Welcome to the ring, it's rich and atom.
Breaking down the fights with flair and passion.
Tag teams grapplin' belts are clashing.
Finishes and factions catching action.
Right, welcome everyone to this week's Raw edition of finishes and factions.
We are live from Atlanta with Raw this week.
And Atlanta as it was mentioned is the home of wrestling in America by the looks of it.
So yeah, we're out of the State Farm Arena and I mean Atlanta's been fabled for wrestling.
But if we just look at WWE, I mean there's been nine PLEs including a WrestleMania.
There's two WrestleMania's in Atlanta, it's 2002 and 2010.
No, sorry two real Royal Rumbles in Atlanta which was 2002, 2010 and had WrestleMania 32.
The interesting thing I found from this being 25 episodes of Monday Night Raw out of Atlanta.
Yeah, absolutely, it's an insane amount of publicity.
Theoretically a half year content just coming out of one city.
True.
But yeah, we won't get too bogged down in Stats for Raw.
No, I've got one more stat for tonight though for you.
There was 12,432 members of the WWE Universe in attendance at the State Farm Arena.
Wow.
What an amount of people.
Especially for the last Raw before Royal Rumble.
That was incredible, incredible attendance.
Yeah, definitely.
And we started this Raw off with a recap of Saturday Night's main event from Saturday previous.
So yeah, we've already...
We've covered that. The episode is up on the podcast ready and waiting for you to listen to.
I'm not going to lie, I had a moment there where I thought, did we do an episode on that?
I didn't really remember.
And then we moved on to an in-ring promo with Steph Breakin-Rollins.
Winner of the 2019 Royal Rumble.
And the 2014 Money in the Bank winner as well.
He was.
If we're going to start listing off his championships, we're going to be here all day.
That'll be short form content I think.
Yeah, 100%. Once we get there, we'll get there.
But the one thing that always...
I'm not going to say impresses me because I'm not in any way, shape or form impressed by it.
But my fucking god, the wardrobe this man has.
What the hell was this thing that he was wearing?
It looked like a curtain design. It genuinely did.
Seth Rollins looks like he's got an addiction to LSD because some of the outfits he wears,
you would need to be on acid to want to put them together.
Yeah, this is it. And it's something that you only really wear once and then probably burn afterwards.
That's a dodgy 80s birthday party outfit. He brings that back week in, week out.
He brings a different one back week in, week out.
But yeah, I mean, it was nice to see Seth Rollins.
We haven't seen him since his... well, since the roar after his...
He's lost a CMP.
CMP. And it's nice to see that his eyes were covered.
It's not anywhere near as holy shit as it was when we first saw it.
Well, he did describe it as he had a bruise the size of Georgia underneath his eye.
And he was not wrong.
No, he was not. Not at all.
But...
He was basically on about his Royal Rumble, really, wasn't he?
He kind of came in and said that he was going to win it, like everyone else has for the last week or so.
He was starting his road to redemption and the start of that was beating Drew McIntyre last week.
And then it kind of moved on swiftly to where he was going after he's won the Royal Rumble.
I loved the comedy factor in this.
So he'd finished talking about Cody Rhodes.
And as soon as he mentioned whether it was Gunther he was going after,
the impeccable timing of Gunther's music here was just perfect.
Well, Gunther seems a little bit desperate to be relevant at the moment.
It seems to be where he seems to be heading toward is that he obviously tried to...
It almost sounds bad when you have to say that a world heavyweight champion had to sort of piggyback of Jey Uso's hype
in the last couple of weeks.
And yeah, just...
I mean, speaking of Gunther and Jey Uso, I mean, he does...
Once Gunther makes it to the ring, he does what all WWE wrestlers do.
And despite the fact that the match that they had...
It was an incredible match.
...was an incredible match, he's still downplaying the fact that, oh yeah, I'll beat him with these.
When you watch the match or listen to the podcast from that episode, you know that wasn't the case.
Jey pretty much had him down and he was lucky to walk away with that title.
Yeah, and the look on Gunther's face at the end of that match says it all, realistically.
Then when you're playing that heel section, you know, obviously in that feud between Gunther and Jey Uso,
with how over Jey is, you're not going to be able to get him to play heel field.
But Gunther's having to try and play that and it's probably not one of his stronger points,
which you really kind of sometimes come to doubt because a lot of his character and the way he builds his character is very heelish.
Can't imagine Gunther running around, yeeting and doing all the funny things that some of the faces do.
No, I think he's...
It's going to take a lot for people to see him as a face if he ever makes it that far.
But yeah, Gunther comes out basically calling Rollins...
He calls Rollins out a lot in this initial exchange, just saying...
I got down here that he was...
He practically accused Rollins of being washed up.
Obviously calling Rollins out, I'm taking his eye off the ball as far as championships go, which, yeah,
I mean I can't really argue against that second lot.
Or that second lot, it's a case that he is not really Chase Championship Gold for a couple of months, because he's been too...
He's been distracted with the bloodline stuff. The bloodline stuff's taken over a lot of characters and a lot of the title runs.
Yeah, it has. And we tend to see this with big factions as well, is that they do have a tendency to have a massive gravity pulling them,
pulling all of them, pulling a lot of wrestlers in to their storyline.
But it has done a lot of them quite well though, because some of these wrestlers that have been pulled in,
you wouldn't necessarily see in a storyline at that time.
So it has benefited quite a lot of the locker room having this incredible storyline with the bloodline.
And as much as a lot of us have got fed up with Roman, Roman, Roman, solo, Roman, it was an incredible storyline.
Oh yeah, 100% and they played it all off to an absolute tee.
I'm actually just going to find out what or if we see any more of solo Sakura after this.
Well, I saw something funny on Facebook after Monday Night Raw saying that apparently solo Sakura was signing with AEW,
which I thought was brilliant. But it was just one of those lines.
There's been a lot flying around saying that solo has just... he's fucked off, he's just gone from the WWE, he's decided.
No, not doing it anymore, he has taken his toys and gone home.
Oh, are we going to hear about that in a CM Punk promo in five years time?
Quite possibly.
The return of solo Sakura is the people's person.
Yeah, this exchange between Gunther and Rollins, we again were seeing Gunther begging for a challenge.
It takes a lot of the wind out of the sales of a heavyweight champion to have to beg for challenges.
Yeah, you'd have thought if you were that good of a champion that everyone would want to face you, but it feels like no one really wants to.
There's no progression of his storyline apart from him trying to jump off other people's hype train and trying to get a fight that way.
Yeah, and this is how it's coming across at the moment, so I'm not sure if this is the storytelling or if it is the lighting or what's going on,
but I think they need to have a massive shake up with Gunther to try and get him something decent for WrestleMania,
because otherwise it's going to just be a throwaway match.
Yeah, and talking about throwaways, one of WWE's worst possible acquisitions made his reappearance during this segment as well.
That much of a...
It was his return.
It was his debut on Raw on Netflix.
Yeah, well Logan Paul decided he was going to come and join the conversation and on Facebook, again, just after I saw this episode air,
there is a video clip of Seth Rollins saying to Gunther, like, who the fuck's music is that? Who's that?
Nobody knew who it was, and I mean, the minute he showed his smug, arrogant fucking face, the entire arena erupted with booze.
I'm not sure who's more hated at the moment, like Logan Paul, Kevin Owens or Hulk Hogan.
They all seem to be receiving some incredibly large booze from the WWE Universe.
I mean, I can understand Hulk Hogan, don't get me wrong. I can understand Kevin Owens, and I can also understand Logan Paul.
I mean, I mean, you have had conversations before we even started doing the podcast about Logan Paul and the way that he came into WWE is that...
He hasn't paid his dues.
Yeah, Logan Paul hasn't paid his dues, and he should not be on the flagship show.
He should be down earning the respect of the rest of the roster down in NXT and doing it properly like the other guys have that are currently on the main roster.
Seth Rollins being one of them.
I mean, credit given where credit is due, he has done phenomenally well for somebody that hasn't got a massive amount of in-ring wrestling experience.
So if a someone who's basically paid for the experience, he's multi-millionaire, he's basically just set to Vince.
Look, there's a couple of million. Let me be a superstar for a little while.
Vince has gone, yeah, sure.
No, Vince isn't there. They're still having to bail out a contract. It's already been signed.
Well, no, because he's recently signed a new cut. He was on a part... He was almost on a like a part-time contract beforehand, whereas now he is very much...
And he is making it known that he is...
That he's going full-time.
He is WWE wrestler through and through.
Do you know what? If he can pull it off and actually start earning some...
Brownie points with the locker room.
Then fair play. I will start shutting up about how much I hate the guy, but it's honestly... I will continue to say it for as long as I have to look at his smug arrogant face.
The guy just didn't... He hasn't done the work.
No, he hasn't.
I mean, you look at any other... I mean, the other two guys in the ring with him, all... Both of them came up through NXT.
Both of them were in the Indies beforehand and put years of their lives into that, into getting to where they've gotten to.
And I'm not even entirely sure if Logan Paul ever had any even dark matches.
