only couple of highlights I got from this was Zoe Stark's hit one hell of a missile drop kick.
Do you know that was the next note I was coming to? That missile drop kick to Zoe Stark's chest was phenomenal.
Yeah, so it was, I've even got brackets on that one. Holy fucking shit, it was such a good drop kick.
Unfortunately, I struggled. Apart from Shayna Baszler, I really didn't recognise or remember too much about the rest of the guys in the match.
Shayna Baszler looked quite lazy.
Dakota Kylo looked like she was nursing something. She didn't seem as fluid as we've seen her in previous weeks,
but for me, Io Sky and Zoe Stark weren't really part of the match.
And Io Sky was the one who spent the most time in the ring if you kind of get what I was saying.
So I think you may have actually gotten the mixed up somewhere there because Dakota Ky,
yeah, she was nursing an injury because Zoe Stark and Shayna Baszler managed to isolate her quite early on in the match.
They kept, Io Sky didn't spend a lot of time in this match just because of how Zoe Stark and Baszler managed to cut the ring in half,
keep the very, keep, how are you saying, Dakota Ky, sorry, very much over onto their side of the ring so that they could enact as much punishment as possible.
It was only on a hot tag to Sky where Sky managed to drag a huge amount of momentum back.
And I mean, Io Sky is a former women's title, women's world title holder.
So we knew we were going to get some hard hitting, hard hitting moves from her.
And I mean, she's Queen of the Sky. She was going to go high risk at any opportunity she got.
And the only other note that I got,
You finished it off at the means, so didn't you?
Yeah, so the only other note that I got was I always like to at least give anybody else involved in this match a bit of an honourable mention.
We had Sonia Deville on the outside, not a wrestler at a particular rate.
She's a fantastic heel and spent some time playing a WWE executive at one point, but she was providing some distractions from the outside,
which sort of turned the tide once more.
But ultimately Io Sky picks up a pinfall over Baszler, which was actually quite a shock to me.
I didn't think they'd do Baszler like that just because of how they've utilised her in the past.
But again, she's not really getting much airtime at the moment because I think it mostly comes from her lack of ability to cut a promo.
She's a powerhouse.
Yeah, definitely.
That led from what was probably the lowest quality match on the card for me this week.
Yeah, that led from that into another BT promo for Saturday Night Main Event in San Antonio, Texas,
which airs on Peacock and NBC in the US and YouTube for everyone else.
And then went through the list of some pretty incredible things going off at Saturday Night Main Event.
So there's a pretty stacked card for that event and we will believe the plan is to do an episode around Saturday Night Main Event.
It may take us a little while to get that out just because of different things that myself and Rich have going on over the weekend.
But we will crank that episode out as much as humanly possible.
Well, if we crank it out over the weekend, that's up to you. I've got work.
Wow, I didn't think you'd actually go there.
Right, anyway, moving swiftly on, I think that Saturday Night Main Event preview was then led into a VT recap of Seth Rollins versus Drew McIntyre,
which was spanning all the way from WrestleMania last year, which actually, interestingly enough, I've seen quite a few memes involving Drew McIntyre recently and the recent Tiktok ban in the US.
I think I might have actually sent one to you, Rich. I can't remember if I did or not, but it's basically the Tiktok ban lasted longer than Drew McIntyre's reign at that particular WrestleMania.
At that same WrestleMania, Damian Priest cashed in his money in the bank against Drew, picked up the title off him, which is sort of then Drew off the deep end, as we've seen over recent months.
And yeah, it's all sort of come to a head this evening where the main event was a men's singles match between Seth freaking Rollins and Drew McIntyre.
And my God, it was. It was a WrestleMania recap, but what a WrestleMania recap match it was.
I mean, to the best of my knowledge, this was my match of the evening. The main event definitely saved the best to last for this one.
No, definitely.
You talked about a long entrance sequence for Jey Uso at the beginning. I don't think that paled in comparison for the amount of length of the entrance they had for Seth Rollins in this one.
But Drew had breaks during Seth Rollins Rollins's entrance on this match. It was absolutely insane.
I mean, that tells you one of two things. One, it's incredibly long. Two, not many people want to watch Seth Rollins entrance anymore.
You say that, but he still gets one hell of a crowd interaction. The crowd is still singing his theme tune back to him to a certain extent.
He's still very much over with the crowd. He's not done with this gimmick just yet.
