Welcome to the ring, it's rich and atom.
Breaking down the fights with flair and passion.
Tag teams grappling, belts are clashing.
Finishes and factions catching action.
Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of finishes and factions does Monday night raw.
I am rich and with me today is my co-host Adam.
Thank you very much and tonight we see Monday night raw coming to us from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Charlotte, North Carolina has hosted now 14 Monday night raws since 1999.
And at this specific arena, which I haven't actually made a note of,
we have an attendance tonight of 15,280 people, which for a Monday night raw is definitely higher than it's been for the last couple of weeks.
Yeah, definitely.
It's a bit of a mixed bag for raw this week. I'm not going to lie, there are some bits that I like, some bits that I wasn't overly fond of, but either way we're furthering on the story.
Oh yeah, definitely. We're at a point now where WrestleMania is not too far away. We've got less than 10 episodes to go until we have each of the programming until we get to WrestleMania.
So we're just trying to fill all the gaps in the story here and kind of build off towards elimination chamber in just over two weeks time.
Yeah, most definitely. And just for anybody keeping track, it was the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I was in the middle of having a quick Google to see if I could find it.
But I was a step ahead of you, my friends, step ahead of you. But we start tonight's raw with a VT raw recap from two weeks ago, which takes us all the way back to the Monday night raw after the Royal Rumble.
And this is all focused around Kevin Owens attacking Sami Zayn right in the middle of the ring.
And I'm surprised Kevin Owens could even move the night after Royal Rumble.
Like that Alabama slammer through the ladder from Cody Rhodes to finish that match was that had finished many a man.
But the fact that he was out here, well, what two nights later, kicking the living hell out of Sami Zayn shows some just shows how kind of mental this guy is.
Yeah. And he was far, far from 100%.
I mean, I don't think anybody's going to be 100% after being put pretty much neck first through a steel ladder.
But yeah, I mean, but we we actually have Sami Zayn in the building tonight, which is we've not seen Sami Zayn for about really since that the package pile driver.
Yeah.
So it was nice to see him wondering around.
We saw Sami Zayn in a VT last week last week where or it might even have been a smackdown.
I'm struggling to remember quite at this moment.
But we saw some we saw Sami Zayn in a VT where he was talking about his injuries.
He was talking about how that attack from Kevin Owens has made him feel.
And we're getting more of the same sort of tonight.
It's a case that Sami's coming out and acknowledging the fact that him and Kevin Owens fighting it out over anything and everything is.
It is pretty much old hat.
We sort of know what we're going to get.
And I mean, you can see with with what Sami the way Sami was sort of walking around and what Sami was saying is that.
It did not matter what he was told.
This is what he wants and he's going to make sure he let he get to.
Which is nice to see from Sami.
We've been saying for weeks, months, years, the guy in the guy can go.
He can fight when he needs to fight.
But you've got to give him really back like he's got to be really back to the ropes.
He's on death's door before you really see what Sami Zayn is capable of dipping, which is a shame because he is a hell of a talented talent.
I'm not sure.
There's probably better ways I could have thought.
Yeah, Sami Zayn is probably one of.
I'm going to throw out there probably one of the most underutilized talent on WWE at the moment purely for the fact that we know what we expect to get from him.
We're going to see a lot more of that in the build up to what has been announced that we're going to not be announced as of yet.
We all know what's coming when it comes to these two, whether they meet at Elimination Chamber or meet at WrestleMania, they're going to meet somewhere and it's going to go off like a ticking time bomb.
Well, I actually spoke to you about this off podcast and I had to sort of remind you that you very much called what happens with what happens or what kind of match they're going into.
Because as we see Sami Zayn sort of getting really fired up around this match at Elimination Chamber, that Kevin Owens has sort of really does.
We see a rare. Kevin Owens wants it too.
So I've got goosebumps thinking about what's coming down here.
The only person that had to sign off on this made his way into the ring, which was a rare appearance from the Raw General Manager, Adam Pearce.
We don't see Adam Pearce as much as we see like Ava and the guy from SmackDown whose name I can't remember off the top of my head.
Nick Aldous.
That's the one.
See, I would make an argument for the fact that out of the three General Managers for each brand, we see Adam Pearce the least.
Yes.
And you see Ava the most.
It is a rare occasion. Yeah, we see Ava the most closely followed by Nick Aldous.
But Adam Pearce very much stays in the background. He doesn't make very many on camera appearances and very even fewer appearances coming down into the ring, which...
No.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, these guys have gone all out in unsanctioned matches before and it's not outside the realm of possibility that it could happen all over again.
So, yeah, we've got Sami versus Kevin in Toronto in an unsanctioned match, which basically means that there's no ref, there's no rules, there's no ring out, there's no pinfall, there's no submission.
These guys are leaving Toronto on stretchers.
Yeah, it's going to be an all out war. And that is probably the best way of doing it. It's nice to be able to...
We don't see a lot in WWE these days of what I like to refer to as those once in a lifetime matches.
We see a lot of very good quality matches, but we do get two people that have come up from the pool halls of their hometowns together through to what is going to be one of the last pay-per-view before WrestleMania.
These guys are going to put on one hell of a show no matter what happens, but I think it is going to be one of the most brutal matches we might see on WWE TV for a while.
Yeah, 100%. We are going to see colour, we're going to see so many broken in chairs.
I'm barbed wire. The possibilities are endless.
There's going to be all manner of absolute gruesomeness during this match.
I've got a feeling it's going to get to a point where it may even be sort of uncomfortable to watch to a certain degree.
I'm hoping so.
If WWE let them do what we would like to see them do, it would be a match that you would not see.
You'd see it week in, week out on AEW, but with the pure aggressive style of wrestling they use over there, especially with Jon Moxley, this could possibly be a contender for beating Moxley at his own game.
Yeah, very much so. But we're going to save speculation on Sammian Kevin as we've got loads more to cover during this episode of Monday Night Raw.
And unusually we're going to actually go to a SmackDown recap for the next little bit where we get the latest update on Jade Cargill and the assault that she suffered months ago.
And this was the security footage that came to light during SmackDown of what appeared to be Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez skulking around the parking lot where Jade was basically being loaded into the back of an ambulance and hasn't been seen since.
And this was basically just to remind us that we've got Naomi and Bianca Belair in Charlotte, North Carolina as we watch this episode on the hunt for both Morgan and Rodriguez.
Yeah, I mean, if Morgan and Rodriguez are the ones that gave Jade Cargill the kick in, that was a hell of a kick in. We've been doing this, we haven't missed an episode of programmed WWE since the Netflix debut.
And we haven't seen Jade Cargill since then. So that's a good sort of like six, seven weeks of injury time for her. So she's going to be pissed when she comes back.
Oh, 100%. This is a woman I used to watch in AEW. She is nobody to be messed with. And yeah, when she comes back, she's going to come back with a bang. And I'm actually, there's a part of me that would be completely unsurprised that...
So, I'd rather keep... Well, technically, isn't Jade Cargill still a tag champion? Because her and Bianca Belair held the titles before her injury, where Bianca pulled Naomi up to kind of help her out for a little bit.
Well, this is where I want to discuss a theory I've got. And I've been sort of percolating this one for a little while.
Is this the same theory that I've had where possibly we're going to see Jade Cargill join back in with Bianca Belair and Naomi and then they'll all hold it under the free bird ruling?
No. That would be an interesting theory. I've got it. It's more of a story based theory for me.
I'm interested. What have we got? So, obviously, with this new security footage, we see somebody that looks a lot like Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez having skulking around, but never actually see in that footage anything on Jade Cargill.
But one person benefited more so than anybody else from Jade Cargill. Yeah.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Naomi heel turn on Jade Cargill's return as Jade Cargill reveals that the person that actually put her out of action for all that time is Naomi.
Oh, that's a dirty shower. I like it. You heard it here on finishes and factions. First guys, Adam reckons we are about to see a Naomi heel turn.
That is a good shot. I like that.
I'm just thinking that would be peak sort of, yeah, there's a mustard on that mate.
A little bit of jalapenos to go on the top as well. That's spicy. I like it.
But off the back of this little VT recap, we actually go, we cut to the judgment day chilling out in this clubhouse. They seem to build themselves no matter where they are.
I found this little clubhouse.
It's a little section quite funny, right? Because on the TV screen, they're playing 2K24 in their little clubhouse. And yet Carlito is on about, well, he's bitching about having to spend the $5 for the DLC.
But 2K25 is not that far away. Surely Carlito should be on enough money to not have to worry about dumping five bucks on a DLC.
Well, you'd like to think so. He should start buying some of the apples to waste.
Especially if he's just spitting them out everywhere.
Yeah. We thought of that as our opener for within the judgment day clubhouse as the camera sort of pans around to Dominic Mysterio and Liv Morgan talking about basically talking about Dom's concern around Liv getting her ass handed to her by Naomi and Bianca.