I'm not sure.
Let alone the fact that he hasn't been through Indies, he hasn't been through NXT.
I mean, he hasn't even gone anywhere close to NXT. And I doubt that...
Unless he starts having a real downturn in any sort of reaction from the crowd. I don't think they'll ever put in there, to be honest.
No, but talking about guys that have been through NXT and paid their dues and done incredibly well to it.
I think that might be a great opportunity to move us on to our first match of the day.
Well, let's cover a few other bits because I did go on a bit of a Logan Paul hate rant.
Logan Paul has declared himself the Rumble.
He has.
And Gunther...
Gunther wants Paul to win the Rumble.
So he wants Logan Paul to win the Rumble.
Only so, Logan Paul chooses to face Gunther at WrestleMania and Gunther gets to slap this living shit out of him.
Which, to be quite honest, I'm not against.
I'd watch that.
That storyline they build, happy days because I would pay, will pay money to watch that phenomenal German guy just lash the living shit out of him.
And we also found out Rollins wants to embarrass Gunther.
So they all really just want to embarrass each other.
Which, you know what, I'm not against.
I'm not either.
We also went from there to a backstage promo with, or a backstage sort of interview promo with the second city CMPump.
Yes.
Before we move on to the first match, is this...
Oh, I don't know how many notes there's this conversation with CMPump.
In your note.
No, I'm literally just pulling yours up for a quick second.
We're just querying up.
Say, because we've got another promo before this as well, that I made a note of.
So they start off at it's CM Punk being interviewed by Kathy Kelly, one of the backstage interviewers for Monday Night Raw.
Ah, yes.
And then just talking about how much of a stacked field for the Rumble it is.
Well, it is one of it.
CM Punk, it's very stacked.
Apology.
Oh, 100%.
I mean, some of the names that have been declared for the Rumble, I mean, we're looking at the likes of LA Night, John Cena, Jey Uso, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre, Ray Mysterio.
Sammy Zane, did you point out?
Sammy Zane's in there, Shinsuke Nakamura, Logan Paul, Chad Gable.
I mean, I'm not even going to mention Carmelo Hayes because he's not really a heavy hitter, but still.
Well, they call him the Marshmallow for a reason.
Mallow never misses.
Mallow is just soft and cuddly.
But CM Punk, unapologetically confident, which we've come to expect from him.
He's just cocky.
CM Punk has been cocky since he started professional wrestling.
Whether that be down in the Indies, OVW or Raw, wherever he's been, he's just been a cocky son of a gun.
I love it.
Massive punk fanmeets.
We're also introduced to Sammy Zane on Monday Night here for it as well, who wanted to respond to Punk's comment from last week where he said that Sammy Zane just wasn't even on his level.
Yeah, and I think Punk was, it wasn't necessarily aimed, well, he did aim it directly at Sammy, but he was just saying in general, like he's head and shoulders above the rest of the locker room right now and no one else is going to touch him.
But Sammy Zane did point out something I quite enjoyed.
And now I've spotted your notes, it's kind of refreshed me.
It was the, you've just got to remember one thing, mate, I'm WrestleMania main eventer and you're not.
And Punk's face after the end of that was very much like, okay, someone's just pipe bombed me for once.
That's not normally how this goes.
Yeah, and he very much pipe bombs it because he does, he pretty much says that and walks away and walks away.
He just does one, doesn't he? But he bumps trying to carry him crossed, doesn't he?
He does. And this is an interesting, this is sort of interesting to find out what carrying crosses roles going to be now.
Because I think we've been given a little glimpse of it with with the second half of this promo just because obviously he did a lot of work with the Y6.
He was he was well and truly, he's head and they both been moved over.
Smackdown.
Smackdown now.
Yeah, so are we going to see carrying cross trying to help Sammy Zane over accomplish this fact he's not really had much of a singles run for a while.
Maybe someone's going to have Sammy's back instead of Sammy having everyone else's back.
I think this is what it's going to turn into. But at the minute, Zane is playing very much hard to get.
He's the very cross in the attempt to in Cross's attempt to get in his head.
And yeah, I think we've got a I think we've got a Sammy Zane heel to them and accompanied by cross on the horizon, which I'd love to see that.
Very interesting.
Yeah, so we see a lot of Sammy Zane in a face role.
And generally, like with the way his character has been built over the last decade.
That was the way it's always been.
He has tried pulling up when he pulled off heel reasonably well with it.
But I think this time we could have quite serious, like quite dark Sammy Zane heel turn be interesting to see who he turns on to make that that push though.
I think it could be a member of someone of the bloodline.
I think it could be someone like Roman or someone like that sort of area.
There's loads of candidates for Sammy Zane to turn on.
I mean, one of them after after Cross talks about sort of urging Sammy Zane to take the opportunities that are at his feet and not to turn any of them down, then walks away.
We then have Cody Rhodes joining Sammy Zane in frame and they have probably one of the shortest exchanges I think I've ever seen on the back end of a promo and all you left with really is Sammy Zane walks away and Cody Rhodes just he looks genuinely scared for Sammy Zane there.
I mean, I think he's seen part of the exchange with Carrie and Cross.
We all know Carrie and Cross is up to no good.
I think there's some genuine concern.
Yep.
And then we went from there into a ringside promo with a town down under introducing themselves to the raw crowd and just trying to throw some shade wherever they can to be fair.
Yeah, we had a lot of like Georgia seems to be very much a hotbed for rap artists and things like that.
I mean, I'm not generally very into rap music, so to be honest, I didn't really recognize any of them.
Recognize to change his name, but apart from that, that was about it.
Yeah, that was about the extent of mine as well.
The only thing that I saw in common with every single one of these artists that these rap artists that they introduced us to was
Please tell me it was the teeth group.
Well, yes, it was.
None of them had that none of them appeared to have their own.
They all look like George from James Bond.
Yeah, just a little bit more tanned.
Yeah, but yeah, it's a town down under doing you keep going out.
Which is which is being.
Yeah, which is just being themselves being an asshole pretty much.
Yeah.
Then we step into March one.
We do.
Which was the.
This was an interesting one because obviously we're recording this after Monday Night Raw is aired and due to my busy week this week.
I've actually seen a lot more on Facebook before recording of these.
This match, I was intrigued to watch purely for the fact that I wanted to see how a certain incident happened.
We'll talk about that later.
But this was War Raiders and Judgment Day for the Raw Tag Team Championship.
And it was the War Raiders first defense of the championship since they won it six weeks ago.
I was going to say they've had it a hell of a long time to have not defended it just yet.
But I think we had it alluded to us in the weeks gone by that they've been sort of fraught with injury and all the rest of it.
And I mean, well, throughout the match, they were busy talking about the injuries that Eric and I have had.
And I can't remember which one it is off the top of my head.
I think it was Ivar, but he is only one of two wrestlers to have had a certain type of neck surgery to still be able to wrestle since.
The other one of those being the rated our superstar Edge.
As he was formerly known, I think he's going into the name of the rated our cope at the moment in a w.
Yeah, something like that, possibly.
And but yeah, this I mean, on paper, it doesn't or you look at this on look at this as it is.
And this matches is looking more and more like a bit of a squash match.
I mean, we've got Judgement Day in JD McDonough and Dominic Mysterio versus the war Raiders, Eric and Ivar.
And I'm sorry, Eric and I mean, Ivar on his I'm pretty sure he could have flattened.
I mean, I'm pretty sure one of them on their own weighs more than Dom and JD put together anyway, even with JD's massive head,
which was referred to multiple times by the announce table.
Yeah, I mean, the correlation between ads.
They big boys.
They are big boys.
And you've got to think some of these guys go through a severe level of pain anyway.
But one thing I do want to shout out and point out is that JD McDonough took quite a you got hurt quite badly in that match.
You wouldn't know it considering he finished the match.
But at one point he hit a rather beautiful moonsault off the outside of the ring, missed his mark,
bless him and smashed his neck onto the announce table.
And I think if that had been anyone else, that would have been a broken neck moment right there.
The impact of that was made me wince.
I'm not going to lie.
I had to look away for a second.
I've seen it a few times.
It was horrible.
The fact that he finished that match was incredible.
I'd had just laid on the floor like a bitch going, I ain't moving.
Fuck you.
XX get me out of here.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, we'll give shit for JD.
JD McDonough until.
Yeah, he's a bit of a chicken shit.
But in regard of this match, the fact that he.
And it came out the raw had finished airing in the days that follow that JD McDonough.
Despite the fact that he cracked the back of his head off the off a reinforced announce table as they like to keep mentioning.
The injuries he actually sustained were a couple of broken ribs and a punctured lung.
I mean, how that adds up doesn't get.
I can't think of at all because he went like, oh, make me feel rough just thinking about it.
Yeah, he hit his head hard.
So the fact he's got no neck injury, no concussion, no whiplash, no nothing like that is very, very surprising.
Well, the war Raiders ragged him around like a rag doll from his head several different occasions during this match.
Well, there was a kick to the back of the head at one point as well.
