Welcome to the ring, it's rich and Adam Breaking down the fights, lip flare and passion
Tag teams grappling, belts are clashing Finisher's and factions catching action
Well, Adam, I'm back.
Yes, yes you are.
So is this week's episode of Finisher's and Factions?
Finisher's and Factions does Monday Night Raw, so so glad to have you back.
I think everybody's sick of listening to the sound of my voice to be quite honest.
I'll tell you something, you wouldn't have heard mine last week if I'd have been here, it would have just been a selection of coughs, splutters and everything from in between.
But nope, we are back with Monday Night Raw from Nashville, Tennessee in the Bridgestone Arena.
Yes, 13,000 strong in the Bridgestone Arena this week, formerly a home of SummerSlam 2022 and the 24th Raw to be broadcast from Nashville in general.
And Nashville is definitely catching up with the home of professional wrestling, they seem to be getting an awful lot brought down there.
And guys from Nashville really do seem to enjoy themselves when it comes to wrestling events as well.
I mean, if you just look at the entry of this week, I don't think there was a single person out of that 13,000 strong in attendance that was not eating when Jay Uso came up.
No, and while we mentioned it, I mean, this was the second Raw in a row that Jay has opened as opened Raw and just the same sort of Jaytastic pop that we've grown to that we've almost gotten used to at this point.
Right, I'm kind of sat here going, how long can this pop keep going and then every week you go to a different stadium, a different section of America, and there's just more yeets than you will ever see.
I'll tell you something though, Michael Cole seems to be getting fit as he's catching up, he's keeping up with these yeets and not having to sit down.
Oh no, he's been yeeting from the sitting position, he's, and yeah, he's starting to complain a little bit more about it, but yeah, it's, he's certainly being able to keep up a little bit more.
If he wants to complain too much, Triple H, I will quite happily take his spot on commentary I can yeet all day long.
As has been proven in your live streams before now.
But yeah, I mean, Nashville 100% was was Yeetville this year this week or it was until Gunther decided to catch Jay out mid Yeet.
And he was mid Yeet too up on that announce table, arms up and you could see he was just about to drop that yeet and then yeah, like Gunther dropped him like a bad habit right onto the outside of the floor.
Yeet. Yeah, it's basically looks like he's following through on a promise that he'd made Jay the week before of making Jay's road to WrestleMania an absolute living hell.
I mean, I think Gunther had probably preempted the fact that Jay was going to be picking Gunther as his champion of choice.
I think we all saw that once coming.
I mean, yeah, but they didn't ask like to tease us a little bit with with what was going on on on Friday night SmackDown while you were away.
It was very much sort of teasing the idea of Ray versus Cody and maybe a few more libations being being had on tour buses before press conferences and all the rest of it.
I mean, yeah, you didn't mean that's what main event Jay also likes the libation.
No, as does as does the American nightmare.
The American nightmare enjoys a libation as well.
Yeet.
But yeah, I mean, just dropped my title.
But yeah, Gunther does not take any prisoners in this attack.
I mean, Jay bless him.
He tries to fight back, but Gunther as well and truly got Jay's number.
I mean, has Jay ended up picking a as he ended up picking a surefire loss for himself at Mania or is he going to feed off the energy of me feeling there's going to be some it's not going to be a straight fight.
Let's put it that way.
I do not think this is going to be a straight one on one one.
Well, it falls, you know, like, much I've got a feeling that eventually over the next couple of weeks, we're going to see a few little few little stipulations thrown in there somewhere.
Now, I would like to take a guess at what sort of stipulations, but there's so many options to think of.
It'd be stupid trying to guess as long as they don't put it in a side of a steel cage, I think we'll be fine.
I don't think it's been I think it's been a very, very long time since they've done a steel cage match at WrestleMania.
So it's a possibility we can't can't put can't sort of roll it out, I suppose.
No, but I think it's neither of these two superstars are sort of superstars you'd expect to see in a steel cage.
So to throw someone like Gunther and Jay in there, it just it wouldn't it wouldn't fit.
No, fair enough.
Yeah, I mean, you're right, there's so many different stipulations that could be thrown in on this match as we go.
And the last time a steel cage was used at WrestleMania was 2007 in WrestleMania 23.
So that just kind of shows how long ago it was.
It's not very often we have like these gimmicky type matches at WrestleMania. There's normally enough of a story built up where they don't need the gimmick.
So we're definitely going to end up with I think I don't think it will be anything too nuts.
Maybe we might see a chair or a table or something along those lines, but maybe a ladder.
But it won't be anything to over the top. I don't think.
See, I'm leaning towards a ladder match. I've got to admit it seems like it seems like the progression at the moment is that they may well have a ladder match at Mania.
But maybe not. I don't know. Again, too many possibilities are firing through my mind at this moment in time.
So I mean, don't get me wrong. I would love to see another ladder match at WrestleMania, especially for a title.
But it's not really. They've just done it with Cody and Kevin Owens and I don't think they're going to reuse it for a Jane Gunther if they get that far.
No, obviously they will get that far, but it's been set now. Obviously at the end of this.
We've now got our first match on the card for the WrestleMania weekend. It's a done deal.
It is. I mean, I must admit, I did find it slightly amusing when Jay picked up the mic.
He's like, hell, Gunther, I shouldn't say this. But you've got like the entire arena just that.
Go on, say it. Don't tell us you shouldn't say it. Say it. Me and you at WrestleMania.
And Gunther, he was not happy. I mean, he'd already started walking away at this point.
So for him to run back and for Jay to try and get a little bit extra on there,
especially after the fact he ate two pretty big power bombs in the first encounter.
Yeah, I mean, the first encounter came with one of Gunther's trademark vicious chops as well.
I mean, those things sound, they sound horrific and they look like they fucking hurt.
So I'm not going to be the first person in line. If he turns around and says, I need a volunteer,
I'm going to make sure I'm stepping backwards.
Yeah, I'm taking a Gunther slap job.
No, definitely not.
It's definitely not something that I'd like to take too much of.
Yeah, so like you said, the point of Monday Night Raw going live,
we are currently recording this on a Thursday.
We had 68 days until Jay vs Gunther at WrestleMania.
So obviously take a couple of days away from that.
We're on about 65 days now until WrestleMania, which is really not that far away, is it?
We're only just starting down that road to WrestleMania.
We've only got a few more weeks until Elimination Chamber.
And we've only got a few more seconds before we move on to the next part of Raw.
So let's make that move now.
And we went to a VT, which was a bit of a Raw recap concerning what happened last week between
Liv Morgan, Raquel Rodriguez, EoSky and Rhea Ripley.
Now, I had to watch this recap myself a little bit closer than normal.
Obviously, I wasn't here last week to be able to kind of jump in and really wasn't feeling
well enough to want to watch it.
So this is actually ideal for me.
Getting to see the highlight from last week where Rhea accidentally slapped Liv.
Well, I'm not 100% sure that was an accident.
But either way, it cost EoSky a win and she was not happy about that.
Was that sent Liv Morgan into the Elimination Chamber?
Yeah, so that was during the first, one of the first women's qualifying matches for the Elimination Chamber last week.
Yes.
So Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez had attacked EoSky and Rhea Ripley backstage earlier in the night.
And Rhea came down for revenge against Raquel Rodriguez.
Liv Morgan got involved.
The slap from Rhea to Liv wasn't an accident, but I think costing EoSky the match was not the intended outcome.
And yeah, I mean, we saw a very different side to Rhea Ripley.
I mean, Rhea Ripley was very apologetic last week to EoSky.
And yeah, we didn't really see any of that this week.
No. Not that I saw anyway.
But Rhea being apologetic is not something we are used to seeing either, because mommy does whatever the fuck mommy wants to do.
And she really don't care too much about who she pisses off or who she upsets.
Which, no.
I mean, can you blame her? She's got a strap over her shoulder.
She is the queen bitch at the moment and she's going to make sure she lets everyone know that's the case.
Yeah. And I think realistically it was nice of Rhea to try and apologise last week.
Obviously EoSky was in no position to hear it.
She didn't want to hear it.
And I think that's maybe rub Rhea up the wrong way.
But yeah, Ripley, we go from that video recap to a backstage promo link to the video recap where Rhea Ripley is talking about the events of last week.
Says about the fact that if Liv Morgan makes it through the elimination chamber,
that she'll deal with Liv the same way that she always has.
And yeah, I mean she even has a quick jar, but Charlotte Flair this week who thankfully does not make an appearance.
I mean, I wish she hadn't made an appearance at the Royal Rumble, but I'm probably not the only one to be fair after watching,
looking at social media a lot after that Royal Rumble Women's event. There was a lot of WWE fans that were not happy about the fact that Charlotte had just managed to walk in and sneak it off.