I mean, and you can kind of understand there is a little bit of a now you've bought that theory. I kind of, yeah, brilliant.
Put me right off my game.
So if we're still working on the on the process of that it was Rical Rodriguez and Liv Morgan that took out Jane Cargill.
Dom's got every right to be concerned because Rical Rodriguez isn't that much to worry about, especially not for two veterans in the form of Bianca Belair and Naomi.
And Liv Morgan's tiny. Like, she don't get me wrong. She's a pop rocket and she'll go off, but I don't think she should have much of a chance between the two of them.
I've just had a thought expanding on my theory.
Oh, he's about to blow the internet up.
So obviously part of this part of this promo is Dom's big idea about adding a new member to the judgment day.
Yes, which really does not like the idea of it. I can't work out why.
Because it's one way. I think it's sort of one less or one more person that he doesn't have or he doesn't feel like he has complete influence over.
He sort of seems to have bullied Dom into despite the fact that the rest of the judgment day is very much happy to follow Dom's lead.
Yes.
Finn Balor seems to be trying to bully his way to the top a little bit and trying to wall with an eye in this.
No, he's not. But hear me out about this theory. I'm going to expand on this now.
No, I'm all ears. All nose as well.
So, well, you see, you keep giving me shit for making cracks about your nose. You're the one that brings it up.
Otherwise, if I do it now, I can't get offended.
Well, that is very true. But yeah, anyway, so my theory revolves around Naomi having a heel turn.
Now, this is where our sort of Ty, Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez into all of this.
What happens if or would it be outside the realms of possibility for Naomi to have her heel turn and heel turn directly into judgment day?
They're talking about adding a new member. It would make sense then because we've got, we know that Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez have got a guaranteed
tag title shot against Naomi and Bianca Belet.
They do.
Now, I'm unsure at this point because I can't see it in front of me when this match is due to occur.
I've got a feeling.
Is it not the elimination chamber?
I don't think it's an elimination chamber.
I think it's the raw before elimination chamber potentially.
But how much would it break the internet for during that match?
Jade Cargill comes back, interrupts the match.
We find out that Naomi has been working with the judgment day for a little while. About as long as Dom's been having this idea of adding a new member.
Somebody we wouldn't expect to find in the judgment day.
And they all sort of work together to oust Jade Cargill out and sort of set Liv and Raquel up for this tag title shot, which they ultimately don't end up succeeding in.
But it ends up ripping the current tag team champions apart. Enough for Jade Cargill to assume the position back in the tag team champions spot.
Then to drop the tag titles to judgment day.
Liv Morgan, Raquel Rodriguez.
That's not a bad shot at all.
That's an interesting theory. It's not one that I would have thought of myself.
I could do this. I reckon I could be a writer. I could write wrestling at angles.
Especially with shit like this. This is fucking immense. I'm impressed with myself.
But yes, anyway, we've digressed because I keep thinking about this theory.
Liv Morgan shrugs off the threat that Naomi and Bianca seem to pose.
She doesn't seem to think it's going to give her any real issue.
Liv instead decides to redirect all of the attention back to Dom by giving him props for stepping up, trying to lead the judgment day into their next chapter.
This is where we see Bimbala coming in, really trying to assert himself in the picture.
Again, that bullying sort of demeanor coming out in him, he's really trying to be a little bit of a bother boy and get his own way.
I don't think he's really got much left outside of judgment day and I think he realizes as well that he's not really got the influence he thinks he had.
So it'd be interesting to see if eventually, like you said, we do get a new member to judgment day, whether they just decide to give Finn the kick out that he needs.
And it could be actually Finn's next sort of part of his story, could be a grudge against whoever kicks him out of New Day, which could be sort of Dom.
Yeah, I'm feeling that it's going to end up being Dom and it's going to end up with Finn Balor being quite isolated and possibly even a transvert maybe to SmackDown to go and try and gain some courage and favor with either Rhea Ripley on Raw or Damien Priest on SmackDown.
I mean, yeah, two great shots. We know we won't be seeing him team up with the Miz because that would completely ruin Finn Balor.
Yeah, definitely not happening.
I don't think there's any danger of that either way, but yeah, we know during this episode of Raw that we've got two Elimination Chamber qualifiers, the last two Elimination Chamber qualifiers.
For the women's match, it's going to be Raquel Rodriguez versus Roxanne Perez.
And obviously Seth Rollins and Finn Balor are going one on one for the last spot in the men's Elimination Chamber as well.
So that could be why Finn's been a little bit of a bitch at the moment. He's got quite a big match coming up at the end of the night and his record against Seth's half decent, but not as good as it could have been.
Yeah, and the last thing that it so as we sort of come to the end of this little promo, it's a case that Finn Balor starts trying to pick fights with Raquel Rodriguez.
He's like he's obviously illustrating the fact that there could be three members of the Judgment Day who are participating in the in the Elimination Chamber.
We know Liv Morgan already has her spot in the women's Elimination Chamber secured a few weeks ago.
Obviously Finn Balor has his match against Seth Rollins, which he seems pretty much certain he's going to win.
He feels pretty confident, I don't know.
And he starts trying to cast some doubt on Raquel Rodriguez's chances against Roxanne Perez, which I'll be honest, I think he's just trying to take some of the heat off himself.
He's not there to try and elevate anybody. He's there trying to shift some of the attention of him.
Yeah.
But Raquel's not really having any of it. She's like, you know what, you're just as likely to lose your match as I am to lose mine.
Focus on your own shit.
Which was she's well within her own, well, than her rights to say because he was being a bit of a cock.
Oh, 100%, which is sort of Finn Balor's MO at the moment. And this is where we see Finn Balor just really, really dead set against adding any new members.
He really doesn't want to expand Judgment Day beyond what they currently have.
And yeah, they're really playing the slow game with the end of the Judgment Day or whatever the Judgment Day's next phase is.
One or the other, it's either going to end, it's going to come crashing down, or they're going to lose a member or lose and gain,
lose one member, gain another new member and sort of carry on from there.
It's quite a stutter at the moment, the Judgment Day storyline.
But they're trying to inject life into it wherever they can, wherever they can, but we'll come back to that in just a second as we did have a short VT promo for...
Yeah, about someone else who needed to get some life injected into them after Pronebreaker that hit him with one hell of a spear.
Oh, he folded him like a deck chair.
Yeah, this was the VT about I show speeds entrance into the Royal Rumble after... was it Akira Tazawa was injured on the entry ramp?
So Akira Tazawa was attacked by Carmelo Hayes, who was one of the first to be eliminated from the men's Royal Rumble, did not take it very well.
And yes, attack Akira Tazawa who ended up being replaced by I show speed.
You've got to give it to the guy, right? You've got to have some Cajonis to get in a wrestling ring untrained anyway.
Yes, he'd have been taught how to take a bump, but there's taken a bump and there's letting a guy who runs the ropes at 30 miles an hour speed.
Oh, 100%.
Pronebreaker is definitely not the guy to look at and go, he's done that fast.
I could have run him. No.
When you're bouncing off those ropes, I think he is the fastest in professional wrestling at the moment.
And then the power of that spear through I show speed as well.
I'm surprised I show speed didn't change his name to I smell shit because I'm pretty sure that's what he did when he got hit.
Oh, most likely. It's certainly not outside the realms of possibility at this stage.
I'm pretty sure he had everything driven from him, including his soul.
Yeah, he took him a couple of days to be able to walk again after he got hit on his stream.
So, yeah, that's that's hard. I mean, I've played to him. I'll take my hat off to him.
If you wore a hat.
I've got a beanie on at the moment. So that kind of fits.
I suppose so.
I got my cap.
But then we go into the first match of the night.
Where we see judgment day, but dirty, dumb and mysterious.
Take on the phenomenal one. Mr. AJ Styles, who did show up to this week's Monday Night Raw with William Byron's,
who is the back to back Daytona 500 winner.
If you're not aware of what the Daytona 500 is, it is a NASCAR event where they do 500 laps
around the circuit.
They do about 2000 left turns with a few pit breaks in there as well.
And yes, it was a hell of a race. I sat and watched it this year and
William Byron's did a fantastic job.
And then obviously gets to where the golden WWE title that gets given to the major sports guests in the arena.
See, after all of that, all I can think of is, um,
He's making a left turn.
Another left turn.
Yeah, I knew exactly as soon as I mentioned NASCAR and left turns that Jeff Dunham is where you were going.
Oh, 100%
It's the same place I went to.
Fair enough.
Nobody was disappointed.
But yeah, this was born out of, well,
Don coming out last, Don, sort of coming out last week, running his mouth against AJ Styles and
Yeah, he interrupted AJ, didn't he?
And then we got,
we got to look at what we're going to expect from AJ.
We both said last week that we thought he was about to hang up his boots.
Maybe when he got that injury, it was time for him to go, you know what guys, I'm done.
But there seems to have a new fire come back into his system at the moment.