Was it a knee to the back of the head?
It looked like a meant to be a backbreaker, but got it slightly.
I don't like using the word botch, but mismove.
It didn't look like it hit the shoulders like he was supposed to have done.
And yet he hit JD right in the back of the noggin again.
So commentary said that this went right to the back of his neck.
I remember watching this and being really sort of meticulous does actually hit him square between the shoulder.
It's still going to hurt if you but not quite to the same extent as it do if it was just straight to the back of the neck.
Move your mic a bit closer.
Eric, I mean, Eric's Eric coming to, I mean, let's try that again.
Eric is not a not a light guy.
As we've already mentioned, I mean, Ivar is the bigger.
So Eric is Eric coming down on the back of your neck.
That is definitely resulted in a broken neck from regardless.
Yeah.
It wasn't a say it was a war Raiders.
Ragged them around, but I will give credit where credits do JD managed to get through that match.
I don't know how, but and don managed to do a very, very good job of keeping the front of it off JD.
Like Don took some impressive spots and some impressive bumps just to try and kind of help the poor guy.
But you can see every time JD took a move, he was going straight to his ribs and clutching at the end of it.
So say all respect for JD there and for Don for making sure his mate didn't take too much of a hard time.
Yeah.
Just a few spots. I want to call out on this match.
Ivar with a sensational handspring back elbow point during this match.
I mean, being the biggest guy in the ring at that time, you do not expect a man of his to move in that way.
And it was absolutely beautiful.
It was fantastic.
We also had a Carlito interference.
Just runs in and spits the apple in his face.
Spits in the face of anybody who does not wish to be cool.
We had Don Mysterio hit, eventually hit a 619.
And yeah, ball raiders narrowly avoid a loss off the back of that 619.
I believe it was Carlito tries to get involved again gets absolutely hammered.
And the war raiders hit war machine to retain via pin.
But yeah, the big takeaway from this match was the absolutely phenomenal fortitude of JD McDonald to basically say, basically say, no, I know I'm a heart, but I am carrying on regardless.
Fair play to him.
And from one miss stereo into a backstage segment with Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston was it.
So I've got a backstage promo with Pete Dunn and Ludwig Kaiser, which I think.
Yeah, they were hinting at a possible feud between the two of them.
That would be something I could get down with.
Well, yeah, I mean, Pete Dunn had a he had an interesting role last week where he was under receiving end of a pantomime.
Well, he was complaining about being irrelevant and feeling ignored.
And during the middle of this promo actually got cut off by an ad break, which I'm not sure was I'm not entirely certain was intentional.
But one of the highlights of my role last week was watching Pete Dunn get cut off halfway through being told telling us that he feels as though he's being ignored.
Yeah, I think that was very well worked into that specific storyline, but I don't think it was done on purpose.
Someone got in trouble for that.
I think they've made the best of a bad situation on that one, quite frankly.
Oh, yes.
But yeah, they Kaiser and Dunn are basically discussing that and Dunn's match last week.
They're interrupted by the new day who by the looks of it are just trying to sort of ingratiate themselves.
Yeah, Kaiser.
I think they're looking for some I genuinely think they're looking for some support from backstage at this point.
They're really getting much support from for the way they they ousted Big E. So they're not really going to have a huge positive effect there.
We've seen in previous weeks that, you know, Kofi Kingston's family have basically told him take a hike.
You know, you did Big E dirty, so we're not going to allow you to do that.
And you know, Xavier Woods has got his match with Ray Mysterio later on in the evening and he's already talking about having his family front row and, you know, have the favourites son of it.
Everyone seems to be at London's favourite son this week.
Oh, definitely. I mean, the interviewer blesser manages to keep a straight face all the way through listing off the different.
I think she was sat there trying to see how many more she could think of before she eventually had to let Kofi kind of go.
No, it's my boy, Xavier Woods.
But it was the fact that Cody, Kofi refers to Cody as a paper champion.
That was something I latched on to and I was actually, is this potentially going to be another hint at a singles, a singles championship for Kofi in the future, maybe, that he's getting quite antagonistic.
I don't know, but Xavier's got a spring in his step at the moment and slightly unrelated, but a former friend of his has recently become single as well. So we could get a part two to that favourite video for all of ours too.
I know what you're talking about.
Those of you who are into wrestling but not 100% sure of the joke, Paige, well, Soraya Knight more commonly referred to as Paige when she was a WWE superstar, had a rather interesting evening with Xavier Woods and Brad Maddox many years ago.
Her and Ronnie Radke have just split up and Xavier's got one hell of a spring in his step again. So yeah, like I said, we could get a part two to that rematch.
Yes, definitely. But I've got a feeling I've got some more notes around later on in the episode.
But for now, we're going to move on to match two, which was a men's singles match between Rey Mysterio and Xavier Woods, who was accompanied out to the ring by one Kofi Inkstone.
So their match fell directly after this promo was cut and it was a nice little segue into the match, I thought.
One of the big things that came out during this match, or they made it quite a big deal, which I was a little bit confused about why they made it such a big deal going into this match.
But it was the fact that this was Zelina Vega's very last Raw. She's being moved, transferred over to SmackDown as of May 2nd.
So hopefully we'll be seeing something more of Zelina Vega.
Yeah, no, hopefully. That could be an interesting one. But it depends what they're going to do with her over on SmackDown to make sure that it's worth the move.
Yeah, definitely. They've got to work it in properly. But Mysterio was accompanied out to the ring by the LWO, including Zelina Vega.
And during Xavier Woods' entrance, he seemed to really take issue with people touching him.
Quite a few people have the last few days. Like the last few episodes of different promotional stuff, whether it be Raw, SmackDown or NXT, I've noticed a few people getting a little bit annoyed at the fans touching them on the way down the ramp.
I will say though, most of them seem to be having an issue with the NXT guys, and that's because their entrance ramp is so small and it's so close to the crowd.
Yeah, it's also come out again as Rick sort of alluded to earlier on. We are recording this Friday, bearing in mind that obviously Raw goes out on a Monday.
And it's come out over the last few days that even superstars like Asuka have been putting up social media posts, making it seem like she's been potentially stalked or something along those lines that she...
Um...
Is he there?
Hello?
Yeah, no, you completely disappeared on the standard.
Yeah, I don't know what's going on.
Yeah, I can see it in the Discord channel. My mic is not always picking everything up.
No, I have noticed that's why I did tell you to move across earlier.
Yeah, which I can honestly, apart from sticking it down my throat, I can't get it any closer to me.
We're back in the room. Okay, so we're going to jump back in with Rey Mysterio and Xavier Woods after we had a bit of a backstage promo involving New Day just beforehand.
So I haven't got a lot of notes for this specific match, but what I did make a note of was there was a lot of high-flying, fast-paced action pretty much from the get-go from both Rey and Xavier Woods.
I must admit, I do want to throw out there that I have really enjoyed seeing Rey Mysterio back on a regular viewing card.
I know there's a Hall of Famer, he's done his time in the ring and whether it be for WWE or some of the AAA luchador at one point in Mexico.
So he's definitely worked his way in and put his time in.
But to see him back is a semi-active competitor doing what's his third week in a row now?
Second week in a row. It's been nice to see.
Even just when you get the occasional tease of a 619, but to be able to see the seated sentons, the Hurricane Ranas and all the fact that he's getting on a little bit and he's still managing to pull off moves that he was doing 15 years ago when he first bumped onto the scene, if not longer.
I'm pretty sure he's been in WWE longer than that.
Yeah, it would not surprise me. We're probably looking at 20 plus at the next turn.
Oh yeah, definitely.
But yeah, the Rey Mysterio vs Xavier Woods match, really high flying, really nice to see Rey actually quite enjoying seeing a little bit from Xavier Woods as well.
It's not somebody we see a massive amount of in-ring competition work for the last couple of years.
No, and even with the New Day, we know we're working as a free man under the freemen rule, or the free bird rule, sorry.
Very often you saw Kofi and Big E with Xavier sort of out the side as a hype man.
To see him in between the ropes of the squared circle competing in a solo singles match was actually quite nice to see.
And is it me or has he got a little bit more stacked in the last few years?
He's definitely been putting the work in and it's definitely showing.
I got a few more notes probably than you did out of this match, mostly towards the worry of the match.
So one of the big bragging points during this match was that he had his blaze and had come out to...
Yeah, he was really excited about having his family there.
Has he was on about that in the promo at the start before he came out, wouldn't he?
Yeah, very much so.
I wasn't not expecting it to go the way it did, I will point that one out.
Well, I digress a little bit, we'll go into a little bit more detail in a little while I'm sure, but it was definitely an interesting matchup between the two.
But one, I wish I'd seen... I feel like I haven't seen a matchup like this in a while.
So, and I couldn't find anything in the research I did about the last time Ray Mysterio and Xavier Woods went one-on-one, so I think this could have been a first for both of them.
Yeah, I don't believe I've seen the two of them face off against one another, certainly not against one another.
It's also possible that they've... or very possible that they've definitely not met before.
No, I've just had a quick Google. They have never met in a singles match.