Well, she didn't even sneak it, did she? She just basically went, I'm not returning unless I've got it by the looks of it.
Yeah, and this is it. We talked, well, I talked a lot last week about how Charlotte Flair is a Q-jumper and all the rest of it.
I've tried to sort of restrain myself a little bit from ranting too heavily over it because otherwise the entire podcast with me ranting about how Charlotte Flair is a dirty Q-jumper.
And it isn't as over as she thinks she is, but hey, I'm not going to go down that road.
I mean, there's several wrestlers we could do that to. Charlotte Flair and Miz are definitely two of them.
So yeah, we've probably wasted enough time bitching about both of them in the past.
And then I think it's probably best that we split our time evenly and we jump into our first match of the evening.
So there's a few other bits I want to touch on just before we go to there.
So we've finished up the backstage interview with Rhea Ripley.
Ripley finishes her interview, is confronted by EO Sky and a returning Dakota Kai who's been out on injury for the last, I think, six or seven weeks with a concussion.
And we also we come to the end of that promo seeing Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez making their entrance into the arena.
However, in true WWE style, especially during the Netflix era, there was something in between that and the match, which was just a VT promo concerning the WWE tag team title match between the War Raiders and American Mays.
Which happens to be the, believe it's the main event of the of the card for it.
But but yeah, I mean, going into the first match, it's a women's tag team match between Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez and damage control EO Sky and Dakota Kai.
And it was nice to see Dakota Kai back in the ring, obviously, like we said, she's been out for a little while with concussion based injury.
And I also think at some point as well, they've given her a little bit of extra time to try and heal with that concussion because we've seen it in the past so many times with different other superstars where they've got concussed, they've come back too quickly.
They've ended up taking another concussion and I'm going to sit out for three times as long.
And my favorite one for that one, not in a in a harsh way at all was Enzo Morey like that guy collected concussions like I know you do Pokemon cards.
So, you know, it's definitely you've got to be careful with that sort of of injury.
Especially if you look outside of WWE into other sports where people take a lot of concussions, they CTE is definitely definitely a very powerful thing and not something I want to be getting myself.
So yeah, it's nice to see the fact that WWE are looking after their talent and making sure they don't come back too early.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, anything anything concerning concussion anything concerning head injuries in general you've got to be so so careful of because they can be not just career shortness but they can be life shortness at the same time.
So the message there is if you end up with a concussion treat it seriously don't just shrug it off.
It's important to get it seen to check out make sure that you are cleared by an actual medical professional and yeah just follow all doctors advice with it.
But moving on to the match itself.
I mean, we had EO Sky and Morgan start off the match but after all of the events of last week Morgan really wasn't very very keen on getting into it with EO Sky just off the bat there and makes a really quick attack.
I didn't see a little bit of standoffish anyway through the entire match. I haven't got a huge amount of notes for this when I struggled with this match. I'm not sure if it was the first one if it was the first match back for me that I was just having quite kind of still felt a little bit rusty.
But this one, Liv Morgan did feel quite standoffish. We saw an awful lot of Raquel Rodriguez in the ring against both the Ketokai and EO Sky for most of it.
I'd say three quarters of the match we probably saw more Raquel Rodriguez than we did Liv Morgan but what we did see from Liv was not bad quality to be fair.
Like she, what's the word I'm looking for?
I feel like they definitely seem to be keeping her in reserve a little bit so that she's making regular TV appearances. She's not wrestling in matches but she's not getting overly involved.
Yeah, one of the biggest sound-back parts for me wasn't even the in-ring action. It's the fact that Michael Cole cannot seem to tell the difference between EO Sky and Dakota Kai.
I mean, you'd have thought for a gentleman who's worked for that company as long as he has, he'd be able to tell the difference between the two superstars.
Yeah, I mean Michael Cole is a fantastic announcer and no shade to him at all. He's done it for a very, so, so many years. He's not my favourite announcer by any way, shape or form.
We all know that would be good old JR for you.
Oh, 100% JR is the goat of announcers, he really is.
But yeah, it's, it felt, I don't know, slightly unprofessional for Cole which is unusual for him because he's normally sort of very super professional about all of these bits and pieces.
It's unusual for him to make so many mistakes in the space of one match.
See, this is where me and you sort of disagree a little bit is that you struggled with this match.
I seem to have quite a lot of notes concerning this match because there, I mean, there's a lot of spots to call, especially when you're trying to break down a match that involves just EO Sky on our own.
EO Sky is always full of high spots and things like that. They don't call her the Queen of the Sky for nothing.
No, and she is very, very talented.
Well, they, they all are to a point. I think out of this match, Raquel Rodriguez was the weakest one again in there.
But I'm not sure, like we said, they were holding Liv Morgan back and they trying to give Raquel Rodriguez a little bit of an opportunity to actually show what she can do.
Or are they trying to see, like, you know, it was Liv nursing something that she probably didn't want to step away for.
So they've basically just kind of let Raquel Rodriguez take the brunt of the damage from to cut the car in EO Sky here.
I mean, my thought was that maybe they're trying because Liv Morgan is now qualified for elimination chamber.
They don't really want to risk a getting like a plan changing injury, which makes me think that Liv Morgan is going to play quite a big part in that match is sort of extrapolating from that.
But there's no reason why there can't be two reasons for that. And they can't achieve two goals at the same time because we haven't seen a lot of Raquel Rodriguez wrestle in a very long time.
And I mean, it was pointed out actually in a video I saw on social media. I forget the social media influences name.
I do always like to reference them when I see them. But it's they put together a compilation.
I think it was the May Young Classic tournament from 2018 has pretty much every single one of the heavy hitters from from the women's division in there at the moment.
And I mean, apart from Liv Morgan, apart from Liv Morgan, every single woman in that ring was in that May Young Classic tournament, including Dakota Kai, EO Sky.
All of them were in that classic. And it's just really weird to go back and look. I mean, even a very young Rhea Ripley before we had mommy before we even had the dark hair.
But then I suppose when you say the 2018 May Young Classic, that's seven years ago, a lot has changed in professional wrestling in that time.
100%. I mean, it's there are huge changes going on sometimes week in week out. So we're not certainly not short on those on those changes as it goes. But I mean, yeah, as I said, lots of lots of high spots, lots of just spots in general.
And one bit I particularly picked out. I had to go back and watch it about three or four different times because I think either side of this there was high spots that I wanted to at least make a note of.
But one that I want to sort of give a certain mention to was at one point, sort of quite early on in the match, EO Sky finds herself sort of isolated in Liv Morgan and Morgan and Rodriguez's corner.
And as Morgan comes in, lays in a series of kicks, the ref comes in to try and break, break it up and just gets all of Liv Morgan in his face screeching like a fucking banshee at one point, which is showing.
We know there's an unhinged side to Liv Morgan but yeah, it was it was an unusual unusual sort of lack of control from Liv Morgan whereas normally she's she seems to occupy that space of being unhinged but in control all at the same time.
Yeah. There's a lot of different spots when you get a match that's been selected like this with the quality of superstar in it.
For us it makes our life incredibly difficult trying to break these down because no matter how much we try and make a note of it.
I know for me I get to appointment I'm like all this there's too much going on. I'm going to spend the next half an hour writing without even watching and then I end up or again again sucked in and I forget to make notes.
Yeah, I have the same issue it's a case that you're either they're making notes so you miss out on something else because you're there writing down I mean I'm not some people are capable of being able to write coherently without looking at what they're writing.
I am not one of those people.
Neither am I. Well, I can type and watch to a point but I end up.
Yeah, and after that if we try to come back to correct the notes afterwards it just makes absolutely no sense and I mean it's it would arguably be easier for rich to amend his notes because again he types out his notes whereas I handwrite all of mine.
Because I just find that easier but it's complete sort of.
I also think as well as you like to sit on the sofa with your feet on the coffee table and you know chilling out the kids watching it where I like to try and hide upstairs in the office where it's a little bit quieter.
So I don't have as many distractions going on.
So, yeah, it does make life a bit easier for us both.
But back to the match I mean with the O sky and Dakota Kai we know we're in for a high flying match we know we live Morgan.
We're in for a technically sound match so there's loads of bits and pieces we could pick out.
And I did make quite a lot of notes on it but instead of sort of just sort of droning through them and and not really sort of picking out some of the best of the best bits.
We saw in the late stages of the match we saw EO Sky tag in and basically taking on both.
Taking on both Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez out of the out of the ring for a suicide dive to the outside.
She then gets Morgan back in the ring to hit a miss or drop kick from the top rope followed by a bullet train attack for a two count.
I mean that was a hell of a lot of punishment for live Morgan to take as well as one of the more defining spots of the match came at the end where we've we've seen before with Rodriguez and Morgan where Rodriguez will use Morgan as a weapon.