Yeah, I think he was looking at potentially sort of retiring, going to spend some more time at home with his
with his kids and all the rest of it.
And yeah, I think they've made him an offer.
I think WWE have made him an offer for one more run that you simply can't turn down.
And I don't think necessarily that run is against Dirty Dog Mysterio, to be quite honest.
I mean, it could be not ruling it out, but it seems unlikely.
Don't think Don really needs someone like AJ to put him over at all.
No, to be fair, like, yes, Don has done a great job of being a very well hated heel.
Like, you saw that last week when he came out and he was trying to talk and every time he opened his mouth,
the entire crowd just booed the shit out of him.
So he's done a great job with his character getting it where he needs to be.
And so you can tell that Dom's definitely the heel in this one.
We get a nice little face run from AJ, which is, I think something he's better at, to be fair.
He and AJ Styles just does not seem to hit it in the right spot for me.
No, and he's never done it for me either.
Again, I've mentioned before, we've both mentioned before that I've been watching AJ for a number of years,
I've seen him with some of his best years where he was in TNA and Impact Wrestling.
And yeah, don't get me wrong, Super Sight that he's now been in WWE for somewhere around six, seven years now.
Yeah, for a while and he's held some titles as well.
I'd have to go and have a little look and see what he's had his hands on.
But I know he defended the World Heavyweight Championship against John Cena.
He didn't win it from him, but yeah, he's had some phenomenal matches and feuds in WWE.
So I'm kind of a little bit jealous I didn't get to experience TNA AJ.
Yeah, because I maintain that they were sort of some of the best years of his career.
I think it's the same with, it's the same impression that I get from the Motor City machine guns on Friday nights.
It's great to have them in WWE, just sort of wish they'd made it there maybe a few years earlier.
They can still go, all three men still phenomenal in the ring, no pun intended.
But I just feel that they could have made so much more of a bigger impact five or so years ago.
Yeah, definitely. AJ had a pretty big sort of impact in this match against Dom.
Some of the bits I've picked up here that he started off with a really nice combination between a backbreaker and a missile dropkick
followed up by a nice little running knee on the outside of the ring.
So obviously after the missile dropkick, Dom's kind of rolled out of the ring, kind of kind of fucked this.
And then yeah, caught that beautiful running knee from AJ.
It's always nice to see him go for his normal spots, the phenomenal forearm and you see him go for that one a few times.
But then you get some nice little reversal from Dom as well.
He's a very good technical wrestler, but he's also very good when it comes to high risk as well.
But as much as I probably like to shit on him a little bit too much.
Dom's definitely got a lot more ability than a lot of people give credit for.
Yeah, he's not a no nothing kid. He's not he's not there to simply live out.
He can actually do his own thing.
Yeah, he's worked really hard on being able to develop his own style
and sort of really get his own shit in and definitely.
I mean, yes, we do see a lot of tributes, you know, within Dom's wrestling style to, you know, the late great Eddie Guerrero.
We know we saw that again in this match where Dom tried to set up the three amigos.
He got two off before the third one. AJ wouldn't let him get it.
So you get to see him do the Viva La Raza body shake off the top rope
when he hits the frog splash.
And, you know, we do get to see quite a few of these these moves from Dom quite often,
but it is always nice to see the homage paid to Eddie Guerrero as well.
Yeah, an absolute a legend that was lost way too soon.
Imagine what Eddie Guerrero would have gone on to accomplish if he was still wrestling today.
The same as Ray.
Oh, dude, the possibilities are phenomenally endless.
Yeah, 100%.
But yeah, ultimately, AJ Styles walks out of this with a win.
And shortly after winning by via pinfall, we see AJ celebrating in the ring,
then pulling off some Jedi mind trick shit here.
Right.
Because like we all got the camera angle of Bronn Breaker sneaking around the outside of the ring
and then kind of climbing in.
And we all know when Bronn Breaker is sneaking, there's only one thing he's looking to hit and that's that spear.
And I'll tell you something.
This is my favorite part of this this segment, right?
Not saying the match was poor.
It was a really good quality match, but this bit for AJ to just like Adam said,
use his Jedi senses to feel something was going off and move it just the right time to watch Dom Mysterio eat.
What I have to say was probably spear of the year.
Like, oh, it was beautiful.
He ate that and he ate it with custom to like it was absolutely incredible.
Yeah.
And anybody that's paid any attention to social media since Raw went out,
Styles got his very own sort of viral moment.
T-shirt catch.
Yeah, just so smooth.
Do you know what? I love to know if they practice that.
Obviously, they do a lot of different things to kind of help choreograph and get the choreographing right.
I'd love to know how many times Bronn Breaker threw a shirt at AJ or whether that was literally just an off the cuff boom done.
Yeah, that clip has gone everywhere.
I want to believe that that was that was 100% in the moment.
I hope so.
I've even seen I saw one clip.
I don't know if I send it to you.
I remember what platform I saw it on and it wasn't a T-shirt that Bronn Breaker threw at AJ Styles.
It was the Intercontinental title belt.
It's just the way he was.
You got AJ stood there at the end of that holding the belt, not the T-shirt looking at him.
I was reading my letter.
That was cool.
But yeah.
I mean, this is why I think one of the reasons I think we're not going to see a run between AJ Styles and Dirty Don Mysterio at this stage.
I think it's very much styles going after that I see title that Bronn Breaker has been holding on to for quite a significant amount of time now.
I think that is the way it's going to go, but it has pissed me off, right? Because they gave us that sniff of Seamus finally getting his hands on that one title that's alluded to.
And they put it out there and they've worked it a little bit and then they've just kind of dropped it.
And I'm like, why have you done that?
Why have you suddenly started bringing like AJ and let Seamus get that title?
Like, what are you doing?
It's not right.
Let's start a petition.
Send a strongly worded email.
Well, I see championship.
It's not outside the realms of possibility for Seamus to still be in this picture.
Well, yeah.
I just hope he doesn't have to go through a triple threat to be able to do it.
Because I think that would suck for Seamus.
It's just the sort of match I can see Seamus in though.
That's the thing.
He does like being the underdog, doesn't he?
He does.
But we move on.
We do.
And talking of underdogs, I'm just going to throw that.
We went into a bit of a strange VT next, if I remember correctly, with the, was it Julius Creed?
Yeah.
So Julius Creed of American made as a joint team Chromier.
Yeah, so he is part of Daniel Chromier's UFC team in tough enough series.
So we actually get to see another sports entertainer decide to try and conquer the world of UFC.
And obviously we've seen the likes of Brock Lesnar do it.
But Teester's done some cage fighting.
CM Punk gave it a go.
He wasn't as successful as some other guys that have tried it.
Ken Shamrock went off and did it as well.
We've seen some cage fighters make the transition the other way as well.
I mean, one of the most famous of which was Rowdy Ronda-Rowsy.
But yeah, it's important to realise that Julius Creed, he's not actually going to be stepping in that octagon.
He's going in as a coach from what I can remember.
So he's going to join team Chromier on the latest season of the Ultimate Fighter as a coach, not a participant.
God damn it.
I got all excited.
I thought it'd be interesting to see what Julius Creed could do then.
But while we're talking about American Maid and the Creed brothers, we actually end up using that as a bit of a segue into a backstage promo.
Which then leads on to our next match.
Yeah.
So this was, we sort of recap very briefly about American Maid sort of.
I totally classed this as them throwing away their tag title opportunity and I don't care how they want to dress it up.
I was just against the ball ratings.
Yeah.
They, if I really have no idea why a team that are challenging for a title decide to lose by disqualification.
Well, they said in this promo that they were trying to send a message.
And the only thing that I could think of throughout that entire thing was would it not have sent so much more of a message had they won the match and pick the titles up off them.
That to me would have sent so much more of a, so much more of a message.
But what do I know?
I'm not a wrestler.
I'm just a fan.
We're just two guys that watch a lot of wrestling.
Yeah.
And then discuss an awful lot of wrestling.
And even remember not recording podcasts, a lot of our conversations.
If you take out the voice messages of one of us, it's still pretty much all wrestling really.
But we go from talking about the Creed Brothers thrown away tag title opportunity to Ivy Niles current opportunity at the women's intercontinental number one contendership.
And she is facing Dakota Kai for that.
Yeah.
And there's a brief interaction between the two backstage where essentially Ivy Nile, who's never held a title in WWE since she's been in it, decides to go step to Dakota Kai and say that she's not.
This is her match to win basically.
And which is pretty stupid because Dakota Kai was the woman who was beaten by Lyra Valkyra for the intercontinental championship.
So and we know Dakota Kai's got ability and she's pretty sure she's had her hands on titles already before.
So she's never won a singles title, but she has held tag team gold as part of damage control.
Yeah.
So she knows what she's doing with the belt around her waist.
So Ivy Nile getting a little bit out of her out of her lane.
It is, I think could be.