But one thing I will say is that Ray seemed to really struggle to get going against Xavier Woods during this match.
So it was quite unusual to say, I mean, not necessarily unusual, but still not what we've come to expect.
We are used to Ray as he's got a little bit older, taking a little bit longer to work into some of these sort of high-flying moves than we were by shapes of 20 years ago.
I did just double check while we were talking about it. Ray Mysterio debuted in 2002.
He's been on the WWE for 23 years and he was in ECW beforehand.
So yeah, this guy's probably been competing as long as I've been breathing.
So for us to see him getting a little bit older and slowing down a little bit isn't necessarily a nice thing to see,
but you do know that once he's warmed up a little bit, when he does get going, you are going to get treated to classic Ray Mysterio.
I will say I hope Ray does the sensible thing in the future when he learns, you know, when he gets to hanging up his boots.
And he does it in a way where he's still got some good matches left if you wanted to, but he's not, you know, going week in, week out.
I'd hate to see Ray Mysterio end up in something like that.
Absolute shit show in Saudi Arabia between the brothers of destruction and Generation X.
Yeah, I'd hate for his career to end that specific way, but I know I think personally, I don't think it'd be too long before we see him hang up his boots on a permanent basis.
So I'm just going to enjoy watching him and watching what he's got while we can.
Yeah, and I think that's the way we've all got to sort of look at it at the minute is that we know he's not going to be, he's not got years and years and years left.
It is a case that he is very much against the clock is very much against him in this case, but we have just got to sort of enjoy him while we've got him.
One thing I was a little bit confused about and I will say this about this match is neither Ray Mysterio nor Xavier Woods need to push.
They are both well accomplished veterans of the squared circle.
So for me, it was interesting to kind of see where they're going to go with this is obviously Ray faced Kofi last week and beat him.
He's got Xavier this week, you know, and not sure where the outcomes going to be.
We're going to end up with a new day versus LWO sort of future ahead.
I possibly see that coming, but I'm not entirely sure how they're going to work it for now.
It certainly seems to be building that way.
I mean, I know the new day and new day and Ray Mysterio seem to have just sparked a battle nowhere.
It seems to have been they have been or Ray has been the target of their frustration, I suppose is probably the best word to use.
I know I can appreciate that, but when you've got those two veterans trying to take it out on another veteran and someone who's so over his ray as well.
It's the ultimate heel turn to, you know, the more the heel action, so to speak, to take out or try and take out one of the best known faces in the business.
And so far it hasn't worked.
No, definitely not.
But if we delve into this match a little bit more, I mean, there were some fantastic spots with it.
I mean, before the match, Kingston talking about really getting that cheap heat digging about the Atlanta Falcons.
I love it when they bring the references like that because the Atlanta Falcons, the season of sucked.
I mean, if you were to use a wrestling term to describe the Falcons, I'm pretty sure you could probably get away with using Book of Tea.
Can you dig it? Sucker? But they did just suck. The Falcons issue have been terrible.
And for them to use that is very much cheap heat, but it worked.
It definitely worked.
One of the other things that I quite enjoyed was thought it was very apt was that we've started referring to Ray Mysterio as the gloat.
So we all know goat means greatest of all time.
The greatest luchador of all time.
Which I mean, yeah, we're not going to find anybody that's going to fit better than that.
I think if you were to really deep delve into like luchador history, especially the triple A promotion,
I'm sure there's probably somebody who has been slightly more successful in that promotion.
But I think Ray's covered it in not only WWE, but ECW and the triple A as well.
Yeah, I think, apart from maybe Penta, who is not exactly a close second, he's very much the greatest luchador of all time.
Yeah, so Ray Mysterio bought lucha libre more to the mainstream in the professional wrestling world.
Before it was a very specialized pipe, it wasn't something like it in mainstream promotion.
No, which is it's been nice to see because you do get a lot of the Japanese pro wrestling has been very forthcoming in some areas of pro wrestling.
But to be able to see the luchador stuff push out from a totally different area just makes it is true.
It's a World Wrestling Federation.
It used to be World Wrestling Entertainment now, but you have worldwide wrestling entities being brought in.
It's not just a mat wrestling like you expect from the NCAA.
You have got different aspects which make it so much better.
So when you get guys like Shinsuke Nakamura come in and Io Sky and the luchadors, it just rounds everything off perfectly.
Yeah, and Ray Mysterio was 100% trailblazer for that.
He was able to have people like Io Sky and all of these fantastic Latin American Mexican wrestlers that have a bit of...
and really embracing that lucha libre style, which is actually really exciting to watch.
Yeah, it gives us the viewer something really to get excited about.
If you're a wrestling fan and most of us that are listening to this will be, or at least know a little bit about it,
the fact that you can have a really boring undercard, right?
And it does not matter.
You can have some great, some phenomenal talents that just haven't really connected.
But as soon as you throw in a masked guy like Ray Mysterio, the entire crowd, they know what's coming.
It's just the tension and the atmosphere automatically pick up.
So it is always a bonus to see.
I for one would love to see how this continues and where it continues.
Definitely, but bringing it back to this match specifically, a lot of the storyline based off that I know downwards,
the beginning of this match we were told that basically Woods's family hadn't turned up,
they weren't in the building and then about halfway through the match,
which seems to act as a bit of a distraction for Woods.
He's quite understandably upset that he invited his family in.
They turned up late sort of thing.
Just turn up late.
They turned up late and slapped him in the face by showing up in New Day suck t-shirts, which I loved.
I absolutely loved it.
And this is where the commentary team were very much trying to push the storyline on us that now that Kofi Kingston's family have also kind of gone,
no, you did Biggie Dirty, we're out.
Xavier Woods family have very much done the same.
You've done Biggie Dirty.
Do you do one?
We're not interested.
And it's adding so many different aspects to this storyline that you would not necessarily think of adding in.
So the writers, I will have to say, have done a fantastic section with this.
Much as I'm not...
Carry on.
I mean, even... I mean, this match ends with Ray Mysterio hitting the 6-1-9 and picking up Pymfore victory over Xavier Woods,
but to add even more insult to injury.
And this is just going to feed into a feud between the LWO and New Day moving forward.
But the Ray Mysterio and LWO at the end of the match with the Woods family and Xavier being very much sort of left on the outside of that.
So I think we're going to see a much darker heel side to the New Day coming forward just because they've now had both of their respective families turn on them.
It's bound to happen.
I mean, I know we've had in previous conversations how much the New Day... how long the New Day have been around and how much more they can bring to WWE.
And, in fact, credit to them.
They keep pulling things out the bag to make themselves semi-relevant.
They're not as big as they were when they were on the boxes of cereal and, you know, WrestleMania main events and Royal Rumble hosts.
And, you know, they've done an awful lot.
But are we starting to see like they've got rid of biggie obviously because of that neck injury.
He's no longer cleared to wrestle.
Could we see the breakup of New Day with the way this is going?
I know we hinted at... we said earlier we'd had a... there was a hint in there of impossible singles run for Kofi.
So it'd be interesting to see New Day have been around for a long time.
A long time.
Yeah, definitely.
And I think it will be... we've had glimpses of Kofi in the past and they were snuffed out pretty... pretty on dramatic... pretty on dramatically and unceremoniously.
I mean...
I think he deserved more...
...fair to him.
Yeah.
For a guy who's given so much of his career to WWE, for them to... given the title and then feed him to Brock Lesnar in a squash match was not fair.
He deserved more than that.
Yeah.
Definitely.
But yeah, I mean, moving on from that match as I'm probably going to talk about it to... probably talk it to death to a certain degree.
I've got down here that the next... next segment was a locker room promo between Sami Zayn and Seth Rollins.
You might be very well right.
You might be.
Is this...
So during this... during this section, it was Sami Zayn coming to basically apologize after making a Haloova mistake.
On... on... on last week's Raw.
He... he caught Seth with that nasty Haloova kick as well, didn't he?
Oh, 100%.
And Seth sort of explaining to Sami, look, I'm... I'm a bit salty about it, but it's a case that you're on your last chance.
You're proving yourself in the past to be semi unreliable, something and not really very trustworthy because of the affiliation he has with the bloodline.
And yeah, it's basically for me once, shame on me, twice and...
You can get your head kicked.
Pretty much.
It's always a strange one because I like Sami Zayn.
I just think that what they've... they've built his character to a certain point.
He's at a crossroads now and where they take him is one of two things.
I think we could get a Haloova heel turn from him and that would really make it pop.
So we've got the stuff of carrying the cross as well, which is probably where that heel turn's going to come from.
But... yeah.
If he... he's stuck between a rock and a hard place, or between the bloodline and the rest of the roster, I suppose.
Yeah, and it's... I think they're in the process of testing the water as to what's going to be believable and they're just doing on-air screen tests, almost.
Well, there wasn't the first one they did this week.
I don't know if you picked up on it, but I believe it was during the Ival, the War Warriors match, where Michael Cole actually used the word bastard in his commentary.