And Morgan's quite happily happy to be used as a weapon.
However, this week, I think it didn't quite go to plan really did it.
You know, Sky managed to get her legs up or get her knees up sorry and when you're when you're being planted directly onto your back onto someone else's knees.
Yeah, I know we sit here and we all know it's scripted but not stupid like the same as everyone else that it's predetermined, but the move still hurt and I'm not going to like you that move look like it hurts.
Oh yeah, I mean the outcome is predetermined but the the action in the ring is while it may be some of it may be choreographed it's still gonna if you land a flat back bump on your back it's still gonna fucking her.
Oh, and that's just into the ring when I there's there's videos online that I've seen with Charles Robinson who is one of the referees that also is part of their ring building crew to.
And he kind of shows the whole process of building that there is no springs.
There is nothing there to give apart from a few sheets of a few steel beams and some inch and a half thick wood.
That is all you're bouncing on to.
Yeah, it's even the most rudimentary ring is is pretty much built on quite solidly built sort of wood boxes and things like that.
So there isn't a lot to those rings and they are they are they have zero giving them whatsoever.
Anything that's giving is your body.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the other part of Rodriguez using Morgan as a weapon.
I mean, at one point she was it.
I'm not entirely sure what happened, but she ends up using Morgan as a bit of a battering ram.
And I believe that there was the Morgan ends up getting some color, but I don't think it was intentional because that was one nasty gas she ended up getting on her face.
Yeah, when you she was she was leaking in the ring.
And then there is a little section a little bit later, which we will get into in more detail.
There's like a little backstage thing with the judgment day and you can see that live has got like you said, what a hell of a gash above her right eye.
Yeah, on the right eye to be fair.
So yeah, something went wrong somewhere.
But that looked like it hurt and bless her.
She took that like a jump and she carried on.
She did but didn't carry on to a win.
Unfortunately is EO Sky ends up picking up a pinfall win on Morgan herself after an successful attempt to over the moon and at an over the moon so which sort of closed out that match which I think gave maybe EO Sky a little bit of closure over Morgan from last week.
But we'll move on sort of swiftly from there just because something that happened right at the end of Monday night Raw last week.
We touched on it a little bit during last week's podcast and yeah, this was Kevin Owens coming back rather unexpectedly after the war he had at Royal Rumble to attack Sami Zayn.
No, this is because Sami didn't really help him at Royal Rumble by the end so Kevin was peeve that Sami was out at ringside during his match but did not help him win his title.
And we've seen this before in the past with Kevin and Sami where they kind of won minute their friends and X minute the knot the next minute their friends and X minute the knot.
I knew something was going to go down and I think they've just set themselves up now for this going to be their WrestleMania moment this year I think will be Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.
This package Pile Driver that Sami Zayn took last week.
I think that was the start of a nice little storyline into WrestleMania.
It's certainly given Sami Zayn a few weeks a few weeks off I think as we're told during this little recap that Sami Zayn is suffering with some spinal compression and major and sort of major nerve damage from the package Pile Driver itself.
He's been weak in week out since the start of the bloodline story so that guy is he deserves a bit of time off to be fair.
Yeah I mean 100% and the injury report that they give us is completely believable based on the move that he's taken.
I mean yeah spinal compression from landing on the back essentially on the back of your neck as well as major nerve damage.
I mean most of your nerves are running up your spine completely believable so yeah it was certainly something to behold.
But we'll move on from that as I'm sure more will come out in the action to be able to watch the build up for Elimination Chamber and listen to finishes and factions.
Yeah 100%. So match two on the card while we mention Elimination Chamber is an Elimination Chamber qualifying match.
It's a women's singles match and it is Bailey versus Lyra Valkyria current women's intercontinental champion.
Now I've been waiting to see a little bit more of Lyra Valkyria and before we go too far into this match I do want to.
I did not realise until watching both Monday Night Raw and NXT this week how many English superstars are currently floating around the WWE.
Well be careful who you're calling English because Lyra Valkyria is actually the only.
She is, you're right how many European superstars. Let's put it that way we don't want to offend the poor woman.
Even though...
Yeah, no, I'm going to put you up there before you end up saying something we'll both regret.
Not only do we have Lyra Valkyria, obviously we've got Seamus.
I didn't realise that... I can't remember his goddamn name now.
Ridge Holland was English until something popped up in NXT and it was like there was an awful lot of European superstars that I completely pushed the boat out on.
And that's, you know, without mentioning the guys like Pete Dunne and some of the other smaller ones you don't see very often.
This is it. I mean the fact that we're getting so many superstars even just based from the United Kingdom.
So, I mean we've got several superstars from Scotland, a good couple from Ireland.
We've got Pete Dunne who's actually a brome.
I knew as soon as you said that it was going to come out.
I was going to mention him regardless. He was going to get on and we'll mention regardless.
I mean he comes up later on in the promotion anyway.
He does.
But yes, no. I mean Lyra Valkyria, I've seen a few videos of her on social media as one of her other Irish counterpart wrestlers in the WWE, Seamus, has started doing his own workout videos.
But in fairness, I know there's going to be quite an age gap between Seamus and Lyra.
But Lyra can work, Lyra's solid mate.
She's put, you see the size of Seamus and you think, yeah, he's well put together and all the rest of it.
But I've seen several videos now of them doing sort of the same workout exercise between the two of them.
And Lyra runs rings around Seamus, literal rings.
She's got age on her side where like Seamus is like us. She's an old man.
Especially when it comes to this sort of particular career choice, unless you're really, really are the pinnacle of human perfection.
Once you start getting past your late 30s, early 40s, this industry takes its toll.
Yeah, 100%
Neither me or Adam have ever been in a wrestling ring.
I do reckon I could have taken Bron Breaker's spear better than I show speed though.
I reckon you'd have been out for a good couple of weeks recovering from the back pain that that spear bought with it.
I still probably reckon I could have taken a better job though.
Oh, I reckon I probably could have done it as well.
Show speed just got absolutely ragged old.
He did.
Anyway, we've got to see quality digressions today.
Right, so yeah, one of the big points I want to point out before this match starts obviously,
Roxanne Perez is in attendance, not in a professional standpoint, but she is there in the crowd.
And actually due to compete against Bailey and Julia at NXT Vengeance Day, which is this Saturday.
There will be a bonus episode at some point on either Sunday or Monday, purely for the fact that I'm at work this weekend.
And I'm not entirely sure how bad I'm going to feel when I get home.
Which is fair enough. I'm working this weekend as well.
So we'll have to sort of play that one by ear, but I'm sure we will have something for you all on Vengeance Day by Monday at the absolute latest.
So before we set watch rule.
Yeah, well.
But do you know what?
Solid technical wrestling for that from this match.
It wasn't like a terribly exciting match to watch.
But if you look at it from the fundamentals of wrestling and look at it from.
They did the basics very, very well.
Yeah.
You know, and that's something we've learned to see from Bailey and from Lyra Valkyria.
You know, they've both very, very technical wrestlers have the ability to go high and take risks.
But you will see a lot more ground and pound, so to speak, but a lot more sort of like floorwork from these two guys.
Bailey, she can't, it felt to me like she let Lyra get out of her system what she needed to without being too over the top.
I think realistically, they, they, they had to very much sort of toe align with this match.
Now, again, Lyra Valkyria is the current women's I see champion.
We can't forget that fact.
And if Bailey would just work in a, if I think if Lyra didn't have the strap, I think she'd probably.
But it would probably have been more of a squash match than anything else, but they have to protect the championship at the same time.
So it was a very.
I don't personally feel they got this much right.
The, I think they, they told the line pretty well, it is, it, I couldn't think of any other way they could have done that any better because there were some fantastic moves from both Lyra and Bailey.
We knew sort of what to expect from Bailey when she came in Lyra is still a little bit of an unknown in my eyes.
I don't, haven't seen a lot of a wrestling to know what to expect from her just yet, but it all together.
I'm not, I'm not mad at the match.
I will be honest.
Mad to a point, I think that Bailey's getting overworked at the moment and we see Bailey on pretty much every episode of WWE programming at the moment. She's on Raw, she's on NXT, she's on SmackDown.
She's showing up at all the PLE's.
Bailey's getting pushed hard in several different directions, like we said, you know, she's got a match against Julia and Roxanne Perez on Saturday night at NXT vengeance.
And then she's had this qualifier for elimination chamber. We've seen a lot of Bailey.
Now, we are seeing a lot of Bailey and nice. I'm not complaining.
I just think if we're going to see as much of Bailey as we are, I think they should have reversed the decision and put the win on the other person.
But would it seen as how every sort of every superstar that has an elimination chamber qualifier has only one elimination chamber qualifier.