If she's got the ability to back it up then fair enough, but nine times out of 10 when Ivy Nile steps out of her lane, she ends up getting shoved straight back into it pretty quickly.
Yeah, this is it.
And she's going up against in comparison to herself.
Dakota Kai is a is a Wiley veteran.
She's she's known for her high flying style, but she's no slouch when it comes to her mat work and her ring work either.
So but yeah, this sort of takes us into this into the second match of Monday Night Raw, which sees Ivy Nile versus Dakota Kai winner becomes the number one contender for the women's intercontinental champion current champion observing at ringside being Lyra Valkyria.
Yeah, so we get to we start off with the two of them kind of just having a bit of a show of strength.
It's very much like a what do they call it's like a color and color and wrist tie or something like that.
It's kind of yeah.
I'm trying to sort of work each other out as far as I'm, let's say they're both different styles where obviously Ivy Nile was more of a power wrestler compared to Dakota Kai's more of an agile wrestler just trying to work out where they're going to be fair and who's got what weaknesses and what they can kind of use to try and chip away each other, which Ivy Nile seems to find pretty
uniquely working on Dakota Kai's sort of rebuilt knee.
It's quite well documented about how much sort of surgery Dakota Kai's had to have on any over the last sort of like couple of years.
So I've been working straight on that kind of gave her a bit of an advantage for a little while, which is not something you expected to see.
I personally didn't know this is it.
Yeah, it's I'm going to be honest, I didn't get a massive amount for this match.
Yes, Ivy Nile did the smart thing of picking on an existing weakness and really trying to exploit that in Dakota Kai.
But other than that, I mean, the match ended with Dakota Kai walking out with the wind.
So as much as it was the smart thing to do, it obviously wasn't effective enough.
No, you know, and Dakota Kai even walked out with the wind and she like I say she walked away.
There was no major damage done.
She had some incredible moves while she was in a couple of sunset flips for a couple of minor pinfall attempts.
I've also got here as well that she she definitely likes to go for a high flying kicks.
There's a lot of high high leg work there and Ivy Nile was really not quite sure what to how to like the way I want to categorize her is within this matches.
She didn't really look like she had the confidence to be in that match.
Apart from trying to throw out like the big moves, which fair enough, it covered the cracks up to a point.
She definitely looked like she was out of her depth and the level of match she was in.
Yeah, and I just not I wasn't really wasn't sort of feeling the way this match went.
And I've got to sort of put a lot of that down to Ivy Nile.
She was very big unknown and I just I didn't get that that sense from her.
I didn't get that.
She didn't really get much proud on the intro when she came out either.
It was very kind of like dull and yeah, wasn't a huge amount to it.
I think for Ivy Nile to have gotten an opportunity like this realistically.
I mean, the last time we saw Ivy Nile in the ring was during the Royal Rumble.
Before that, she had an online match during main event where she defeated Natalya, which is quite a big win for somebody somebody like Ivy Nile.
Yeah, definitely.
The last time we saw her on Raw was for the Women's Intercontinental Title Tournament first round triple threat where sort of the current champ Laura Valkyria beats her Anzalina Vega to move on and obviously eventually pick up the title herself.
But that was back at the beginning of December.
Yes, we've not seen a huge amount of Ivy Nile in a lot of light.
I don't really want to see a huge rumble.
Back stage why she's not too bad with the mic, but yeah, there wasn't much for her in the ring that made me kind of too enamoured.
Yeah, I wasn't sort of feeling the love for Ivy Nile here and it's not going to unless something drastic changes.
I think she might find herself on the chopping block come the next round.
I wasn't far from saying that myself.
I think when it comes to the next round of releases, we could see Ivy Nile go that way.
But it was nice to see Dakota Kai take the win. So it kind of shows who our next sort of like pathway is for Laura Valkyria.
So she gets to have a nice little hoping it's a half decent feud with Dakota Kai after this number one content.
Well, after that the title opportunity.
Yeah, definitely.
And I mean, yeah, but we went from there into a VT recap basically showing how Jey Uso chose Gunther last week on Raw.
Yep.
Didn't really get a lot massive amount out of that other than the fact that we know one of the matches for WrestleMania is going to be Jey Uso versus Gunther for the World Heavyweight Championship.
And isn't this where this is just more of a recap I think of Gunther attacking Jey Uso when he was doing his entrance at the start of last week's Monday night Raw.
And then obviously Jey's chosen him for WrestleMania.
We really know that Gunther's not going to make it too pleasant for him.
So it's kind of it's the road for pain, road of pain for Jey Uso at the moment.
Yeah, this is it.
And yeah, just it's a necessary it's necessary to have that to have that promo in there.
We've got to keep that that news relevant and I get that but it just yeah, I just don't feel like it's quite served the purpose where it was.
Yeah, we went actually came from came from that to a section.
We don't see as often anymore as we did towards the beginning of the Netflix era, which is the the facts about WWE's relationship with the city that they're in.
Obviously this week it was Charlotte, North Carolina.
It's hosted Raw 14 times since 1999 earlier in the episode.
And then we got to find out a few other bits about it.
Well, Charlotte, North Carolina is the birthplace of not just Charlotte Flair, but Cody Rhodes and our truth as well.
Now, the next bit we actually took to Twitter.
We had to ask a question.
So according to Michael Cole, Charlotte North Carolina is hosted six PLE events.
Now, both myself and Adam have done a reasonable amount of research on this because we both came out and said, you know, we'd like to tell you which ones they are like we do try and do most weeks.
And, you know, and try and sort of give you some knowledge and gives us the opportunity to look back into the archives and find some interesting bits along the way.
But we couldn't find six, could we?
No, so I think the most we managed to find was four.
Yeah, we had judgement day three.
We had vengeance both six.
Clash of Champions 19.
And NXT Vengeance Day, 2023.
So we found four.
So there's two missing that we couldn't think of.
And yeah, me and my in my haste decided to try and tweet about this slight issue from the podcast Twitter account, which is at Finn and Fan pod on Twitter.
So it's at Finn and Fan pod for the finishes and factions podcast.
And yeah, I did throw a tweet out there.
But it doesn't seem to be on my feed to be able to tell you it was basically I tweeted.
Paul of that WWE and Michael Cole asking what they were.
The last couple were and had a response just yet.
So we want to pass this back out to you guys.
Hit fill us in where we got that where we couldn't find the answers.
So judgement day three, vengeance.
So six clash of champions 2019 and NXT Vengeance Day, 2023 with a four we found, which means there are two missing that were that came out of Charlotte, North Carolina.
I've even as rich was speaking just then tried to do another Google search and come up completely empty.
So get in touch on that Twitter handle that Rich mentioned just a moment ago.
Tell us the two that were missing because it's driving me up the wall.
Yeah, it's doing me as well to be found looking alive.
But we look forward to seeing those as they could seeing those as they come in.
In the meantime, let's see what we let's see what else we've got on the.
Well, we actually go back to to Gunther at this point.
So we have gone up in the con caves up in the crowds of like going to get a burger section.
Up on the concourse of the arena for it.
Basically trying to do his best imitation of Jey Uso.
But with a lot less if what he wasn't it wasn't his best.
He was just taking the piss out of Jey Uso's entrance ready to be found.
Oh 100%.
I say he's just kind of walking down.
He's taking the calls the crowds smelly tells the little boy needs to move out the way.
I thought that was quite palsy to be fair that little boy will always remember that.
Oh yeah 100%.
But it's yeah, I mean.
Gunther starts off looking like he's just trying to have a bit of fun with the crowd.
It very quickly takes a bit of a.
Uncomfortable turn in the sense that.
We don't see this side of Gunther Gunther is not the fun loving type essentially.
Definitely not.
And I mean he's even like he blames the WWE Universe for Jey Uso's future blood being spilled.
When he faces him at WrestleMania and everything that happens up to this point.
I mean he's even goes to the point of asking Pat McAfee and Michael Cole if they honestly believe that Jake and beat Gunther.
Yeah and Pat McAfee took a real big risk here by kind of going actually yeah I do.
Yeah this is it and.
I think it's at this point Jey Uso some snaps within Jey Uso I don't think I mean nobody likes a bully and this was starting to look like bullying behavior.
Yeah, Jey decided he was going to come and well it looked like he was going to come in and kind of just cut a promo.
He was being pushed back by security guards and he's like alright okay he'll stand at the top of the ring he'll cut a promo and that'll be the end of that.
I did not expect him to ditch the guards and take a leg down to the ring and kind of fuck it that's fine.
Oh no he came out of there looking for a fight those refs were doing an amazing job at trying to keep him contained.
One of them lost focus and Jey Uso took the opportunity to slip past all three of them, went back and just basically took Hammer to Nail at Gunther.
I mean I think there was a retaliation for the comment that Gunther made a little bit earlier walking down the arena going performing for these people is like feeding Shakespeare to a dog.
You know what Gunther's very good with his words and he's a very talented in-ring performer too not going to take that away from him.