But then Drew's very good with that heel roll, so he's automatically going to have more people hating him.
So it kind of works out quite well to be fair. Easy heat for Seth Rollins.
Oh, 100%. But match starts with the pair of them. It starts with a war of words before we get into any sort of physical action.
That gives him the entire match. I made a note that there were trash talking each other the whole way through.
Which is something that we see quite a lot in not just Drew McIntyre's matches, but Kevin Owens.
This is, again, still fueling a bit of a theory that I've got that Kevin Owens and Drew McIntyre will end up teaming up at one point.
And I've got a feeling we're going to see it at WrestleMania. I'm not sure what that's going to culminate in.
But I think that's where these intricate threads are weaving their way toward.
But Drew seemed very much in control in this match. I mean, it was kept to a very physical match, which benefits Drew.
That's a workhorse as well. He will give you everything he's got in every match type he's in.
Oh, 100%. I mean, there was one particular sequence I took real notice of, which was the big superplex that Rollins managed to pull off on McIntyre.
Went for a float through for a broken arrow, but got converted into a Michonaku driver.
I had to rewatch that sequence. I had to rewatch that sequence three or four times to try and catch the name for the driver.
The commentators used that, but that that entire sequence ended up with a very near fall at a two count, which, yeah, I was genuinely took my breath away.
There were a lot of two counts on some pretty impressive moves.
Yeah, there were some phenomenal sequences towards the end of this match as well, where they're just sort of because they know each other's movesets so well, there was counter, inter-counter, inter-counter.
And yeah, just some fantastic technical wrestling between the two of them.
So well, I didn't take many notes purely for the fact that I spent a lot of time glued to this one.
I really enjoy watching Sathronin choosing the Huracan Rana to be fair.
Yeah.
The Falcon Arrow seems to be a move that a few superstars are kind of using variants of at the moment, which is an interesting one.
The Penta Driver is very similar to the Falcon Arrow.
It is, but something that only really Penta can get away with doing at the moment.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure the others are more than capable, but Penta just seems to be able to pull it off with some flair.
But yeah, this match culminated in Rollins.
I put it down as stealing a win with the Jackknife pinfall, and Drew did not take this loss well at all.
This seems to send you off into a next level off the deep end, in my opinion.
Him and Kevin Owens are swimming in the same deep end of the swimming pool at this point.
Like your theory lines up perfectly.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, Drew goes off the deep end, and then that leads us into getting a reintroduction to Sami Zayn.
So Sami Zayn, true to what Seth Rollins has said about him, came out to try and help Seth Rollins.
If anything, he'd have done himself a favour had he actually heeded Seth's words and said, and just stayed in the back.
Let Drew do what Drew was going to do, and just sort of kept his nose out.
But that's just not who Sami Zayn is.
Sami Zayn is the friend you want in your corner.
That's just outside the corner, and he pops you with a Haloova kick instead of the guy he's looking at.
Yes, this was what I was.
I was literally about to make a similar reference to this.
The match end, the show ends with a misdirected Haloova kick too, that was supposed to be for Drew McIntyre.
Drew McIntyre was agile enough to just duck out the way, and Seth Rollins caught all the feet into the face.
And we were left with a...
That's Haloova kick.
Yes, 100%.
We were left with Seth Rollins shooting some major evils towards Sami Zayn by the end of this match.
I think we are possibly heading towards some kind of match between the two of them to sort that shit out.
Possibly next week's Raw, I would imagine.
But, yeah, I mean, I've already stated my match of the night, Rich.
I think we've come to the end of Raw at the very least.
Any final thoughts?
No, I left it. It was a great episode.
There's lots of things that are set up.
I'm looking forward to... It's definitely built the hype with me for Saturday Night Main Event.
I'm hoping the rest of the program in this week goes the same way.
I think that's us done.
I think it is.
Thank you, guys. Thank you one and all for tuning in to this week's Raw edition of Finisher's and Factions.
Obviously, please let any of your friends, family, strangers on the street that you know are true fans of professional wrestling.
Know about our podcast.
The only way this is going to grow and get bigger and better is if you recommend us to friends, family, and anybody else you know who is a fan of professional wrestling.
But this is it.
We're going to call it... We'll call it a day for today.
And yeah, I mean, I've been Adam.
I'll see you in the next episode. I'm Rich. Peace.