I can sort of see what you mean. I mean, it's a case that as we've said, Bailey is also competing for the NXT Women's Champion on Saturday at vengeance day.
This, the fact that she's now been booked in the elimination chamber sort of casts into casts a lot of doubt.
In fact, it rules out the possibility altogether of Bailey walking or walking out of vengeance day as champion.
I just it's not going to happen because she's not going to be allowed to go into elimination chamber as the NXT Women's Champion.
It's just it to then potentially go on for a chance to face off for one of the main roster women's champions as well.
They've done double strap champions before. I mean, a W have currently got a three strap champion in Mercedes money, but that we're not here to talk about a W.
It's WWE and it's not something they do very regularly.
So I can sort of see where you're coming from from that perspective, but it would have been a massive, massive win for Lyra had she got a win over Bailey to qualify for the for the elimination chamber in two weeks.
So we could see. I mean, we saw a lot of, as I said, we saw a lot of spots in this match that were sort of really I thought were really good.
Valkyria hit a missile drop kit ring, a sort of a missile drop kit out of the rings.
It was almost like a suicide dive missile drop kick sort of maneuver to Bailey.
We saw a sunset with one of those one of those moves that has to hit the bingo card every week.
It's a sunset flip, but this was a sunset flip buckle bomb as as the commentary team started referring to it.
Valkyria hit a tornado D8 DDT into a fisherman suplex on the outside, which was I mean, technically brilliant. Loved it every second of it was pure magic.
And yeah, I mean, Bailey does end up picking up a pin for win after a reversal of a small package pin.
So Lyra tried small packaging Bailey Bailey with a lot obviously of years, many years of in ring experience has the wherewithal to know how to reverse that and goes and goes ahead and gets the win ends up qualifying for the for the elimination chamber.
If I remember correctly, this puts her as the fourth woman in the elimination chamber, which means there's only two slots left because we've currently got live Morgan Bianca Belair Alexa bliss and Bailey and Bailey now.
Yeah.
No, it's all good. It's all good.
So, yeah, I mean, we've got our fourth entrance into the elimination chamber, which is always good to see.
Yes, when these when these matches start filling up was obviously the men's elimination chamber is starting to fill reasonably nicely as well last week.
Last few gaps for that field later on this episode and I believe the last one is filled.
Next week.
So we've still got a few elimination chamber qualifiers for the main match for the men's for the men's match sorry.
Because we've got, I think the last matches are taking place on next week's raw.
So we've still got a few more left to go, but we'll come back to men's elimination chamber later on in the later on in the episode we've got going to a VT promo for Penta.
I have really enjoyed watching Penta the last few weeks.
He's definitely been a breath of fresh air to Monday Night Raw.
So getting to see a little bit extra of him's always been quite nice and then we got to see your hometown hero too.
Wouldn't necessarily go far as hero, but he's certainly a local boy for me.
Yeah, so Penta's calling out Pete Dunne and Ludwig Kaiser in this promo as last week Pete Dunne interfered in well wouldn't necessarily call it an interference in his match.
He walked out very last moments of the match with Ludwig Kaiser and Penta last week caused a bit of a distraction.
I mean Penta still picked up a win over Ludwig Kaiser, which Kaiser did not take very well.
And we go straight from that VT sort of into an interview with Kaiser and Jackie Redmond.
And Penta's issued a challenge.
Really much of an interference.
Kaiser's definitely not turning it down.
And yeah, there's a bit of a confrontation between Pete Dunne and Pete Dunne and Kaiser there, but we've essentially ended up with a...
Basically just Pete Dunne turning Kaiser to stay out of his business.
Like he doesn't need his help and he'll do it his way.
Which is the, well, Pete Dunne is the king of hardstyle, isn't he? So it'll be done one way or another.
Yeah, this is it. But it's revealed next week we've got a match between Pete Dunne and Penta for next week's Raw.
And Kaiser is basically, as I said, that he's going to stay out.
He's going to leave Dunne to face Penta and I'm not sure I believe him.
I'm going to be honest. It's the look on his face.
I don't know if that's just his face.
He's got one of those faces that everyone wants to slap.
Yeah.
Well, me personally.
My smile we have.
Oh, yes.
But we did get to see a little bit of something special at the ending of this little section backstage.
And are you, you never used to be a massive fan of this particular person?
Over the last year, I think he's grown on me a little bit more than he is.
Probably about 10 years too late. I'm not going to lie.
But we've got to see the phenomenal one, AJ Styles walk around backstage and then walk out to be able to go and have a nice little conversation in the ring as well.
So yeah, I mean, there's a few other bits that we need to cover before we get to that point.
But or at least one more bit as there was another backstage promo between now and then where we see Lyra Valkyria and I'm still not sure what to call these guys because they've got alpha babes written across their shirts, but they still referred to as alpha academy.
These guys just have a bunch of myths.
And this was sort of alpha babes sort of commiserate commiserate in Valkyria on a win.
She was so very close to winning that last match.
American Maid sort of come in and it's basically this is it's going to sound like a bit of a me saying the same word twice, but it's a promotion promo.
It's they're teasing the tag titles matches the American Maid at the lads from American Maid are facing off against the Viking warrior at the war raiders.
How many times have every package the same tag team?
It is they've been four different names so far.
Yeah, and it's I don't know why I keep one I should really learn that it's going to that is what they're going into but it's yeah, never quite 100% certain.
But yeah, so that's a teaser promo for the main event later on.
We then move into, as you said, AJ Styles is in ring promo.
I mean, this is the first one we've seen in the in the Netflix era. It's certainly the first one in raw in a little while.
And he gets a pretty decent pop coming out.
I mean, he's a big he's obviously had quite a storied history in his career, not just in WWE, but when he's been in TNA out of Nashville and they've he's always done really well in the town.
Yeah, I mean, AJ, like I said, I probably am 10 years late to the party with AJ.
But at the moment, obviously, he's just come off quite a long injury from that happened ironically in the same place in the same stadium but for SmackDown rather than Raw.
Four months earlier.
Not tiny sure what was the injury.
I don't know.
I am not 100% sure I'm sure I did look into it, but I can't I didn't make a note of it at least not that I'm not that I can see my notes here.
He looked jacked.
Like, normally we see AJ he looks reasonable but nothing over the top when he he looks huge.
I mean, I actually did make a note. I just found my note where it was my handwriting is atrocious.
But it's something called a Liz Frank injury.
I'm not sure if that's a ligament or a muscle or a bone.
I'm not a medical professional in any way, shape or form.
But that is the that is what I looked up at.
I looked it up and.
Yeah, I mean, actually, possibly possibly, but it's a case that I think AJ was almost hinted at the fact was that he was a
before his injury was possibly looking at retiring soon or
Yeah, no.
I mean, I hate to see him retire.
I know we've definitely passed his better days.
But he's one of those work courses.
If you look after him correctly, he will just keep going and going and going.
And it's been a long time.
We haven't seen him for about four months. He's come back.
He looks great and I want to see him like get into it.
Don't get me wrong.
I've been a big AJ Styles fan for a long time.
I used to watch him in I used to watch him in TNA and really enjoy really enjoyed it.
It was my opinion.
His best days were the days when he had short hair rather than a long hair.
Yes.
Yeah.
But so I think TNA did get the best years of AJ Styles career.
But having said that, he's still got more to give.
And as you said, if he's booked correctly and he's madly in love with him,
he's still got more to give. And as you said, if he's booked correctly and he's managed correctly,
then yeah, he's still got loads of years left.
But somebody that sort of didn't appreciate him coming out and making and making some noise was Don Mysterio.
It was a weird one, but out of all the people in the locker room to come out and have a word with AJ
or try and get a piece of AJ, they sent out Don and Carlito.
There's no...
I don't think the judgement day were involved in his injury, but...
I know he's had history with judgement day in the past.
This was before Damian Priest and Rhea Ripley split off, which AJ Styles does actually address.
It's like the last time I saw a judgement day, you had Damian Priest and Rhea Ripley and...
West Finn Balor.
Yeah, they aren't here anymore.
What happened to Finn Balor?
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he points out the fact that Finn Balor wasn't there as well.
This is after Don gets the booing of a lifetime.
I mean, this guy couldn't even start his part of this promo without being drowned out by a sea of booze.
And I think the only injury AJ Styles was in any danger at that point...
A tinnitus.
...possibly a hearing injury.
A tinnitus. All that ringing.
You know what? We sit here and we say there's some superstars we don't like, there's some we do.
Every professional wrestling fan will have their opinions.
Don is one of those really strange ones that you...
He's so good as a heel that you can't help but love the fact that when you see him,
you know you're going to have some fun taking a piss out of him.
Oh yeah.
He plays a heel character insanely well.
Just like his dad used to.
Well, yeah.