He can cut an intellectually gifted promo without having to be like me big caveman, me beechew and headwood stick.
He's very very articulate with the way he cuts his promos. He does it so well.
Yeah definitely and basically Gunther ends up getting escorted to the back as basically Jey does his thing with North Carolina and Yeets the Night Away.
I mean everyone likes to enjoy a Yeet.
100%
Anyway moving swiftly on past that we go to a backstage promo where we see Kathy Kelly interviewing Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez.
And yeah I mean this interview focused mainly around the threat that Naomi and Bianca were posing with their very presence based on obviously what we saw involving the attack on Jade Cargill some months previous.
This Jade Cargill storyline is starting to heat up quite quickly so I'm thinking we are going to see a reappearance from Jade.
I'm guessing I want to throw out there and say it's going to be elimination chamber that we'll see Jade Cargill make her return.
But they're pushing something big with this and you can feel that they're not over.
Actually they could be getting to the point where they could be over pushing or trying to over hype their own storyline but if they leave off the theatrics too much and I know it's professional wrestling I get it.
But I think what they can do with this whole situation is going to be incredible.
But yeah definitely it is all going to revolve around when we see Jade Cargill next.
I think the best place to do it would be elimination chamber if they don't do it then they've got to hold off until WrestleMania.
Something like that returns sort of size of a return.
It needs to be a big deal to keep the push that Jade Cargill was on before she got injured in place.
She needs her return to be a big big deal.
This is it and I think we will see that big deal coming. It's just a question of when.
But we go from the backstage interview to match three on the card which sees Pete Dunne versus Pentar.
You know what I fucking I am really starting to like this guy.
But to be fair I'm not.
I like both of these wrestlers.
Pete Dunne is starting to grow on me a little bit more that I'm seeing more of him.
I'd liked him anyway just because of where he's from.
Like if you come from that part of the world you're automatically amazing.
But Pentar as well is absolutely phenomenal.
And with the contract negotiations going on between Rey Phoenix AEW at the moment basically saying I won out of my contract.
If we get to see Rey Phoenix and Pentar together I think we're going to have an absolutely breadable year this year with tag team wrestling.
Oh 100%. But we couldn't have two more different wrestlers in the ring as it goes.
I mean Pentar, High Fly, No Fear, Luchador.
Just absolute explosive Luchador out of the gate.
And then we've got Pete Dunne.
But they call him the bruiser.
He is an old school wrestler.
He likes to grapple ground.
And Pete Dunne's favourite thing to do as well is to manipulate every part of you he can.
So whichever way he can, like whether it be your fingers, your elbows, your knees.
If he can bend it into an uncomfortable position and hold it there for a while just to really get under your skin he's going to do it.
Yeah, most definitely.
We do see that pretty early on at the start of this match where he takes Pentar's glove off and starts basically trying to rip his fingers out of his socket.
It was brutal.
Yeah, most definitely.
And yeah, it just goes to speak to how much that Pete Dunne does enjoy that sort of joint manipulate.
He calls it joint manipulation.
I think we could probably go to the extent of joint mutilation.
To a certain extent.
But some fantastic bits and pieces in this match.
I mean, as we've come to expect from both Pentar and Pete Dunne who are sort of, I mean, we know Pentar is a top tier superstar.
And I think Pete Dunne is another underutilised star, realistically.
We should be seeing so much more of him.
I will tell you something, Pete Dunne can sell a move.
Like, incredibly.
Like, that guy is amazing.
The way he sold the Mexican destroyer that Pentar hit him with was just, well, I've seen people sell moves like that in other places like Willowsbreak and Sellemove.
You know, Kenny Omega can sell a move.
Pete Dunne can sell a move.
Even thinking about it, now I'm getting goosebumps.
That was the sweetest Mexican destroyer.
I think Pentar is here.
And I think Pete Dunne sold it perfectly.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of like wrestling fans as well as wrestlers themselves will tell, will be able to say that it's more important to be able to sell somebody else's move
than to sort of be able to hit your own.
If you can sell a move, you've got 50% of the game done.
Automatically.
You don't need to be the best in the world if you can sell a move, the best life of anyone in the promotion that you're in.
Pete Dunne is definitely on his way to the top of NXT.
NXT, sorry, he's going to go a lot further up through Raw than we're seeing him at the moment.
It'd be nice to see that he does.
I'm just hoping that they stay the course with him.
Give him a continue this little push they've got him on at the moment and sort of go from there.
But yeah, real sort of back and forth between the two of them.
One of the big moments of this match was we saw sort of Ludwig Kaiser make his way out to the ring.
Seem to sort of just basically to come into observe the match.
Now, I get again last week's Raw episode, I believe I made a passing comment about the fact that like Ludwig Kaiser is not somebody you don't take them at their word because their word don't mean shit.
Yeah, if you're standard chicken shit, he'll and he's going to lot that borrowed lion steel, whatever it is that he needs to do to make sure that it goes his way in.
Well, he was out here trying to manipulate the system again.
Yeah, but we knew how we I think everybody sort of knows how this is realistically going to end.
I think it's going to end with Pete Dunn versus Ludwig Kaiser more than a penta Ludwig Kaiser.
It's definitely going to be a Pete Dunn's going to be involved a lot more in the next few weeks to months.
Which isn't again isn't a bad thing.
Would be an interesting a more interesting match between sort of Pete Dunn and Ludwig Kaiser because they are so similar in their styles.
Yeah, definitely. And it would be a big scope for Pete Dunn to take as well with Kaiser.
Yeah, this is it. And I mean, in match three, we see Penta walk out with the win after a Penta driver and winning via pinfall.
But it's a case that it just erupts into a pretty much an all out brawl where we do see Pete Dunn and Ludwig Kaiser focusing mainly on each other rather than rather than trying to go after Penta and sort of Penta just leaves them to.
Really.
And apart from getting involved now we can see which way it's going.
Penta's like, yeah, of course, you know, crack on.
Yeah, odd to bigger and better things.
Next up after this is a another backstage interview promo where again, Kathy Kelly is interviewing this time Jay Uso basically getting his thoughts and feelings around sort of gunters attacks.
And I mean, the big thing I took away from this was sort of Jay's going to feel like he's severely underestimated that he's just sort of basically sick of being doubted by everybody.
Everyone in his peers. It's yeah, I can sort of understand he's the guy who worked is absolute balls off in the Royal Rumble.
He did a good job winning it. Very good job winning it.
It might be John Cena.
Even though it's a John Cena that is not necessarily in the best shape of his life, but still.
And I think it's out the guy that, you know, this is his retirement tour. He could ask for anything and then give it to him and he gave Jay Uso the Royal Rumble, you know.
I generally do think that Cena had a massive part in having Jay so win that Royal Rumble.
Yeah, it's it's Jay Uso's time 100%. And I still think we're going to see that title change hands between him and Gunther at WrestleMania.
I'm not seeing it any other way.
It's kind of got to keep it fresh, I think.
Yeah, it's going to be Jay Uso versus someone that's not going to WrestleMania.
What is in Gunther dropping the title to somebody else, you mean?
It's possible. It sneaks out a third way, especially if you have it where, you know, Gunther loses a match against, say, Cena.
Cena then drops it back to Jay at WrestleMania.
You know, Cena then breaks Ric Flair's record.
Jay gets to, you know, get the biggest pop in the world, sticking a feather in his cap of he beat Cena in the main event at WrestleMania for the title.
Like on his retirement tour, everyone in Cena's last WrestleMania, that could be like a massive feather in the cap for Jay Uso.
Yeah, most definitely.
And it kills a couple of birds with that one big stone, a few storylines that everyone kind of wants to see happen.
We think still do it in the same way.
Cena doesn't need to hold a title for long. It's just him, him breaking that record isn't enough for him, I think.
So if you've only got him from, say, like, you know, Elimination Chamber through to, what's like, Monday Night Raw after Elimination Chamber, for example, through to, like, you know, the Monday Night Raw after WrestleMania.
Or even WrestleMania herself to drop the title back over, you're giving, he's giving back to the WWE, which is what his retirement tour is about with him putting people over, you know, helping them with their character development if they need it,
while he's still there to be able to go right cool. Let's go out into the ring and we'll cut promo, we'll do it that way and we'll teach you how to do it this way.
Like he did with Roman when he had that feud with Roman Reigns.
Yeah.
And, you know, he still gets to break the record. Jay still gets that pop at WrestleMania because if they give him that win anywhere other than WrestleMania, they've wasted that chunk of storyline.
Yeah, they've wasted an awful lot of build and everything else. It's got to, that that win for Jay has got to come at WrestleMania. It doesn't matter who the opponent is, whether it's Cena, Gunther or both of them.
But again, we'll move on as we have a VT recapping the Roxanne Perez, Raquel Rodriguez elimination chamber sort of qualifier, basically the build up to that to be fair.