So I've noticed that they've been setting up... they've been testing a lot more of what they can get away with in-ring and on the microphone as well.
And even the... as I thought I was hearing things, but I'm obviously getting old now and my eyesight's not as good as it used to be, so I have to put subtitles on for the wrestling,
especially if Jacob Fatou is involved, and quite clearly said in the subtitles bastard too.
So yeah, no, they're definitely testing a few different bits out this week.
Yeah, definitely, and we knew this was going to happen. As they move more away from cable providers in the US, we'll start to see that vanity filter sort of slipping away a little bit.
It's not going to be F this and F that and all the rest of it. It's not going to go to the degree, but it will be... we'll start to see it filtering in a little bit more.
Yeah, we also, if the Turvan notes line up correctly, had a nice little backstage promo with Rhea Ripley at this point as well.
I missed a section.
So I'd be honest, the next thing that I've got was an in-ring promo for Jey Uso and a young gentleman, Quavo.
Yeah, that's where our notes don't line up, because I was looking at two different things. Yeah, so we've got Jey Uso and Quavo come out with lots and lots of yeets.
Now, I had to try and do some research, because I know that according to the entry VT we were given that Quavo is a rapper,
but apart from that, I didn't know anything about him. So I had to do a bit of research. Apparently he's a Grammy-winning musician,
but apart from kind of all I could find is he'd done some work with Lana Del Rey, and that seemed to be sort of like the biggest thing musically he's done.
He has been in a fair few movies as well, the Fast and the Furious, he was in Water Boys, and he was in last year's John Travolta film, Cash Out as well.
So he's done a fair few different things, but he's definitely getting out there for a gentleman who's actually only the same age as us.
Yeah, it's just the thing, another one with my full of mouth.
I don't personally understand this, I mean, nearly all my teeth are my own, but I don't know how comfortable it would be to have one of those grills put in with all the diamonds.
I mean, it's a lot of money, do you know what I mean? I suppose some of these guys are on a lot of money.
I can imagine it being something similar to licking a battery or something, and surely you've just got constant metallic taste in your mouth, like your mouth's constant bleeding, and it just can't, it can't be good for you.
I mean, don't know, I know it's not for anything like that, but it can't be good, it can't do you good in the long run.
Well, a lot of these gentlemen unfortunately don't live huge lives, a lot of them end up losing their lives quite early to be fair due to gangland activities, because a lot of these, a lot of the rap guys, what they rap about is their real life, you know, they're doing some of these things.
And it's quite a brutal lifestyle if you listen to some of it.
Oh yeah, definitely, but we're not here to talk about rap lives.
We are here to talk about Jey Uso announcing his entry into the Royal Rumble, he just happened to have Quavo out with him, which I think was a nice little hype thing, we've seen him come out with a few different musicians the last couple of weeks and it's definitely helping.
I mean, I don't know who's raising whose profile as it stands at the moment.
I think Jey Uso is raising Quavo's profile, I'm not going to lie.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely is with me and you, I've never heard of Quavo before this point, I don't think, and probably won't think of him again after, but in that moment his profile's definitely been raised to the point that we are aware he exists sort of thing.
Yeah.
And after we had quite a furious, so yeah, Jey Uso wasn't very polite in the way he announced his entry to the Royal Rumble, he was quite, quite mad about it and very, he seemed pissed, like, and I'm not sure if it's because Gunther's still disrespecting him after that hell of a match, but it's not an event event, but yeah, he really did not seem happy about something today when he came out.
Well, he's not had a fantastic, despite the fact that he is one of, if not the most over superstar in WWE's rosters at the moment, he's not had a fantastic track record recently, he's lost more than he's won, and he's not really done very well when it comes to, like, vital opportunities either.
I mean, he had that one, let's say it's like the Nightmare Event against Gunther and he gave him a hell of a match and you can find some more details about that in our podcast episode.
But coming into this, for someone who's so over, you'd expect him to have had that push to go with it, and yes, he's had a couple of title opportunities, but he's not, you'd have thought for what he is, they'd give it to him.
Now, I said this last week, and to say it again, I think they'll give it to him on the grandest stage of them all. I think if he's going to win a title this year, I think it'll be at WrestleMania.
Do I think Jey Uso is going to win the Royal Rumble? I'm going to put my six punts in here and I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I think Jey Uso is winning the Royal Rumble this year.
I was going to say, Jey Uso is my favourite to win the Men's Rumble this year, just because that seems to be the most logical way that they will.
They can keep that Gunther storyline open, and he doesn't have to, as I don't see Jey going for Cody, I think they're going to set Cody and CM Punk up together, which will be an interesting one later on in the line.
But no, I think they're going to let Jey win the Royal Rumble so he'll choose Gunther, and that will keep that storyline going for the next 90-ish days, I think it's about 85 by the end of the year by the time the Royal Rumble comes.
Yeah, this is it. If they're going to put a heavyweight championship on Jey Uso, they will do it where they've got the most amount of eyes on.
And it will be a case that the easiest way to do that is WrestleMania.
And if you think about it as well, if you give Jey Uso that title at WrestleMania, and you give him a heads up that he's getting that title at WrestleMania, so you can get a new merch line out as well.
And they put that on at WrestleMania. So if they have him win the first night, the second night at WrestleMania, that merch store is going to get absolutely pounded for Jey Uso merch.
Everyone on that Monday night, Raw after Mania will be running round in Jey Uso merch, myself included. I'm probably going to head up order on a 7 in the next week or so.
Fair enough. Fair enough. But yeah, that's how I see that playing out. We haven't got that long left to wait until we find out.
No, we haven't. We have not. We've not got long left to wait at all.
From here, we had that sort of little segment out in the ring with Quavo. Well, I say out in the ring, it was more on top of the announce table.
Where did you end up going from here? Because I've noticed again that my notes and your notes don't mix up. I've got Bianca Bella and Naomi vs Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez.
You've got a backstage promo with Rhea Ripley.
So that match is coming up. But we went from that in-ring promo to a, it was like a Pat McAfee little interview promo with Xavier Woods family, just really driving that point home about the fact that the family have turned on Woods.
Yes, unfortunately, this week where I've run out of time, all I've done is I've watched all the matches and I've skipped through. So I've missed a lot of the fillers for Monday Night Raw because I was so delayed this week due to having quite a busy week with work and picking up a new car.
So my notes this week are diabolical. I've literally just watched the matches to say I've seen the matches to be able to chip in on those. But the promos and stuff, I've not really seen a lot of.
This is where it's good to have my notes as well. So the next promo we had after that Pat McAfee interview promo, which was really just to sort of drive the point home.
We had a backstage promo with Lyra Valkyria in being interviewed by Jackie Redmond, who and Lyra Valkyria has herself in for the.
Women's Rumble is starting to look as stacked as the men's. There is some interesting names going into this female rumble. And obviously there's a few that haven't been mentioned that we are probably guessing are going to show up.
We spoken about this.
Right. So we have when Seth Rollins entered at the start of the episode, there was a sign on the right hand side on the entry ramp saying, where's the man? Seth Rollins shrugged his shoulders and tapped his wrist like a watch.
So to me, that was very much like you'll just have to wait and see which I think could be a massive hint that we're going to see.
Becky Lynch on Saturday. Yeah, I mean, that seems like a bit of a given. Not going to lie. We already know that we've got the likes of Nia Jax, Bailey, Charlotte Flair, Young Cabella, Ria.
No, Ria is not in there. No, Ria is a champion.
Yeah, she is.
She also puts herself in for the rumble during this little promo segment. And yeah, it's this sort of Lyra Valkyria is interrupted by American Maid who basically says, oh, yeah, Ivy's going to be challenging for Lyra's championship.
And they have a bit of an odd exchange where apparently Ivy's going to be winning it for Chad Gable.
Yeah, no, I saw that was a little bit like Chad Gable looks like the sort of person who'd look good with a women's championship around his waist because he does nothing but bitch and moan.
Yeah, pretty much. And we're still yet to find out who who was on that piece of paper that the Dominic Mysterio had passed to Chad Gable to try and get over his inability to beat a luchador.
We've speculated about this from the last previous episodes and it has now been confirmed outside of an episode that Alistair Black is re-signing with the WWE. And as we know, Alistair Black has a history with luchador wrestling.
For a guy his size to be able to do it is interesting. Some fantastic videos on YouTube of Alistair Black doing some luchador style stuff.
So it is increasing the rumor flow that Alistair Black could end up teaching.
Chad Gable was some luchador. Yeah, or how to deal with luchadors. For some reason, Dom Mysterio was coming into my head, but that was Dom gave Chad the name, didn't he? So that's where it was coming from.
Yeah, and then to sort of round this round this out, American made way and walk straight into the Alpha Babes, which were formerly the Alpha Academy being the only one I could ever name is Oatid.
I know the other guy was the guy that used to chase our truth around when he was carrying around the 24-7 championship with a couple of ninja in tow.
It basically turns into a bit of a shout in match between Alpha Babes and American made where Chad Gable taught Zotis about the ankle, famously injured during their split and basically calling them failure.