Ray's never been a great heel.
Ray Mysterio very rarely turned heel and it was mostly because of his size.
I was never going to believe that he was.
But he was.
I mean, he's on a fissure date.
Don Mysterio is an official father of Eddie Guerrero used to play a heel really well.
But...
I generally think if you put a DNA test out there somewhere that he probably is Eddie Guerrero's
and my eyes do you know who's Tyrannos?
It's not outside the realms of possibility, I suppose.
It's certainly made for a fun storyline.
But yeah, I mean, for now, one of the things that AJ Styles has always been a really good high-flying superstar,
the other thing that he's always been really good with is a mic in his hand.
The man can cut a promo.
Yes, he can.
And he's cut some incredible ones over the years as well.
I mean, just to throw out there when the face that ran the place went up against the almighty John Cena.
You know, those were some of the greatest promos that we saw at the time.
And it was, you know, they are both phenomenal when it comes to a microphone in their hand.
And in fact, they have both of them in the same ring, feuding with each other.
Just showed the world how good these microphone uses are.
It's not all about who can get what done in the ring.
Now, microphone is just as important.
Oh, definitely.
Being able to connect with your audiences, being able to connect with the audience through what you say,
not just what you do is an important part of being a professional wrestler.
And any professional wrestler would back me up on that.
But, yeah, I mean, he's styles has always been one, a good one to be able to turn a phrase.
And this one that he turned this time round was sort of giving props for Dom's work ethic,
but reminds him how he'll always be Rey Mysterio's punk.
That's good.
Which sent dirty Dominic into a bit of a, he was not very happy with that.
You went for a cheap shot, which a cheap shot from Dom doesn't.
Yeah, a cheap shot from Dom, which is normally just a shot.
It doesn't really seem to have too much of a to it.
There's no, no content to that, that particular thing because of the way he plays his character.
And he plays it very, very well.
Not knocking him at all.
But every shot that Dom takes is a cheap shot.
Yeah, it's a case that Dom Mysterio came out with Carlito and no shade to Carlito.
I'm glad he's managed to make his way back into the WWE because he was always a very entertaining superstar to watch,
especially when he was in ring or backstage.
But he's not necessarily the most intimidating person in the world.
And those purple skinnies he possibly is not.
I mean, there are intimidating people in the WWE.
And then there's this Carlito.
Yeah.
The only thing that would be intimidating about Carlito, like AJ pointed out,
those purple skinnies do not fit you, my good sir.
Oh, yes, the purple skinnies.
The purple skinnies that were probably filled with skitties by the time those three finished brawling.
Yeah.
But at the end of it, when AJ ripped his top off though, and you really do get to see how well he's been working out.
I said at the start, he looks huge.
You actually get to see a proper look on how much work he's put in at the gym,
especially considering that injury had was actually a foot injury.
And that makes it so I did have a little look into a Liz Frank injury is an injury to the bones or ligaments in the center of the foot.
So that would definitely slow him down a little bit, considering we know how much of a high flyer AJ is.
So he spent a lot of time in the gym working on the rest of it.
Well, that's been healing.
And you can definitely tell he looks good.
And I think when we get to seeing back in a ring in a match capacity, we're going to have a hell of a match, I think.
Well, to prove before we set before we sort of discuss that a little bit further because we will discuss that a little bit further.
We're going to move on to an arena side promo with Seth freaking Rollins.
Jackie Redlin up in the up in the what where do we call this like what is this because it's it's kind of in the crowd, but it's not in the crowd, but it's not.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, this is why I've taken to calling them arena side because it's not ringside.
It's not necessarily backstage.
It's out in the crowd, but it's like a it's like a mezzanine balcony sort of thing.
They're not in a box or anything like that.
It's they're out on what essentially is a public walkway, which they've quarantined off for the purposes of the promo.
So I've just caught started calling it arena side as that makes sense to me.
But yeah, Seth Rollins cutting a very similar arena side promo than the one we saw CM Punk cut shortly before the the Royal Rumble.
That may also have been with Jackie Redmond at that point, but sort of reviews the current match chamber entries being Cena, Punk and McIntyre.
And yeah, it's it sort of promotes his match next week, which is the I think it's going to be the final men's elimination chamber qualifier, which is sees Seth Rollins face Finn Balor for a spot in the chamber
and sort of highlights that after the announcement at the very beginning of the show that the winner of the men's elimination chamber decides who it essentially the men's elimination chamber match decides who Cody Rhodes is opponent is at WrestleMania
as the elimination chamber gets a guaranteed main event at WrestleMania facing the champion that was not selected by the Royal Rumble winner.
Yes, see, there's a lot of names in here that I'd like to see face Cody.
But I think we all know who's going to be that one to face Cody.
Yeah, I mean, I'm calling it that Cena is going to walk out of elimination chamber with a win.
It would surprise me greatly if that's not how they're going to play it.
Well, I've called it like this for a few weeks now.
And I'm going to look at it this way as well after elimination chamber. There are no other events to get you to WrestleMania.
Elimination chamber, I believe is the last one, isn't it?
I mean, I think even if Cena does even on the outside shot that Cena doesn't win.
Cena, it's going to be seen as last ever Royal, it's going to be seen as last ever WrestleMania as an in ring combatant.
He ain't missing WrestleMania.
No, they will find a way to weasel him in.
I personally think that I'd like to see Cena win the elimination chamber.
I'd like to see him beat Cody at WrestleMania for the title.
I would then like to see him drop it back to Cody.
Probably after about a month, right?
Like the first pay-per-view after WrestleMania, I'd like to see Cody like bring his rematch clause back in and then get his title back just so they can say that Cena's beaten Flair's record.
He's done it all in the same promotion.
Obviously, like any professional wrestling fan should know that Ric Flair, yes, has had the most titles in professional wrestling, but he's done it over three different promotions, all owned by Vince at one point or another.
But Cena would be the first person to have gone into WWE and done it 17 times.
So I'd like to see that happen.
I think every wrestling fan.
I don't think they'll have seen a drop it quite as quickly, but I don't want to see him hold on to it for the entire year.
That's the problem.
I think once they've given him what he deserves, and we're not talking about a one here.
This is a man who's given WWE 23 years of his life.
Like, if not more, right?
This is a guy who's like he says he missed weddings, birthdays and funerals for that business.
I mean, the guy personified workhorse, workhorse ethic.
It was he was there weekend, week out, didn't miss a beat even when he was in some cases, even when he was out on injury.
He was still he was still there still actively part just wasn't competing.
And yeah, the guy is the guy has earned the right to be able to call the shots of how he wants his last his last year in WWE is as an active wrestler to go.
I think he does he does need to break that record.
But we'll see how it how it plays out.
Yeah, so part of this arena side promo is we have Finn Balor appear basically to respond to I took Rollins what Rollins was saying about the match with Finn Balor he sort of breezed past it and made it sound like yeah,
Balor's not a challenge. I'm basically going to walk out of that with the win, which I don't get me wrong. I do genuinely believe that Seth Rollins will walk out will walk out of next week's match with his ticket punch to elimination chamber.
I do think he's going to be the last person in the match, but it does feel a bit disrespectful to everything that Finn Balor is to make him sound like a bit of a pushover, essentially.
I mean, you got to think as well that Finn Balor and Kevin Kevin, where did I come from Finn Balor and Seth Rollins have been going at it for years.
I mean, these two were were in the inaugural Universal Championship match.
They were wasn't Finn Balor the winner of that much but had to vacate it the next day because of an injury.
Yes, I believe it was and yeah, Finn Balor hasn't enjoyed a massive amount of like single success since really.
He sort of very much seemed like to a certain degree he peaked in NXT and he's enjoyed a few title reigns with within the main roster but never anything quite as lofty as sort of WWE Champion.
He's never had a WWE Champion or heavyweight Champion.
Yeah, no, he's I'm pretty sure he's had the lower end cards and the lower end titles he's never had anything.
Yeah, I think he's done a runner. I think he's done a runner to his IC champ and maybe a runners US champ.
He's had tag team gold as well but other than that it's he's never held one of the either the WWE champ or or the heavyweight champ belt since he came up to the main roster so so many years ago.
I can't even can't even think about when he came up to me fair you know he he feels like he's been around since the beginning of professional wrestling for like as long as I can think of I've seen him at WWE so you know it's just one of those he has been around for a long long time.
Yeah, 100%. I'm just having a look here actually so I'm trying to find out about his what titles he's won.
But all it wants to tell me about his time in New Japan. So I'm guessing like, like AJ Styles I think, Finn Balor's best years were outside of WWE.
Well, while we mentioned New Japan and AJ Styles in the same sentence, there's somebody else that is spent quite a lot of time in Japan under a WWE contract actually that has come to light recently and that is Omar's.