And once we got to where we are and what's what's left, you know, where the winner of this match slots in within the elimination chamber in just want to say just over 10 days.
Well, it wouldn't be an episode of or a weekly episode of WWE, whether that's raw NXT or SmackDown, if we didn't see at least one, if we didn't see or hear from at least one person during this entire thing.
And that one person that we didn't hear from this week is or this week so far is Bayley. The reason for that is because Bayley had actually a All-Star game this week, which Pat McAfee decided to use the pattern straighter tool that he seems to have bought with him to,
yeah, basically do loafer pictures of Bayley and NBA All-Star game. But yeah, the VT promo that you're talking about was sort of Roxanne Perez laying out her many accomplishments in WWE because Leica or Laita.
She's accomplished.
You can't take away what she's managed to accomplish in such a short time.
No, definitely not. And what she has accomplished in that short time is I think just it's not even a drop in the ocean about where she will go within the industry.
But the first place she's got to go after this VT is into that match with Ricardo Rodriguez. And I think that's going to be a tough match for her.
Most definitely. But before we get there, we've got one more VT.
It's the War Raiders recap from the piss-pull match with American Made last week. And it wasn't even a pull match because of the War Raiders. It was because of American Made and their stupid decisions.
Yeah, it was the end into that match. I just can't wrap my head around it. I really can't.
I don't know if we've already spoken about it tonight and it's not back up again and it's pissed us both off again. Such a wasted match.
Such a wasted opportunity.
Right.
Yeah, basically the War Raiders have come in their VT basically say, look, if ever you manage to make it to that spot again, to challenge for those titles, you just best be prepared for a war.
So it seems like the War Raiders feel like they may have underestimated the Creed Brothers of American Made and maybe paid the price for it a little bit.
But we've held their titles and they could have been worse.
Oh, most definitely.
Master Gable could be getting his wish and coming back to having American Made or holding titles. Master Gable.
I mean, he's not off to a great start so far.
Last week the Creed Brothers...
I think Lyle's not had her opportunity.
Well, she squandered her opportunity as she didn't manage to advance earlier on. But we've spoken about that. We're not going to go back and talk about American Made anymore this week.
As we're going to talk more about this...
Elimination.
This elimination came from qualifier.
Between Roxanne Perez and Raquel Rodriguez of the New Day.
Judgement day.
Judgement day. That's the one. The New Day. That's an interesting one. I need it to be a New Day.
It's a New Day. Yes, it is.
Now, I broke this match down a little bit differently to how I normally do. And I did it for a very specific reason.
So, in my view, Raquel Rodriguez held a number of...
... number of...
... advantages going into this match.
The numbers game, she came in with Liv Morgan, who was at ringside throughout the entire match. So, that's the numbers game.
Raquel Rodriguez's size over Roxanne Perez is always going to be more of an advantage than a disadvantage.
And one of the other bits that I took note of was...
Raquel Rodriguez hasn't wrestled in a little while.
Which normally we would be looking at as a disadvantage.
So, Roxanne Perez went through an absolute... went through a main event match at vengeance day.
It was only 48 hours ago.
It was a main event as well. Like, three or four ways, it never pleasant.
Roxanne Perez was quite active within that one.
Yeah, this is it. And yeah, it just... it was...
It all added up to some disadvantages for Perez in my view.
And...
I don't know, it just...
It felt like the decks were very much stacked against Roxanne Perez for this fight.
She had to pull out something pretty special to be able to walk out of this a winner.
Yeah, and...
But then, when you look at it in a different aspect,
we know the quality of Roxanne Perez is a lot higher than Raquel Rodriguez.
So, I really...
I personally, when I went into watching this match, pretty much kind of...
Guess where it was going from the start.
And...
Yeah, no, as much as I enjoyed watching how...
Sort of intense this match was, I pretty much got it from the beginning, where I thought it was going to go.
Yeah, it was...
It didn't make much sense putting Raquel Rodriguez into the Elimination Chamber.
So, and I can't even tell you why.
I think it's more of the fact that, yes, she'd have had Liv Morgan in there with her, but...
Her character is not quite strong enough at the moment, I don't think, to be in matches of that calibre.
No, and...
Yeah, I'll sort of agree with that, despite the fact of how much of a dominant superstar Raquel Rodriguez is.
It's Roxanne Perez's time. It isn't Raquel Rodriguez's time.
No, we've been saying for weeks as well that we're expecting Roxanne Perez to come up from NXT.
We've seen her making a lot more appearances on Raw.
And it's working. She's getting the reaction that she needs. She's getting the push that she kind of deserves to be fair.
And it was all just fitting into place for Roxanne Perez at the moment.
Yeah, most definitely. And Perez manages to combat the numbers game on this ridiculously well, of course.
And it's helped by the fact that Bianca Belair and Naomi do eventually end up catching up to more so Liv Morgan.
Yeah, Raquel Rodriguez didn't really get what she deserved from this.
They were... I think they probably realized that Liv was an easier target.
And they didn't really... If they'd have interfered with Raquel Rodriguez, they'd have automatically given the win to Roxanne Perez.
So it's a little bit of a... It's a strange one.
There wasn't much they could have done without really interfering and kind of screwing it over for everyone else.
Yeah. There's obviously they don't have an issue with Roxanne Perez, as we're aware of at this point.
So a small allegiance between the two of them or the three of them could have been interesting.
I just don't think it's something that Roxanne Perez needs at the moment.
No, most definitely not.
Roxanne Perez is very much making her own opportunities. She's making things happen for herself.
She doesn't necessarily need somebody to put her over in that way.
No, she's done it well enough herself.
And I mean, it comes to the end of this match and Perez is... Secures the last spot in the chamber.
And this means that the match is now set as Naomi and Belair are two entrants.
They have Liv Morgan as a third, Bailey as number four.
Obviously Roxanne Perez at six.
One more missing.
Eoskye?
No, Eoskye has not qualified for the elimination chamber.
I can't say the name of this particular superstar because I have an Amazon Echo device that likes to listen.
Alex Bliss, yes.
There we go.
There we go. Mine's unplugged at the moment.
Yeah, mine is not.
I had an unfortunate incident with mine a few weeks ago and I unplugged it and left it unplugged.
Okay, fair enough.
Yeah, the women's elimination chamber match is now locked in.
We know who's taking part.
And it's difficult at this stage to discern the overall winner.
By looking at the women's elimination chamber,
a lot of them, I mean, Liv Morgan and Alexa Bliss haven't been back in WWE very long.
Alexa Bliss, sorry, hasn't been back in very long.
She made her return at the Royal Rumble.
Bailey could be a good shout, but it should be one of three.
Bianca Belair and Naomi aren't getting it purely for the fact that they've got the tag belts at the moment.
So they're not going to split a tag up to send one of them to the main event at WrestleMania to try and take on a singles title.
Unless one of them has a heel turn.
Yeah, but neither of them have really earned it.
No.
My money at the moment would be between Roxanne Perez and Liv Morgan.
I'm actually going to go out there and say my money's Roxanne Perez to win the elimination chamber.
The predictable answer out of this one for me would be Liv Morgan.
Obviously Liv Morgan and Rhea Ripley have torn the house down more recently in a phenomenal series of matches where Rhea ultimately came out on top.
It could be.
What we have a reversal.
We send Liv Morgan back to Rhea Ripley and then we come out with Liv Morgan on top.
I mean, either one of those two women on top is a dream for most people realistically.
It is definitely an interesting match idea.
And we can tell by the fact that Rich is stammering that he's thinking about it a little bit too much.
No, Rich is just messaging his wife back.
Convenient that one.
Anyway, we're going to move on from a fantasies and all the rest of it to talk about the backstage promo that happens next where we see Kathy Kelly who's getting about a bit tonight interviewing Seth Rollins.
And we basically get to it.
Yeah, I mean, it's a build up to his match in a little while with Finn Balor and Kathy Kelly's managed to get away with asking some pretty pretty interesting questions over the course of the this episode as well.
And she's feel like Seth wasn't quite expecting her to go the way she did with the questions that she was asking.
Yeah, I can see that.
I think it was more of a it was going to be a case of like, you know, you've got this match against Finn Balor. What's what are you going to do?
Where we already know what they he's going to try and do. It's Seth Rollins.
And he does the same. It's the same sort of heel. Seth Rollins that we've we've kind of seen a lot of to be fair. So it's all very predictable from Seth at the moment for me.
Yeah, this is it. And I mean, Seth Rollins leaves to to go and prepare for his match, which is next.
This backstage promo isn't over because we see Carrie and Cross and Scarlett come out and make their and make an appearance.
We haven't seen them in a little while.
And he goes straight for Sami Zayn.
Like, why is everyone really?
I mean, Carrie and Cross we know has had a bit of a bit of a hard on for Sami Zayn recently. He seems to feel like he's got his claws into him, maybe.
Where I don't know if he's deluding himself or maybe he's seeing something we're not.