While they're stood in the middle of a corridor in a TikTok video.
I mean, you know, there are better places to make TikTok videos, but if you're a backstage wrestler, or if you're a wrestler backstage, sorry, I'm pretty sure that exclusive content is going to go down pretty well.
Yeah, I mean, I saw the TikTok video before I saw the episode, actually. Yeah, it's a bit of an odd one. Don't get me wrong, but Oatid's can move. So, and this is where our notes will start to line up a little bit more, because this is where we go into three, the women's tag team match with Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan of the judgment day versus Naomi.
Naomi and Bianca the current women's tag team champions.
Now, this wasn't a title match. This was just a tag match, which is.
We were told on several occasions that this could if Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez win with a victory, this could very well mean a tag team push.
It did. Yeah. And so obviously this is the second match of the episode that judgment day featuring in a tag match. We already saw JD and Dom in their match earlier on in the episode.
So this one kind of finishes off that one. I haven't got a lot of notes for this one.
I did point out and did make a note of that both teams going into this were very high energy. There was a lot of flair and there was some really interesting spots.
There was a I know Liv Morgan does the move quite a lot. It's one of her favorite ones, but there was a I like to call it a slight homage to Y2J there because she hit a beautiful code breaker at one point on Bianca Bella.
There was a couple of double cross bodies as well by the tag champs over onto to the judgment day.
Yeah, I was really into this one. I'm not sure if it's just because Liv Morgan was in the ring or if it was the fact that I've connected with this storyline quite well.
Could be both reasons to be fair, but no, it's definitely a great match for me.
Yeah, so this match came about after Liv Morgan stole a pinfall against I believe it was against Bianca Bellaire on Friday night smack.
It was yes.
It was a relatively unremarkable match. I don't get me wrong, I do the code breaker from Liv Morgan and everything along those lines, but all in all it was a relatively evenly matched matchup and it was a solid match.
There was nothing wrong with the actual wrestling match. It just was. There wasn't a lot of storytelling.
I mean, one of the set apart from the fact that we live more than hit that beautiful code breaker, which Bianca Bellaire used to hit any ST off.
I've got a few bits in a dirty Dom obviously makes a distraction at one point.
Obviously, like the commentary teammate and note is saying he's still in Liv Morgan's bad books. So he's pretty much doing whatever he can to tongue punch that far box and get himself back into live Morgan's good books and possibly back into a more permanent slot in New Day.
Bear in mind we haven't seen Finn Balor for quite a while since his street fight with Drew McIntyre was the last time we saw Finn Balor.
So his street fight wasn't with Drew McIntyre, it was with Damian Priest.
That's the one.
And he should be looking for a more permanent picture in the judgement, not the New Day. So, yeah, that's my tiredness. That's my bad.
Yeah, no, that's cool.
I mean, I've had about two hours sleep in two days.
We're both running on one cylinder.
Yeah, it's been quite a busy week for professional wrestling this week with obviously not just our normal three shows for raw SmackDown and NXT.
You had Saturday Night Main Event in there. We've got a Raw Rumble this weekend as well.
So yeah, it's definitely we're in the middle of what is quite a busy week for pro wrestling as it is. And then it wasn't a great time for us to have weird work schedules and other bits and pieces go off.
It's been quite an interesting week.
It's been quite disjointed this week, but we'll push through.
Yeah, as you said, Dirty Dom into Fear in. I've got a note here that says Naomi ended up taking Dom out of play.
I've got that one as well. I've then got that she hits a split leg moonsault and Raquel Rodriguez drags her off the pin for that one.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately this one.
We're going to get it gaining a pin for victory over Naomi this time.
Yeah.
And that's where my notes run out for that one.
Yeah, so I've got Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez win. There wasn't really much. There's no afters after that one. It kind of went from the end of that ring into a backstage promo with Rhea Ripley.
She basically just tipped her hat to Jay, so basically said, you know, wasn't worried too much about what was coming up. She was just kind of enjoying the ride and what's coming her way.
Yeah, I mean, she's there's not many like there's not many superstars she worries about and we'd work. They were she was being interviewed about who she wants to win the Royal Rumble and she gave a typical champ.
Yeah, pretty much who wins the Rumble.
But we had one of probably one of the most hard one of the hardest working female WWE superstars on the roster today.
Bailey jumped in on this one to basically say I've won and I'll win it again. And hasn't she?
Yeah, I'll be facing you in WrestleMania.
Bailey's been everywhere. We've seen her on every show for the last two weeks. So she's done two Rawls, two Smackdowns, two NXT's and a PLE in the process.
The word work, workhorse doesn't even fit with that one to be fair. Like her air miles, she's going to be making some.
Yeah, definitely. It's but with this promo, it's we saw a brief confrontation between Bailey and EO Sky.
Basically just said she'll see her at the Royal Rumble. There's a little bit of bad blood between those two. They used to be friends and now they're not.
So that could be an interesting if those two meet in the ring at the Rumble that could be some fireworks going off there.
Well, they were both part of the damage control at one point and Bailey is the leader got ousted by the rest of the team and damage control continued on without her.
Now, the next bit got a bit of a bee under my bonnet. I'm not going to lie. So if you've heard some of the previous episodes, you'll have heard me rich talking about the fact that I show speed and being invited personally by
Triple H to the Royal Rumble. Mr. Paul Levec has been making video calls to I should be to invite invite him to the Royal Rumble.
And we've been.
Well, he seriously saying that our phones haven't run that we haven't had anything come through just yet and Kai Kenneth has or Kai Senate. Sorry, he he was there at Monday Night Raw and he's also been invited to the Royal Rumble.
He has got invited by Pat McAfee of all people. I mean, who have twitches biggest stars are going to be at the Royal Rumble? That is, I mean, these guys are fighting against each other at the top of twitch at the moment for the most subscribers on the platform.
So they are very, very popular men.
Yeah, this is it. And yeah, I mean, Pat McAfee's invited Kai Senate to the to the Royal Rumble. I think we're potentially starting to tease a because every year celebrity match, we have a bit we have a bit of a novelty match.
It's never a serious match of kind.
Normally, when we've normally the one that's got the miz in it.
Yeah, well, you can call any of his matches serious. But yeah, we're it's a potential match gimmick with I show speed versus I Senate, possibly on night two of mania. That's normally how it ends.
It's normally been a cop.
It's up the breaks up the night a little bit. But we'll see how that one goes. The next part of my notes has absolutely fuck all to do with the show, but more to do with the stats to do with Georgia, which I know we
Yeah, we went into a little bit earlier.
So, Atlanta is the home to Georgia championship wrestling, which is this was a wrestling promotion from back in the territory days. Now this is a sort of way back when big go back in history or professional wrestling.
100%. Not only that, but Atlanta was also WCW wrestling.
That one doesn't go back quite as far, but still.
We said earlier it's had 25 Monday night Raw's in Atlanta. There have been two Royal Rumbles 2010 and 2002.
I know winners of both of those rumbles now triple H himself on in Atlanta in 2002 and the room in a for 2010.
Superstar Edge. Yeah, definitely. We've got a slight difference in our notes here because you probably Google it and I was trying to be clever. I've got down that WrestleMania 32 was held in Atlanta.
You've got down WrestleMania 27. So I'm going to go with yours because I know you've hit Google.
In fairness, it bugs the life out of me that they do it all in Roman because I don't know about any. I weren't taught Roman numerals in school and I've never really bothered to learn them.
You see them.
But yeah, they put it up in Roman numerals. I had to try and figure out what those Roman numerals were and a Google search did indeed tell me that that was WrestleMania 27, which the main event for that WrestleMania was the Miz WWE champion won John Cena with an assist from Dwayne The Rock Johnson setting up the rock versus Cena at the following years.
WrestleMania was that the team I bring it via satellite year.
Yeah.
Yeah, long, year long worth of promos that we had for one of the worst WrestleMania matches in history.
It was the first time the Rock had competed in years and yeah, it just didn't. They over hyped it and then did the same thing again. It just yeah, it was the beginning of the end really.
The other thing we saw at WrestleMania 27 was the infamous feud between Michael Cole and Jerry the King Lawler.
They did a little VT about that.
They did. They did like a sports illustrator's breakdown of basically just how pathetic Michael Cole looked in this segment.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
It was very gimmick match that we talked about earlier on. It was comic relief. It was nothing more than that.
And it was a way to get Jerry the King Lawler a WrestleMania because I mean, the guy's got the guy while he still wrestles or was still wrestling at the time was in no fit shape to take on anybody in the back in back in those days.
So yeah, no, definitely not.
So we went from there. We had a little VT promo for Penta declaring himself with the Royal Rumble.
Looking forward to I say this. This rumbles getting more and more stacked every time you see someone else come out and announce themselves for it and really looking forward to Saturday to be fair.
I mean, the Royal Rumble is one of my personal favorite PLE's of the calendar. And it's because it's so unique.
I mean, you have we now have two Rumble matches in the same in the same PLE and that's one for one for the men.
Women.
And one leaves with a guaranteed spot.