Yeah, which is now I didn't think he's still had a contract I will be honest but it seems like he's out there on WWE's dime.
I think he's out there helping with their developmental process. I think Ozmos is out doing some training work over there or learning some training work.
Maybe we might see him a little bit more in the performance center teaching some of the talent of tomorrow how to do what they do.
He was doing some work with developmental but I thought that was teaching him how to wrestle because some of the matches that I've seen Omar's with has been a bit early Goldberg ask.
Yeah. I mean even Goldberg made into the Hall of Fame mate.
He did and it's not disrespecting Goldberg. I'm just saying that if there was somebody that I want, if there was somebody I was going to pick to teach anybody how to wrestle it wouldn't be Omar's.
No. But anyway, again, this is going to be an episode of digressions. It really is.
This is not episode of live-ations.
This is true because there'd be even more digressions then.
But yeah, sort of Balor points out Rollins' failures in 2025 and sort of how he's on a bit of a downward spiral.
They have a bit of a back and forth about who's standing in whose way to WrestleMania when realistically at this stage they're both standing in each other's way.
And that sort of closes out that promo for it.
We then go backstage and see a rare appearance from Raw General Manager Adam Pearce who's in conversation with AJ Styles booking a match for next week with AJ Styles versus Dirty Dom Mysterio.
This is why I didn't want to get too much into seeing AJ Styles in in-ring action because we're going to see it next week.
We are and I cannot freaking wait.
But before we get to see any real action, we get to see a cheeky little glimmer of our current IC title holder, Mr. Bron Breaker as he walks through the back area.
Yeah, looking a little bit like Woody from Toy Story.
I don't really quite understand where the cowboy hat came in.
I realise they're in Tennessee and yeah, cowboy hat is ting.
They are in Nashville.
But yeah, no, didn't see that at all.
Hey, you know, it's nice to see Bron Breaker putting a bit of a smile on people's face rather than trying to wipe the smile off people's face.
Yeah, this is true. It's nice to see a light, a slight, I don't think it was meant to be a lighter side of Bron Breaker, but it's sort of involved into a lighter side of Bron Breaker.
But yeah, it's, it was a very much a sort of a silent exchange between AJ Styles and Bron Breaker until Breaker simply says, see you around.
So I mean, I, unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be Bron Breaker holding the IC title.
If AJ goes for it.
No, we've said this.
Yeah, we I think it'll be shameless with the IC title.
If WWE do not book this and give this man his fucking intercontinental championship, I'm going to send triple H a very sternly worded email because I don't think
that's where he's going to get an email from the anonymous Raw Jansman manager.
Oh, that was always a laugh.
I've got an email.
Shut the fuck up.
Shut the fuck up, Cole.
That's a great t-shirt.
We went from there.
Yeah, go call your idiot.
You just made the list.
Three on the card was the men's tag team title at mad men's tag team title match.
Now I earlier on said this might have been the main event and I may have misspoke and I apologize for that.
But I didn't want to put you up on it.
This is between Eric and Ivar the war Raiders and American and Julius of American made a company to the ring by Ivy Nile.
And now I don't think I got a massive amount of notes for this match.
I will be honest.
I think I possibly may have struggled with this match just to touch.
I will.
I will use what I have to try and see if we can bump this out a little bit because I also struggled a little bit with this match.
We've had a conversation of podcasts that we're probably going to have again on the podcast that neither of us were a big fan of the way this went down.
So this match felt like a filler for me personally to start off with.
I know they've been teasing it the last few weeks.
But for a tag match for a title match in the middle of the card is one thing.
But it didn't have.
There was no pizzazz or nothing to it that made me really go shit.
This is a title match.
It just felt like they were trying to fill a space, which is not something to do with war Raiders.
It was very basic tag team wrestling.
And I think this had more to do with the team from American made than it did with the war Raiders.
We know they're going to come out.
They're going to knock the shit out of people and then go home.
American made are they've been a lot of mouth and from what I've seen, there weren't a lot of substance to it.
No, it's my biggest problem with this match was the ending, which match ends in a deep you finish for a title match where the challenges are the ones that end up earning the DQ.
And there's no reason for it.
And this is this was basically the bread and butter of the conversation that myself and Rich had off podcast about this match specifically was that the ending to this match was horseshit.
It really was.
Yeah, that you were better off not having this match this week, putting it next week and giving it a bit more extra time.
Then or even drop one of the promos around it.
You know, to give them a bit of extra time to fill because from what we did see, you know, Eric and I have had some nice spots.
You know, they use their moves and the time they had it in the ring.
Well, American made.
I'm not sure if they were told to kind of go in just be really standoffish.
It's they seem quite stiff as though they're possibly, you know, a little bit of IRL heat between the guys, but you can't really.
I don't think they were given enough time and then that the ending was very rushed, you know, hitting the war.
American made hit the war radars with their own titles to get themselves DQ, which basically just meant that they got to to hang out with their own.
Yeah, it wasn't really much to do to it.
They threw away that mean it makes no logical sense for the challenger to throw away what could be their one and only shot at getting a tag team title gold.
And it makes sense if a champion team does that.
So if war radars had hit American made to try and claim championships advantage to retain their title if they were in trouble, then yeah, fair enough.
I don't have understood that.
It's very strange.
But the way they've the way they rip that match.
I'm sorry.
It's just made no sense whatsoever.
And I just can't find any way to get behind that.
No, no.
Um, yeah, it really was strange.
Um, I've even put my notes that it felt like it was just being used to fill a spot on the card.
Um, yeah, maybe they couldn't promo long enough to be able to fill that, you know, what was there or they didn't have enough for you to footage maybe.
Um, like, I'm the guy that will normally sort of try and find the positive.
I'll try and find the balance so that it's not just us raining shit on WWE's parade.
Not that they not.
They didn't help themselves with this much in the grand scheme of it all, but it just, I couldn't find a positive side to that match.
Really couldn't.
What?
Yeah.
The positive side to that match, I think was, um, you know, after we watched that terrible ending, we got to go back stage and and see Tom and Tom dirty Dom and Finn Balor having a bit of a conversation.
That was definitely better than the match previously.
It certainly was.
I mean, we, uh, we went back into, so the judgment, they seem to build themselves a little clubhouse in every arena they go into.
And this is where they hang out.
This is where they've got their video games and they go to do whatever it is that they want to do.
And we had sort of Carlito live Morgan, uh, supposedly trying to, I mean, Carlito is trying to gain some sympathy for a non-existent injury at this point.
Um,
Oh, the only thing that got injured in that encounter was Carlito's pride.
Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much.
Um, but this is where we got to see sort of the true extent of Liv Morgan's facial injury from, uh, from earlier on, because there was a lot of blood and
She had a hell of a hole in there.
I was trying to make out if it was intentional color or if it was accidental because it was.
Yeah, there was, it wasn't entirely clear.
Um, and it's still not clear, but all that was clear was that that was one hell of a gash putting Liv Morgan's pretty pretty face.
It was a hell of a split above the eye.
Um, well, it wasn't even above the eye. It was literally right on the side of her eye. It was quite a nasty little, nasty little tap.
So however that happened, um, kind of didn't look like she had any stitches in there, but I'm kind of glad she didn't need any.
So we've seen this play out before. Um, I think we saw it last week or the week before.
Um, Finn Balor comes in basically says, yeah, everything's gone to shit. What's going on? And, um, sort of Dom sticking up for everybody else.
I mean, Finn Balor seems to be really sort of trying to paint himself in the role of leader of the judgment day since, uh, since Damien Priest left, but it just seems that everybody's in behind, uh, sort of Dom Mysterio at this point.
Yeah. And you obviously like judgment day of a quite weak compared to where they used to be. So whatever they're planning on doing, be intriguing to know.
Obviously this is where you've got Dom saying, look, dude, we need more people and Finn's like, no, we don't. So are we going to see Finn get kicked out of the judgment day or leave the judgment day and then Dom gone a bit of a recruiting sash?
I think we might do, you know, it'd be interesting to find out who it is they're going to try and recruit into the judgment day. Um,
Well, I did see a little rumor. So obviously we are recording this a little bit later than Monday. Um, AEW have released some of their talent since this was, uh, you know, Monday night Raw went live and we are recording this.
Um, so we now have, um, Alistair Black is now a free agent. Uh, Miro formerly known as Rusev is now a free agent. And there was another gentleman whose name I cannot remember that was also released from AEW.
Um, but yeah, like I said, I can't remember his name.
No, I can't think. I know you're talking about and I can't think who it is either. Um,
Yeah, right. Okay.
So a few of those have all been released, uh, pending, um, I'm guessing 90 day, no compete causes. Could we possibly see Alistair Black make an appearance back on WWE?