It's difficult to say which one, but he certainly thinks he's onto something as he is determined to try and support and tear down Sami Zayn all at the same time.
Yeah, he's definitely trying to make it difficult for whether he's Sami's friend or not.
He was kind of coming in from both angles. The wonderful Sami's kind of he really doesn't get the best of it.
Does he tell me like he always ends up getting caught out or stabbed in the back by someone.
No, he doesn't get the best of the best of runs with it. It doesn't matter what's going on.
He does always seem to catch the raw end of it, which again, is not a pun.
Was that pun intended? That was a good one if it was.
No, it really wasn't.
But yeah, I mean, it's a case that there's...
I think Karian Cross is going to start playing a more active role in Sami Zayn's storylines and the run up to WrestleMania.
And I think he's going to play a part in this.
It is possibly... I've got a feeling he's going to end up being involved in some way in this unsanctioned match between him and Kevin Owens at Elimination Chamber.
It's not completely outside the realms of possibility.
Well, it is one of four confirmed matches for Elimination Chamber.
It's a possibility that we can see him. I would say it's an unsanctioned match. Anything is possible.
Yeah, this is it.
So I think we've got to keep our eyes peeled for that one and see how that one develops.
But we go... Before we make our way to the main event of the evening, we go to Aviti Promo,
and we've got to see... Basically, EO Sky plugging her match with Rhea Ripley in two weeks' time for the WWE...
Yeah, it's going to be a good one to draw after Elimination Chamber, isn't it?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I think that would be a happy match.
I don't think EO is going to walk away with the title, but I think it's going to be a very, very good match.
Yeah, and... Actually, I think I've vastly underestimated how much more of Raw we've got to go here,
because as well as that VT promo, we have an in-ring promo with The New Day.
Yep, we do.
And it was basically just, you know, it was a little recap of them giving a beat down to Rey Mysterio last week,
where Dragon Lee came in to help Rey and open up a can of whoop-ass on The New Day.
Yeah, and again, The New Day are sort of... They're not really...
They haven't got their eyes open to what it is that they are...
to the image that they're portraying it would seem,
because they don't really understand why everybody goes in after them because of how they treated Big E.
Even during this promo, they end up calling Big E lazy when we obviously know that he's out on a permanent injury.
Yeah, he's not returning.
Yeah, if he returns, it'll be for a retirement, like, I'm retiring in the middle of the ring with everyone doing the thank you Big E,
and that'll be sort of like it.
You'll go back to being... I think he's working as a writer at the moment.
I think he's actually working as on-screen backstage.
It's a case that we've seen him do some kickoff show, bits and pieces and things like that.
So I think they've found a place for Big E. I think they've found a way to keep him around,
which is nice to see because they could have just easily said, you know what, Big E, you're not of any use to us anymore.
So we're not going to keep paying you away just because we feel sorry for you.
Guess what? It's time for you to start a new day.
Yeah, pretty much.
But yeah, I mean, they even...
I mean, they've done quite a lot of running down of Rey Mysterio over the last few months, generally.
They seem to have really taken an exception to good ol' Rey.
And I actually went into a bit of detail with this one and tried to...
try to fact-check a few of their points.
I'm not sure I did it in the best way, if I'm honest, but...
So Woods runs down Mysterio as somebody who sucks the lives of every fresh-faced luchador.
Great since WWE.
I thought that was quite a good little remark for a member of the new day.
Yeah.
I thought it was quite impressive.
But Kofi...
Kofi's the one that came out with the more hard-hitting lines here,
where he sort of points out that he's been in the WWE longer than Rey Mysterio.
And has had more titles than him as well.
Now, I didn't go into...
See, I fact-checked this as well.
Well, I did it when you were going to.
Ah, fair enough.
So Rey Mysterio has had 16 titles and he's been a Royal Rumble winner.
Whereas Kofi Kingston has had 23 titles in WWE
and is currently a 15-time tag team champion, having had different partners throughout.
But he himself has held 15 tag team championships.
That is impressive.
Very impressive considering Rey's only had 16 titles in total.
And Kofi's done 15 tag team championships.
Ooh.
I mean, it's important to realise that both Rey and Kofi have each held a heavyweight championship as well.
Yes.
Rey for longer than Kofi, I believe.
I think I could have possibly held a heavyweight champion.
He did.
And I still am really upset with that.
I think that it just felt like a massive kick to the nuts for Kofi Kingston at the time.
And yeah, just don't think it was handled in the way that it was supposed to have been.
But you mentioned Dragon Lee coming out to help Rey Mysterio.
Well, this time the LWO came out to have a little mouth off at the New Day.
They're building something into this, I think.
It's not entirely sure where I think it's going yet,
but it is definitely going to involve some interesting tag matches between the New Day and the LWO.
Oh, 100%.
They are 100% working up to something.
They're just not entirely clear as to what they're working up to just yet.
But it's going somewhere.
But LWO come down and basically New Day run off like a couple of scolded cats.
They do not stick around very much and that sort of brings that promo to an end.
We've got one more promo to go before the main event.
This was a backstage promo where yet again, Kathy Kelly really earning her money this week.
Catches up with Bianca Belair and Naomi.
She does eventually and we get to find out from Bianca and Naomi what the deal is.
Yeah, so the tag champs sort of feel that they've been vindicated because I think they suspected that
they suspected that Liv and Raquel had something to do with Jade Cargill's being out on injury at some point.
Or they've known all along and just not been able to prove it.
Yeah, and then obviously we keep getting shown snippets from that same little clip from SmackDown.
Yeah, this is it.
Which is a very misleading clip because you don't actually see anyone laying the boot in.
You just see Liv and Raquel walking around in the underground while Jade Cargill has been put into an ambulance.
It could just be a massive coincidence.
It could.
It's not outside the realms of possibility for that to happen but we can't always deal in that sort of conjecture.
It's a case that it will be what it will be.
And yeah, they basically just then go on to talk about their strategy going into elimination chamber.
Which they hold an advantage depending on where they start or where they come in in relation to one another.
It's a case that they've certainly got the numbers advantage in the elimination chamber which is a pretty hefty advantage to have.
Yeah, but I think with the other four women in there there's going to be some other allegiances forming.
So it could end up with a little while with some really sort of strange combinations of people within that chamber.
Like I said, depending on who comes in and where and who gets what elimination.
But you might get to a point where no matter what tactics you put together, you might not end up in the chamber at the same time.
No, this is it.
This is it.
Right, well this main event I thought was absolutely kind of, it started off really well but then went quite lacklustre and then came back with a bit of stonking ended.
So I don't know about you, but yeah, I thought it was really, really good.
I mean, I got a lot of notes down for it and we knew that when you're looking at Restless the caliber of like Seth Rollins and Finn Balor.
Despite the fact that Finn Balor has not been on the best of runs recently.
No.
It's a case that you know you're in for a good match.
We've had programmes involving these two guys before which they've gone out and absolutely torn houses down.
I mean, look at the inaugural Universal Championship match was between these two guys and you've just got to look at that on YouTube to know what sort of match these guys will push out.
Yeah, I mean we're staring down the barrel in this main event of the 11th time that these two are faced off against one another one on one.
So these guys know each other really well.
They're there, yeah, and we know how professional they're going to be but...
Well you say that but this match didn't start in a clean professional manner because like Finn Balor and the Seth Rollins straight out the gate before the bell.
Trying to basically kind of get over how desperate he was to secure that win and he was going to use as much aggression as he possibly could to make sure he got that down.
Well we've been talking obviously about the cracks that have started to appear in Judgment Day and things like that where there seems to be a bit of a power struggle.
And I've got a feeling that part of Finn Balor's desperation to get this win in the bag was sort of to in his own mind to try and secure a more stable leadership position in what is the new day at the moment.
Because he's already feeling threatened by Don Mysterio which is strange.
Which is strange.
Inadvertently taken over.
Yeah, he's been, everyone's kind of clung to him especially sort of Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez. They've looking more at Don as the leader of New Day where, I'm not New Day, Judgment Day sorry.
And it's very much, yeah, Finn feels threatened by this.
But I think this is also part of the reason why we find over the course of the last few weeks where Don's been trying to get an extra member in that Finn's really against it because that puts him in a weaker position.
Especially if it's someone that gets on well with Don Liv and Raquel.
He's going to get pushed out one way there, isn't it?
Yeah, this is it. And I mean, Finn could look at that really as being an opportunity to, like the word, to try and bring somebody in to support his position a little bit more.
If he could get a strong individual to come in and support his position unequivocably, then he'd be set because there'd be less of a power struggle if he's got a big fricking bruiser behind him.
Well yeah.
In the same way that Liv Morgan walks around with Raquel Rodriguez.
Yeah, but trying to find the right person for Finn Balor is going to be a difficult task in that approach, I think.
Yeah, because the only person that really seems to fit that bill unfortunately left Judgment Day and moved to Smackdown.
Damian Priest.