You don't get that in any other.
And then we went from Penta's announcement into the Royal Rumble into a Paul Heyman promo in rain.
So we haven't seen a lot of Paul Heyman over the last few weeks.
Since really the tribal combat on night on the first night of Rawrx and he is obviously still completely elated by the fact that by the result of the tribal combat match and to put a bigger smile on his face as well.
Not much puts a smile on Paul Heyman's face apart from when he's got something to rub in someone else's face.
A lot of his promo for this one was that he is the one behind the one and very much sort of hyping Roman Reigns as he is very doing.
But what surprised me more than anything else was pop that Heyman got coming out in Georgia.
That surprised me quite a lot.
Yeah, but then Heyman's got one of those.
If you look at Paul Heyman's interview series, was it inside the ropes that you did?
I think that helped a lot getting Paul Heyman across with the crowd because where he gives away so much.
It really helps the casual wrestling fan kind of jump in and understand what's going on and he's a central mouthpiece and professional wrestling has been for 30 odd years.
So it's definitely it's nice to have him there and the fact that we don't see him every week at the moment like you did when he was with Roman Reigns for a while or Brock Lesnar.
It's you get a treat with Paul Heyman. It's not being pushed on your throat. It's the treat that we want him to be and he's there.
Oh, in fairness, if I'm going in for a run on the WW choice of who manages me, I'm a Heyman guy too.
I mean, one of the big advantages to being a Heyman guy in this era is that you end up on the cover art WWE 2K25 as tribal chief is announced as the cover art for this year's entry from WWE.
And do you know what, they're actually hybrid game quite a lot.
I'm going to pick this one up.
Yeah, I'm going to pick this one up and have a little look at it. So there are two versions of the 2K25 cover.
You've got the standard version, which has got Roman Reigns on the front and a small little cameo in the corner from Paul Heyman, which was pointed out by Drew McIntyre when he came out.
And then the like the ultimate addition, so to speak, the money grabber has got the the phenon, the undertaker on the front of it.
Yeah, I have seen this around and about.
And I mean, it's smart.
It does. And it just looks it looks smart. It's been well done. The work on it's been really well sort of designed and it's made the cover really pop.
So I'm not sure which one I'm going to get, whether I want to go for the Roman Reigns or the undertaker, but I will be getting a copy of 2K25, even if it means I get to plump on you online.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I generally tend to stay away from the online games.
Only because it has a tendency to go. You get it gets really sweaty.
Oh, they do.
Bit like Rikishi in the cafeteria.
Yeah, pretty much.
But yes, you alluded to it. Drew McIntyre comes out.
He's actually quite almost sickly sense sickly sincere.
Yeah.
He comes out saying that poor Heyman looks nervous and he just needs to relax the person that should be nervous is really Sami Zayn. But it's quite funny because you then also comes up he turns around and says, you know, don't really get to talk very much, you know, like,
we've both been around for quite a while, but we've neither of us have really had a conversation to the time to have a conversation and the entire time that Drew is talking, the crowd is just chanting they want Roman.
Yeah, the crowd are really vocal this little segment, which is it's always nice to hear. Don't get me wrong. But yeah, McIntyre goes from there to pointing out that may actually be the catalyst for the bloodline and everything along those lines.
The spark that lit the fire that is the sort of the bloodline storyline and I can't deny his logic. I'll be honest. He makes a very long.
But this this promo basically ask ends with McIntyre asking Heyman to pass a message to his boy about how at Royal Rumble he is coming to win.
But it's not the tribal chief he is talking to, but rather see punk. And we've been hearing a lot recently. Yeah, they've started talking a little bit more about the fact that Heyman owes punk favor after punk went to went to bat for the bloodline at
War Games more recently. And we're starting to possibly get an idea that this may be something going on from their end.
So yeah, we're starting to get the idea that we may actually find out what that what that favor may actually be. And I for one I'm here for it. And we'll find out we'll find out when they are ready to tell us what that means.
Moving on, we go to a backstage promo with Ron Breaker, who is also declaring himself for the Rumble this year.
It's nice to see that the Rumbles kind of picking up some interest and having some of these smaller champions step in as well. And obviously, you know that Bron Breaker is not going to win it because he's holding that title. But it'll be nice to see what he can do to affect the rest of the Rumble when it comes out and whether there's going to be any people that he's going to look to target specifically.
I mean, we could well see that I don't think he's storyline with Seamus is quite.
I think there's I think that there's going to be more that feeds into that so I am what I'm going to call it here.
I'm going to say that Seamus tosses Bron Breaker over the top rope to eliminate him, which will continue this feud with Bron Breaker because you know he's the champion and you know Seamus should have had more respect than to toss him over the top rope.
That is how it's going to ultimately play out. But yeah, Seamus so far has not declared himself for the Rumble. So he is going to be an unknown element. We don't know.
I can't imagine they'd leave him out of the Rumble. I mean, I'm pretty sure unless he's been injured, he's been in nearly every Rumble that's gone on since he's been part of WWE, including winning one of them.
There's one that sort of switching gears a little bit while you mentioned while you mentioned superstars that have been in every Rumble every Rumble. If we look at the women.
There's two superstars that have been in each and every one. I believe one of them is Bayley. The other one. Oh wait, no, it's not Bayley. Bayley has not been in every single Rumble match. Charlotte Fleur.
Charlotte Fleur.
Charlotte Fleur has not been champion at one. So the two that have been in every Royal Rumble match since the women have had their own Royal Rumble match. One of them is Liv Morgan.
So Liv Morgan has served in every single Rumble. Is Natalya. Natalya has been in each and every Rumble match since the women's Rumble was introduced.
And is Natalya under contract at the moment?
She is. I think she's under some permanent blood patch or something like that. She is one of the more under a female superstars on WWE.
I just don't think she ever quite got what she wants she needed. No. And I've said this again, said this for years. But she's not currently declared herself.
Yeah, it should be one of those that comes in as a surprise entrant if she does make a move. I'm not sure if you are still experiencing this technical issues with your microphone, but we are getting a little bit of break up occasionally.
Yeah, I'm seeing it as well. It's why I keep trying to get louder to see that I'm hitting his gate. I'm starting to look a little bit like a...
I am. Or how much I am close to this freaking mic.
Yeah, that's not an issue. So we went from Drew McIntyre coming out and having his little bit about Sunday's Best to Paul Heyman's Boy talking about punk, not talking about Roman Reigns.
I have seen a few things online which kind of interest me a little bit. There is talk of there being a faction of Heyman men, so to speak, where there a case of we see Roman, punk and Brock team up at some point.
I'm not sure if that will happen, but there's been some rumblings online. I did read something on that online. I think it's pure fan speculation at the moment.
I mean, it would be cool to see, but that would definitely be a hell of a tag team, so to speak, if that was to come through.
It's unknown at the moment as to whether Brock Lesnar will actually ever make a return at this stage because he's still very deeply embroiled in all of the...
Vince McMahon.
But if we come back to that backstage promo with Bron Breaker, the ending of that promo sees actually Penta come and confront Bron, which gives me reason to believe that may actually...
Well, Penta had a nice big look at that IC title, didn't he? He had a nice look at that.
Oh, definitely. And I think it's safe to assume that we may well have an IC title in Penta's very near future.
But closing out Raw this week was a main event for a men's singles match, including Drew McIntyre versus Sami Zayn.
Right. Well, before we get in there, I've got a statistic for you. I have... Well, actually, I've got two.
So this year will be Sami Zayn's seventh Royal Rumble when he enters the Royal Rumble on Saturday.
But did you know that Sami Zayn has never beaten Drew McIntyre in singles competition? He is 0 and 10 against the Scottish Warrior.
Oh, wow. Okay.
So that was a few interesting bits to pick up on there. One last thing I'm going to pick up on. I don't know if you did, but this match got bloody.
Oh, I don't think there was any missing this match got bloody.
Sami Zayn was leaking.
Zayn's nose popped like a water balloon.
Oh, like mate, it went everywhere.
But I couldn't work out how he did it. I watched this specific move a few times.
He hit Hurricanrana into a DDT, but somewhere he managed to plunk himself up, not Drew McIntyre.
Yeah, I don't think there's a part of me that doesn't think the colour was intentional. At one stage it looked like it was coming out of it.
The end of his nose, where it seems to be where the cut was.
Yeah, maybe.
But yeah, we saw actually quite an aggressive side to Sami Zayn within this match, to be quite honest.
The amount of people he's had in his ear that I asked for you weeks telling him he needs to stop thinking about everyone else, he needs to start thinking about himself.
It was nice to see him kind of take everyone's advice on and go, fuck it, this is mine.
Oh, yeah, 100%. And for a good majority of this, Sami Zayn actually appeared to be in quite a large amount of trouble.
He was, and which is unusual considering when you look at the guys that Drew McIntyre has been facing recently.
He's been having some big matches and to see someone like Sami Zayn go in there and give him something, I don't really think Drew was expecting that to come that way.