And could he be the guy that slots in to take over the judgment day? No, I personally hope not. I think if Alistair Black is coming back, I'd like to see him have a damn good singles push first.
Or at least let him build his own faction.
There's a, I think we've, we've said this before. I think judgment day, this could be the end of judgment day now.
We've seen a lot of cracks appearing. It might just be a case of, uh, they all tend to end up going their separate little ways and reconfine probably a year or so down the line is something other than judgment day.
Yeah. And, um, yeah, I think there's a lot of fractures in it at the moment. I mean, we see in this promo, there's a lot of infighting, uh, especially between sort of Dom and Finn.
There seems to be like a bit of a power vacuum between the two of them. I don't think Dom's trying to push to be leader, but I think everybody's sort of putting him in that position.
Whereas Finn is very much trying to force that idea on everybody else and it is going to end up with, uh, Finn being ejected out because at the minute he's, um, he's coming off a bit sort of ego maniacal.
It's, uh, it's a bit odd.
It's been a decade, isn't it? It's been a decade.
Which is odd because normally we're saying Dom's being a bit of a dickhead, but you can only have one dickhead in one place.
And that's being you are starting to say room in this tip.
Yeah, this is true, but we don't try and, we don't try and out dickhead one another. We have a tendency to.
We just joined dickheads.
Yeah, pretty much. It just gets worse. Um, but yeah, so we get a lot of sort of promotion for future matches in this, within this promo.
Um, Raquel is in a match next week for an elimination chain, elimination chamber qualifier.
Um, we've got, uh, Liv and Raquel have got a guaranteed tag title shot coming up, but there's no date on that just yet.
More, uh, more fuel is added to the Finn versus Seth elimination chamber qualifier for next week as well as AJ Styles versus Dom Mysterio.
Now it's, um, it is mentioned within this promo that Finn is having nothing to do with the feud that Dom seems to have started with AJ Styles.
And, uh, yeah, I think Finn is very much sort of going out on his own at the minute.
Yeah. Um, which I'd like to see again. I'm not gonna lie. I think he's been held back by Judgement Day.
Um, he's a very, very talented singles wrestler.
We just need to keep him fit and healthy and hope he can, you can work hard enough to get the push he deserves.
Um, yeah.
Then after we spend our time backstage with Judgement Day and Finn Balor, we stay backstage for a little bit longer actually because we get to see damage control wandering around backstage, bumping into the current women's champion,
Mummy.
Yeah. And, uh, they have a little bit of an exchange. I mean, there's always a bit of a language barrier when you've got EO Sky conversing with anybody and that's no shade to her.
It just seems to be, it is just the way it is.
Unless of course it happens to me that slagging match with Oscar.
Yeah. In which case, they're having the time of their lives, but we haven't got a clue what's going on.
It's just that bit again where she's got bitch.
Yes. Yeah. Um, what I liked so much about this was the fact that after Rhea, you know, basically stitched EO Sky up last week by slapping Morgan.
Um, she, she didn't have to try and make this better, but Rhea offers EO a championship match for the raw after elimination chamber.
Which, yeah, we're in really looking forward to, to be fair. Like, I know we know that mommy's not dropping the title, but I'm going to be so bold as to say I don't think any of the major titles are going to change hands between now and WrestleMania.
But they are all being defended within that timeframe.
So we've got, we obviously briefly versus, briefly versus EO Sky in three weeks.
We've got, um, this Saturday, the NXT women's championship is being defended.
Um, and we've also got, I believe, if I remember correctly, Friday night Smackdown has a women's title match this week between Tiffany Stratton and Nia Jax.
Okay. So yeah, I don't think that even though all the major titles are being defended, I don't think we're going to see a major title change hands between now and WrestleMania.
But it will be.
They don't, they always have a title, they always have a title defense, but it very rarely changes hands.
It will be nice to see have that opportunity to open up and really kind of show us what she can do because we've seen her wrestle in other places against other people.
But this is, mommy's the top of the top at the moment in that women's division.
So it'll be interesting to see how much of a match EO can give her and hopefully they don't squash her too hard.
I don't think they're going to let a squasher too hard in all fair.
I don't see them killing any momentum that EO Sky is built by squashing her.
It just doesn't make sense to do that.
No, they won't let her have the title just yet, but they will.
I think, and I do think at some point soon, EO Sky will hold a major singles title.
But I don't think they're going to do Rio like that just before WrestleMania.
No, no, definitely not.
Yeah, so we have that much announced for the Roar after Elimination Chamber, which is in three weeks time.
We then go to an in-ring promo with the second city saint.
CM Punk. I have been, you know, like every pro wrestling fan, I think that 10 year break without having CM Punk has made me feel like a small child again.
Because now every time I hear that music, I'm bouncing.
It does not matter whether he's coming out for a match or if he's coming out with a microphone in his hand.
You know, you were getting the best CM Punk has to offer.
And it's the fact that we don't get a pre like obviously a couple of the promos this week we've had pre-warning of.
We knew AJ Styles was coming back. It was announced last week.
We knew.
So we've known about a lot of the big promos that were a lot of the big promos that were coming.
We could either see it come in or we could.
We were told that it was going to happen.
But with CM Punk's promos recently, they almost, they're not unplanned, but they are an announced.
We don't know when he's going to turn up, but he turns up.
He's one of those. He's a workhorse.
He is pretty, if he's not wrestling, he's there cutting a promo or he's promoting something else.
Or he's trying to get his face on the front of the program.
His own ice cream bar.
He's chasing those ice cream bars.
He's out there grinding the ice cream.
And you can't say the guy ain't working hard enough for it.
I mean, he's making his money and he's making it well.
And we've seen some quality, quality mic action from Punk over the years.
I didn't know if they were going to hold him back a little bit with a microphone when he came back.
But they've basically just, I think Treps has basically just said to him, there we go.
Say what you've got to say.
Well, it's sort of what happened during the Royal Walkout a few years back.
It was, it was a case that they just said, yeah, you're on commentary, Phil.
Who knows?
Right. And he even got to where Treps is blazing.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, that's, that's a pay rise.
Well, he got double duties.
You've got double pay.
He got to ring the bell too.
He got to wear Hunter's Blazer.
That boy got looked after that day.
He made some dollars.
100%
100%.
But yeah, I mean, it's, CM Punk comes in cuts quite a, I class this as a bit of a humble promo for CM Punk,
which isn't something we get very often because he comes out and sort of accepts that he made a lot of claims
before the Royal Rumble that he was going to go in and win the Royal Rumble.
He didn't win the Royal Rumble.
And he has been quite humble about it to be fair, which like you said, it's not something we expect from, from Phil.
No, definitely not.
I mean, that guy's ego is two steps above mine.
And that's pretty impressive.
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, the E also highlights something that none of the other superstars have dared go anywhere near,
which is very wrong brand for CM Punk is that John Cena has not had to fight a qualifying match for the elimination chamber.
He declared himself for the elimination chamber.
He said, therefore he is sort of thing.
And CM Punk has basically taken that as an open invitation to target him openly during the elimination chamber match where I think if anybody can,
it's going to be a case that CM Punk is going to be looking to eliminate John Cena from his last ever elimination chamber.
His last ever wrestling event in Canada, I believe.
Last one in Toronto.
No, I'm not sure if it's the last one in Canada.
Oh, fair enough.
I knew it was something along those lines, but it's last elimination chamber.
But very much puts across the point that he's going to be fighting tooth and nail to get to mania.
He will do whatever it is that he needs to do.
Now, this is where I've got to highlight something to rich because he will have missed last week and the amount of joy that I took in Drew McIntyre's new nickname.
Drew McIntyre.
Just because I was ill does not stop me from watching LA Night videos on TikTok.
Yeah.
Yeah, the fact that that is that is now McIntyre's new name.
It was only a few occasions where I will call him anything else, but McIntyre is the one at the minute.
Still not going to say I'd call it to his face though.
I'd give it a good go.
He'd knock my shit out.
He'd knock my shit out too, but only if he can fucking catch me.
I mean, have you seen the speed that guy can run running outside of the ring?
I'm not even going to run fast.
You just have to run long enough for me to get winded.
Or find a tray of hot cross buns.
Yeah, pretty much.
As long as they're not being eaten directly out of the packet, you fucking heathen.
Mate, do you know how much hate that TikTok got?
Brilliant.
It was our, if professional wrestlers used social media as much as they possibly could,
that TikTok would have put so much heat on me.
It would have been a real eating a dry hot cross bun straight out of the packet.
Well, considering the fact that we're talking about social media and wrestling and wrestlers,
we may as well come to the next part of this promo, which was Logan Paul.
Can we not just forget about the rest of this and just call it that?
Up until this point, so far, Raw has been half decent.