I was going to say Damian Priest fits that really well and I'm not sure who won the Raw roster would fit that description, if I'm honest.
I can't think of anyone off the top of my head.
No, but Finn and Coral.
I was going to say there were a good few spots in this match in fairness, again, with the fact that these guys have faced off so many times, we know they work well together.
And yeah, they were setting each other up really well.
It just very much gelled in the ring for both of these gents.
I will say I very much enjoyed watching Finn Balor hit Seth with his own pedigree.
I mean, he pulled it off for a two count, so he pulled it off reasonably well.
But yeah, it's not very often you see Seth eating a pedigree.
I think Hunter was the last one who made him eat a decent pedigree, so...
Yeah, probably.
And I mean, lots of...
Like, these guys pulling off moves that we don't see them do very often.
I mean, I can't remember the last time I saw Seth Rollins cinching a sharpshooter.
No.
Did it in this match to Balor?
Yeah, I mean, considering this was Finn Balor's first match since...
Is this his first match since his Street Fight with Damian Priest?
It's certainly his first one-on-one singles match.
He still looked like he was not 100% fluid from what we know you can get from Finn Balor,
but whether that was just because he's hurting still from that beat down he took from Damian Priest,
or if it's more of an emotional wearing down and he's just not fully there.
Like, he's having some issues with the Judgment Day, he's having some issues in this match as well,
he's been on the wrong end of a few moves that I wouldn't want to be on the right side of.
There's a springboard flying near one point of Finn Balor eats, and I'm not going to lie to you,
it looked like it hurt.
Yeah, it's like...
The one thing I noticed during several points in this match as well is
there were lots of people in the crowd that were using the flashlight on their smart phones.
They were pushing this thing away.
I can tell you why, if you don't know.
Yeah, please.
So that recording of Raw was the anniversary of the last time Bray Wyatt stood in a WWE ring.
I think it was the third year anniversary or second year.
But yeah, it's the anniversary of the last time that Bray Wyatt stood in a WWE ring,
so they had all the fireflies out for that.
I thought they might have bought in, like a surprise appearance from a member of the Wyatt Six.
No they're over on SmackDown at the moment, we haven't really seen them since they transferred over.
But I wasn't sure if they'd do something for it, but yeah, I have seen on,
I had seen earlier that morning that social media, that's what they've done.
Obviously the time difference between them airing it live and me getting to watch it sometimes is a good few hours.
So I always end up seeing a few bits on social media first thing in the morning.
See, I hadn't put that sort of two and two together.
I hadn't sort of figured that bit out.
It didn't make sense with what I was seeing in the ring,
but now you've said that it makes complete sense.
And to be fair, what a match to have on as a main event.
On a tribute Bray Wyatt, he also had some incredible main event matches.
And I believe he had an incredible elimination chamber match in, I think it was last year, or was it the year before?
Well, it's been over a year since we've lost him, so it wouldn't have been last year.
No, I'm just trying to work out when it was to be fair, but I remember seeing some clips on social media of him and the elimination chamber,
and it was absolutely phenomenal. I can't remember which year it was off the top of my head though.
Yeah, Wyndham Ratunda was lost way too soon.
Definitely.
But we'll digress from there.
I am actually going to bring back to a certain point that you've mentioned earlier on,
because it has ended up being quite a pivotal point in the matches that you mentioned about
Rollins hitting Balor with a pedigree.
This was a controversial pin attempt that came up against it, because
literally I put it down that he achieved like a 2.9 out of 3k
to the point that Seth Rollins thought he'd won it.
And the ref actually gets a hell of a lot of stick for this match call in the end of it,
just from Rollins himself, who ends up in a very DX sort of way telling him to...
Suck it!
Yep.
Even the crowd starts sort of chanting,
ref you suck.
Which is always nice to get on over on the refs.
It's nice to see them get grilled such as much as some of the wrestlers do.
Yeah, but that little exchange between Rollins and the refs sort of gave Balor
a bit of a new lease on life in the match, started sort of fighting back into it.
Rollins at some point during this match ends up quite early on doing some damage to his ribs
and Balor zeroes in on it like the pro he is.
To the point obviously one of Balor's favourite finishing moves, the good grass,
is specifically targeting ribs normally.
Yeah, so you could see within the match that Rollins was targeting a lot of Balor's left knee,
but Balor was targeting a lot of Rollins midsection and the commentary team even throughout the match
keep referring back to these sort of possible storyline injuries between the two different wrestlers.
Yeah, and again it just speaks to the history between the two superstars in the ring
that they know to go for these specific areas.
I mean I think Rollins himself had injured it during this match, so that was quite fresh,
but for Rollins to know to target Balor's knee, you're not going to get that from somebody who's never wrestled him before?
No.
Generally?
No, their history will give them both a lot of like insider aspects to what's going on
and obviously they work together, like they know who's doing what, they're probably all trained together as well.
So they're kind of outside of the ring, they know exactly what's going on,
so they know where to go inside of the ring.
Yeah, very much so.
Yeah, but I mean we see a very sort of varied match in this,
it's not just sort of strikes and holds and big high-flying manoeuvres,
we see a fair bit of submission as well as I mentioned Rollins sort of.
Had that sharp shooter in at one point?
Yeah, tying up Balor with the sharp shooter and we had, I had it here a second ago,
Balor trying to sort of lock in a cross-face submission as well,
so they were both sort of very much showing their range, this wasn't,
this was a match they could have very much taken to any other promotion with a recording of this match
and saying yeah, this is what the fuck I can do.
Yeah.
So this was a very sort of CV defining match for both superstars in this case.
Do you start the same thing just a little bit?
Yeah.
That cross-face submission was the beginning of the end really as Rollins reaches for the ropes,
Balor tries to sort of roll back to maintain the hold, ends up losing the hold,
but ends up being set up for a curb stomp which ends up circuering.
Seth Rollins is spot, the last spot in the elimination chamber.
Yeah, and it does look like it's going to be one hell of an elimination chamber match.
I'm definitely looking forward to sitting watching it.
Do I, I don't think I could probably pick a winner.
I know we tried last week, but you, there's so many different people in that chamber,
so many different styles of wrestling, picking a winner out, that's going to be difficult.
Yeah, and I mean, there's a hell of a lot of, I mean, we've said it before, commentary,
I've said it before.
It's a case that these, all of the superstars involved are massive,
like there's massive championship pedigree in this match.
Oh yeah.
We've got a 16-time champion in the ring for elimination chamber.
I think if you've died all the time it was up for the people in that chamber,
you're probably looking at a good, like 30.
I actually did the math on that one.
Oh, I knew you were a junior.
I broke it down, did the research to find out how many championships each person has held in WWE only,
and found out that in total, between all of them, there have been, there's been 58 championships held
between all six men in that ring.
That's some experience.
100%. I mean, John Cena himself has held 21 titles in WWE.
I mean, nine between the other five was a bit of a kick in the nuts on their behalf.
I do apologize, guys.
Yeah, like 21 in total for Cena.
That's not just heavyweight championships. That's US title reigns, IC title reigns,
even tag championship reigns.
I mean, Rollins is a 16-time champion again, going across all of it.
CM Punk, eight-time champion, Damian Priest, seven championships in total.
Mackin Crier, five-time champion in WWE.
Logan Paul with his one US title reign, which, yeah, I mean, he's the least championship pedigree out of everybody in the match.
I was saying, Punk only got eight titles. I thought he'd be on more than that.
Well, again, I only totaled up based on a quick, the quick bit of research that I did.
The amount of titles that he's won in WWE is the title reigns that he had.
It wasn't, with CM Punk, it wasn't quantity. It was quality.
It was a case that he didn't have any short reigns, essentially.
So, just thrown it in. He had the world, he had the WWE championship five times.
One of them, he held it for 69 days the first time, 89 days the second time.
Eight days for the third one.
Won it in July 17th at Money in the Bank, lost it to John Cena on the 25th of July, the next week.
He left with the title and then his fourth reign.
He had it for 434 days and his fifth reign.
So, his fourth reign was when he was very much in his Paul Heyman guy era.
Yes, we defeated Alberto Del Rio at Survivor Series 2011 and lost it to The Rock on the 27th of January, 2013.
Which would have been a Royal Rumble event.
Yes.
So, yeah.
But yeah, enough about CM Punk's titles.
We're not going to do the same thing for everybody's title reigns.
We'd be here all night just on John Cena's alone.
Yes.
Yeah, that brings us to the end of Finishes and Factions does Monday Night Raw.
It does. I don't really have anything to add into this one.
I'm going to think at the end. I think I'm pretty much.
I'm all raw down.
No, I've nerded out as much as I can over this particular episode.
But yeah.
We'll nerd out a little bit more on our next episode, which is Finishes and Factions does NXT.
Yes. So stay tuned for that episode coming. Well, as shortly as humanly possible.
Yeah. Peace out. Enjoy the rest.
Thank you.