Especially like I said, but the fact that Sami Zayn's never beaten Drew McIntyre, I generally just thought Drew thought this would be a squash match.
He'd roll him up and count him off pretty quickly, maybe a couple of claymores, but yeah, definitely was not seeing the match going to open up the way it did.
No, definitely not.
And yeah, I mean, I've got a couple of spots here.
So many notes this match.
Yeah, I see the couple of spots I got. I got Sami Zayn got his nose broken during a hurrican run into a DDT.
I generally think that was a possible broken nose rather than just a pop nose.
I did get the Drew McIntyre at one point used the ropes to get Sami Zayn off the top turnbuckle.
And in the process, Sami ended up catching his royal family on the top rope and it looked a little bit uncomfortable for him.
I sent him to the outside of the ring where Drew attempted to hit him with what looked like quite a nasty claymore shot,
which ended up with Drew bouncing off the announce table rather than Sami.
Yeah, as well as that, we saw McIntyre end up throwing Zayn into timekeepers as well and almost forces a count out victory.
That was by the skin of his teeth.
Well, I got it down 9 3 quarters.
But yeah, as soon as he got back in the ring, that's when Drew started just tearing off on him really.
Yeah, this is it. But given where credit's due, I mean, I've always called Sami Zayn the ultimate underdog.
There was no quit in that dog.
No.
He was not willing to go down without a damn good fight and he put up a phenomenal fight.
Yeah, it's one thing you'll never take the dog out of Sami.
You can try and take him out of the dog, but you'll never take the dog out of him.
He's always going to come back looking for more.
We can definitely tell that you're tired, mate, because I think the same goes.
You can take the dog out of the fight, but not the fight out of the dog.
I mean, yeah.
But yeah, it's a really brutal match, which we normally come to expect from Drew McIntyre anyway.
But yeah, it's a case that Zayn ends up reversing an attempt at white noise from Drew McIntyre,
which was a little hat tip to the Celtic warrior, Seamus, as that was one of his signature maneuvers.
Zayn got a couple of near falls, one after a blue Thunderbomb, which he pulled off really well as well.
I was going to say, it's impressive for somebody of the size of Sami Zayn to be able to pull off a blue Thunderbomb on somebody the size of Drew.
I mean, that's insane, but ultimately, all of this comes to none as Drew picks up a pinfall victory with...
Well, I always refer to these as dirty pins.
Yeah, you rolled him up and used the ropes to support, really, which the ref didn't see until afterwards.
And by this point, we'd already had the three count.
Yeah, I mean, if the ref doesn't see it, it doesn't get...
Yeah, we had an issue last week with the same thing, didn't we?
Someone used the ropes to aid in a pin and ref saw it after he called the count.
Well, we tend to see a lot of the same things in WWE week in, week out.
And this week is no different as after the match ends, Drew just goes to absolute town on Sami Zayn.
Cody Rhodes comes out to try to save what's left of Sami Zayn.
And then Kevin Owens comes out to attack Rhodes and all of a sudden it's back to...
It's been the same as it's...
Yeah, the same as it's been for the last couple of weeks, just every opportunity.
Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens firing.
I mean, I can't wait for the Royal Rumble just to let them get it over and out of the system to be fair.
I don't think it'll be the end of it, but I think it will take a huge chunk out of the system.
Oh, 100%. But yeah, this Kevin Owens attack Rhodes, Mackintyre joins in.
Sami Zayn lines up a Haloova kick but ends up with yet another Haloova mistake.
Yeah, it's Cody Rhodes in the face this time.
Oh, 100% and Cody took all of it.
Oh, he did and he was still feeling that in the promo after the match as well.
Like, once all the hustle and bustle had kind of quietened down, you see him sat and doing an in-ring promo,
looking up at those championships and he's still holding his jaw.
Like, he ate all of it and more.
Oh, 100%. But just at the end of that match, we have the last thing we see,
Sami Zayn looking completely distraught.
But I think the one thing that isn't going to help Sami's case, because if we think back to the promo we had with Seth Rollins earlier on,
is that if you do it once, we can count it as a mistake and move on.
But this is now the second time in the second consecutive week that Sami Zayn has been sort of suckered in the same, in exactly the same way.
Yeah, Drew Mackintyre knows how to play that and play him for that fiddled, and he tunes up the band.
And that's him play himself.
Oh, 100%. But I don't think Sami helped his case at all by leaving the ring.
No.
I think if he'd stayed in the ring and sort of made sure Cody was okay,
because as we've said, Cody at all 150% of that halloula kick.
And yeah, I just don't think it's going to play out very well when it comes to the rumble,
because that's when the spark's going to hit the tinder, so to speak.
It's going to be when they find themselves in the ring together at the rumble.
Yeah, and so we alluded to Cody sitting in the ring afterwards, feeling his face kind of,
feeling a little bit sorry for himself and probably a little bit pissed off to be fair.
I know I would be.
I don't know about you, but he seemed very sort of space-kaky at the same time.
I think that halloula kick was hit a lot harder than he had anticipated.
Either that or he had a libation on the bus with Jade before he went into his second.
Yeah, he did look a little bit out of it, which is what I think CM Punk came out to ask him if he was okay.
Which was a weird thing to see from Punk, because you see him earlier on in the episode,
and he's just been that cocky arrogant asshole that we all know and love.
Now he's kind of come out trying to use a phrase that he uses at the end.
He's basically just come out to say, look, I know we're friends, but this is what I'm doing.
Yeah, and after explaining to him about, you know, we got some statistics here that, you know,
Punk says he knows what it feels like being a champion, you know, champion for over 400 days when he was in his first spell,
but after sort of 300 days for him, he hit sort of like burnout,
which is roughly where the point that Cody's got to be at.
He's got to be hitting that 300 days.
Obviously he won the title off Roman Reigns at WrestleMania last year,
and WrestleMania, I think we said was about 85 days away from Royal Rumble.
So he's pretty much getting into that sort of area now where he's, and he's been everywhere and you see him a lot.
So, yeah, we see if Cody starts getting burnt out and see where he goes from there.
Yeah, and sort of Punk being very sort of upfront and being like friends or stab you in the back.
I'm going to be a real friend and stab you in the front instead, sort of declares himself and says, look, when I win the Rumble,
I'm coming for you.
I'm coming at your title.
And there was a little bit of back and to and fro between the two of them,
but I will say the one thing that I picked up out of this little bit was Cody Rhodes mentioned that when they were at OVW,
everyone was chasing CM Punk.
He was like the trendsetter, the guy that was, well, he claimed that the CM stood for Chick Magnet.
You know, and then now 10 years later, no one's chasing CM Punk.
CM Punk's chasing Cody Rhodes.
And it's one of those like I've flipped the table and if you want this big gold sat on my shoulder,
then you're going to have to work for it.
Oh, don't get me wrong.
The Chick Magnet stuff is well documented.
If you look in the right places and speak to the right people or listen to the right people speak,
you will know from his first day to his last day, Bill Brooks is 100% a ladies man.
He knows how to charm them and he's not afraid to do it either.
And yeah, it's all going to come to a head, realistic.
I think we are looking at one of our WrestleMania main events.
I'm hoping so.
CM Punk and Cody Rhodes.
I think we may even find possibly John Cena thrown in there as well just for a real throwback.
We haven't seen anything as Cena at the moment and there was obviously when he showed up at the Netflix debut,
he was very much like, you know, I'm going to be a full time superstar this year.
He's actually been off filming a TV show.
So come on and lie to it.
He has, according to his contract, guaranteed WWE this year 38 weeks worth of content.
So that should kick in soon.
I think we'll see Cena at the Rumble.
I know we're definitely going to see Cena at the Elimination Chamber in Toronto in a little, a couple of weeks away in it, but two, three weeks away.
Cena is declared for the Royal Rumble match, so he has said that he's going to be there in the Netflix on Saturday.
And it wouldn't shock me if we see possibly John Cena turn up on Friday Night SmackDown.
Possibly have a match to try and shake off some ring rust, because if he's going into that World War II cold, there's going to be so many reasons why he doesn't win it.
There is a rumour as well, there is a rumour as well that he's going in at number three.
Yeah, it's, there's a lot of people that I've spoken to who are saying, oh yeah, it's Cena.
He's obviously going to win it.
And it's just not the case.
He's not going to win it.
He's already been, he's already been billed to perform in one way, shape or form at Elimination Chamber.
That is the match he's going to win to get to Mania.
Right, well, I think that's most of my notes for Monday Night Raw done.
Yeah, that's all of my notes for Monday Night Raw done.
So, yeah, we've, we've, there's been a lot we've unpacked in this week's episode.
And as always, we are now, as we record this, only 24 hours removed from, from Royal Rumble occurring.
So, that episode should be live on Sunday as well.
So, we will, we'll be breaking that down in a slightly different way, slightly different way this time.
We're still testing waters for how things work with this podcast, so we're going to try and you set up Royal Rumble and see how that works.
But no, thank you very much, Adam, for joining me on this episode.
I will see you for an XT.
Yeah, see you for an XT.
Enjoy. Bye.