Not amazing. It's been half decent, but unfortunately,
because Logan Paul makes up the main event match, we have to cover him at least a little bit.
So, yeah, again, though, someone else had to ask whose music that was.
Well, have you listened to the lyrics of the song that he comes out to?
I haven't, no.
It's all about the fact that he, Logan Paul, is humble.
Oh, shit.
Oh, okay. Yeah, we know there are several things.
Logan Paul and Logan Paul are not two words that I would put in a sentence together
unless they come on either side of is not.
I mean, there's two other words I could fit on the end of that sentence, too.
Logan Paul is not a professional wrestler. He bought himself and that is that.
Yes, we both have our own very it.
Logan Paul, like the Miz and Charlotte Flair is somebody that we agree that we that for many reasons we dislike him.
Apart from you did make me feel like a bit of a prick disliking Miz yesterday morning when you sent me that video of
the art of him buying all the writers dinner because he wasn't they weren't allowed to the WrestleMania after party.
I was like, why'd you have to send me that? I've got so many like him a little bit.
And that's a bit harsh.
Yeah, I know. I saw it. I had to share it with somebody else and you're the only person I could think of.
So yeah, so Logan Paul comes out.
Punk has to ask whose music it is and to be quite honest, I think everybody else did as well.
Punk also admitted to forgetting about the fact that Logan Paul had a match.
I mean, bearing in mind the main event.
And basically there's a bit of back and forth between the two.
And Punk basically says, look, if you make it into the chamber, he's going to I'm going to put you to sleep.
And that is the one thing I was kind of hoping would is going to happen, you know, but then.
Well, we may as well introduce the final match of the card, which was the main event match.
It was an elimination chamber qualifier, which saw Rey Mysterio face off against the Maverick.
Now, this is the second time that these two have met in singles competition, according to the commentary team.
I thought there'd been more. Apparently at the last time these two met was in Saudi Arabia.
Yes. So Logan Paul, I believe you may have to correct me.
I believe Logan Paul beat Rey Mysterio for the US title.
Possibly. You know, I'm not even going to look it up because by the time you start trying to Google stuff like that, it's it was obviously a crown jewel last year.
Yes, I believe so.
Oh, no, I'm all right. OK, I've got it.
But while he's looking that up, Logan Paul from the very get go in this match very on brand for him.
He was disrespectful.
I mean, we don't generally tend to tolerate tolerate a lot of disrespect for legends on this on this podcast.
And Rey Mysterio is one that we're both particularly fond of. And yeah.
Rey Mysterio is someone that I think the two of us have been watching since we were just outside of Nappy's.
So to see Logan Paul have that sort of this level of disrespect towards a Hall of Fame was our mix.
We just want to slap the lip right off his face.
I mean, we didn't have to do that at all because Rey Mysterio gets some really early momentum here and put Logan Paul very much on the sort of back foot.
However, he sort of manages to get Logan Paul manages to gain a bit of space after pleading with the ref about the fact that the ref not really he didn't feel like the ref was counting the match properly,
especially when it came to being stuck in a corner with Rey Mysterio wailing on him.
I personally could have watched that all night.
Screw the ref, screw the rules, just have Rey Mysterio kick the shit out of fucking Logan Paul.
Ty's like Ty's arms behind his back so he can't defend himself. I fucking love that.
But yeah, we see, I mean, I have to give credit where credit is due as much as we will both say that Logan Paul is not a professional wrestler.
He bought his spot. He hasn't paid his dues. He hasn't done the Indies.
He's going straight in at the big leagues and as fair enough, if we look at, if we take the fact that he's Logan Paul out of the equation,
some of the matches that I've seen in wrestle have been of a decent quality, I will say.
And I may have to throw up after saying that, but there was a point where Logan Paul does a,
I've characterized it as like a moonsault crossed with a fallaway slam.
I think he did this off the top rope and it was, I've got to admit it was impressive.
I mean, are you really put me in a tough spot? You bastard.
Logan Paul has a range of moves that you would not necessarily expect from a guy who's bought his space, right?
He has got the ability and we've seen it time and time again where he does go high and he will, he will take some bumps.
One of the ones I really don't want to use this phrase, but one of the ones I enjoy watching him do is the moonsault off the second, off the top rope.
He uses, like he jumps from the base onto the top rope and then uses the top rope to basically launch himself into a moonsault halfway across whatever area he's going for to be fair.
He's hit that from the outside to the inside, the inside to the outside, from the outside to the outside. He's hit it everywhere.
When he does get it right, he gets it right. When he doesn't get it right, he just looks like a twat that's not allowed in Japan.
Yeah. But again, we saw some classic Rey Mysterio, classic Rey Mysterio sort of swinging DDT.
So, because the level of the long run is in a 619 than I thought it would take normally, but it's one of those that's really bad about it.
So, Rey has two attempts at hitting a 619. The first one is sort of foiled by a big boot. The second one he hits, but he's unable to complete the full 619 in my opinion,
it's always been referred to by dropping the dime. And yeah, it's... I mean, Rey even manages to hit a sit-out powerbomb for a two count.
Now, this isn't something we see from Rey Mysterio very often. He's very sort of fast, agile, he doesn't normally go in for the ground and pound sort of style that a sit-out powerbomb dictates.
So, for him to have hit something like that, I found at least noteworthy.
But Logan Paul seems to hit what... I'm assuming it's some kind of new move, which is like a...
Pulverizer.
Again, I've characterised it as a flip-out face buster, which was lovingly named the Pulverizer and ends up getting a pinfall win.
So, it's a bit of a over-Rey Mysterio to become the fourth man to go to the chamber.
Yeah, as much as we will both sit here and go, yeah, it's Logan Paul. That new finisher was actually half decent.
I've watched it a few times on social media afterwards from different angles. It doesn't look too bad.
For someone who... he's just signed a new contract in me, so he's basically going full-time now for the next 12 months, I believe.
I'm going to... again, can't really believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually going to cut the guy a bit of slack and give him the benefit of the dull.
When it comes to elimination chamber, I don't think he's going to be the first person eliminated, but I don't think he's going to win it.
Do I think he deserves a WrestleMania spot this year? Probably not, because we've not seen a huge amount of him.
But in the next 12 months, if they can book him and book him well, keep his storylines fresh, we might actually have an opportunity to...
We should see him in next year's WrestleMania with a title defence at WrestleMania.
I'm not saying a heavyweight title defence. I'm saying maybe ICUS or a tag title. Nothing...
No, I don't think we'll see him as part of a tag team, because he'd have to find somebody that he gets on with well enough to be able to team up with.
Someone else is hating him as much as he is. We can team him with the Miz.
Yeah, they're on the wrong promotions. Miz is on SmackDown and Paul's on Raw.
Just send a text to him and I'll look for it.
But yeah, so Logan Paul becomes the fourth man to go to the elimination chamber.
But in the closing seconds of Raw, we see the new day attack Rey Mysterio in the middle of the ring, literally closing moments of Raw.
And I actually had to go to social media to find fan footage of after that as the attack continued.
And I believe, I can't remember off the top of my head, but I believe somebody did come to Rey Mysterio's defence and it was Penta.
That's a bit tasty.
I know, right?
I didn't see that, so I must have done my normal...
Oh, that's the end of the match. Boom! I'm out, I need the loot.
And missed the last 60 seconds of that one.
Penta's in Rey Mysterio.
I mean, one thing you will have missed in your time away though, Rich, is the new day have taken on a...
Obviously, it's not news that they've taken on a new persona, but they've definitely taken on a new ring entrance theme video and new ring gear as well, which isn't half bad.
Okay, okay.
I mean, I must admit, we've heard that this is a new day. Yes, it is. A lot over the last decade. A lot.
It might be a good thing, I suppose.
It's certainly solidifying their heel turn, in my opinion.
But yeah, but that brings us to sort of the end of Raw. As I said, we've certainly...
Certainly, the word I'm looking for...
...digressed a lot during this match, but it's...
I mean, we've had fun doing it.
Certainly, I digressed a lot during this episode, but it's been good to have your back, mate, honestly.
It's never the same without you.
It's definitely given me a little bit of a...
The last week has been so boring.
It's sat on my ass on the couch, not being able to even concentrate on the phone.
It's been poor, so to be able to feel like I'm back at a point where I can crack back in and crack back on, there's definitely been a nice one.
Yeah, so...
No, it's all good, bro. All good.
So, next episode that we come out with will be, Finishes and Factions does NXT.
And this will be the last NXT Before Vengeance Day.
So, that will be...
Well, we'll be recording that shortly, and it'll be something that you'll be listening to shortly as well.
So, yeah, until then.
It's a good night from me and a good night from him as well.
But no, look forward to seeing you guys when we do Finishes and Factions does NXT.
See you in NXT. Have a good one.