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 a new episode of finishes and factions does smackdown.
This week we are in the Wells Fargo arena in Philadelphia with myself obviously rich and my co-host this week, Adam.
I host every week, I don't welcome in mate.
Say you co-host this week.
Say like we get guests on this podcast at the moment.
That's not even going to go there.
That's not even going to get into it anyway.
So what we will get into is this week's episode of smackdown.
Like I said this was from Philadelphia.
So we've had some history here.
The last WrestleMania was just across the road from this building.
You know this is a lot of things have happened within Philadelphia wrestling wise that we will get into a little bit further over the course of the evening.
But what we are going to do is start off with a preview of what's to come as smackdown itself did this week.
Letting us know that at some point this evening is our main event we've got LA Night vs Shinsuke Nakamura for the US title.
I've got this pegged and I know a lot of people do have Shinsuke Nakamura's US title reign pegged as probably one of the worst in WWE history other than that very poor Dean Ambrose one that we probably all like to forget about as well.
We also know that at some point tonight we are going to see Braun Strowman take on Jimmy Uso because that has been announced as well.
Not quite.
Braun Strowman isn't taking on Jimmy Uso, Drew McIntyre.
That's the one and Braun Strowman has a match against Solo's coa, sorry.
And then we also get that into a little sneak peek over something that happened a little bit earlier on in the day when Mr McIntyre himself attacked Damien Priest backstage and give him a bit of an ass whooping but not enough of an ass whooping as you'll find out a little bit later on.
Yeah he started a fight he may not necessarily be able to finish.
But we go from all the superstars coming in into an elimination chamber recap VT Promo.
Basically just recapping action from beginning to end as this is the first Smackdown we've had since exiting the elimination chamber.
We then go into an in-ring promo, an in-ring promo that is well overdue.
The guy's been out of action for roughly about four months.
We are of course talking about the Viper, the Apex Predator Randy Orton returns to Smackdown.
Randy made his return at elimination chamber during the end of the In-Sanction match to help Sami Zayn out hitting the first of five RKO's of the evening elimination chamber.
Obviously one of them was on Kevin Owens, the other four were on the very feeble members of security that decided they were being told to run out into fear.
We got quite a nice little promo from Randy Orton to be fair.
It was basically an opportunity within this promo for Randy Orton to get some shoot work done.
He doesn't just have a pop at one person, he's not just out there to be like Kevin Owens you try to injure me you dickhead I'm going to rip your head off and shit down your neck.
He originally came out talking about John Cena.
Yeah so sort of acknowledging Cena's heel turn like yeah, it fucking happened.
Kind of everyone just felt like they've been able to weigh in an opinion on this heel turn.
And I've had people at work ask me what I think about it.
This weekend at work I was wearing John Cena t-shirt and I had my yiit shirt on as well so people where I work know I'm into pro wrestling.
So I've had a few people ask me and it was kind of like well, I kind of saw it coming within a way, not to that extent I thought we might be getting something different from Cena within his retirement tour.
But when you ask them what they think and they're like dude, I haven't watched wrestling for like five years I saw this clip on Facebook, can't wait for Raw, can't wait for NXT, can't wait for SmackDown.
And with it being on Netflix now as well it's made it so much more accessible to these people that already have Netflix that haven't even acknowledged that WWE's on there because it may not be something they're willing to watch anymore.
But after Elimination Chamber, god damn people are going to be like well I've already got Netflix.
Why did John Cena do that? So yeah, I mean there was a lot of points and he's still making big waves even now doing the one thing no one really expected him to do.
Show up?
No even then he didn't did he?
He is going to do exactly what the Rock did and he's going to bring it via satellite.
I hope he wears that t-shirt as well you know. Team will bring it via satellite.
Bringing it back to SmackDown here we even have Alton make a joke that Cena is just a bottom for Rock.
And then brings out the line it brings a whole new meaning to a rock bottom. Hey that was yeah the most PG wave dropping a sex joke in a wrestling industry that you could possibly come up with these days and it went down with me pretty fucking well.
Oh yeah 100% I loved every second of that fucking line I will be honest.
I mean I'm not going to lie to you I just loved every second of seeing Randy Orton again. We haven't seen this guy for four months the entire time we've been doing finishes and factions.
Randy Orton has been on the shelf injured so now we're getting some of our favourites from childhood coming back and doing a lot more so punk, Cena,
Randy Orton, you know all of these sort of older superstars that used to hype us up the way that like the Usos do the younger superstars for example.
Like younger generation I'm still sat there roaring like yeah come on come on.
I can't wait to see Cena get back in the ring again you know. Or Orton to be fair.
We are. Yeah so he goes off on Cena he then starts talking about the fact that John Cena used to be his friend and there was a very few people within the WWE that he was friends with and trusts like he likes to keep a circle quite small which you can kind of understand to be fair I mean I do it myself.
And you know one of the other friends that was Kevin Owens and you know no matter what Kevin it basically goes on to say no matter what opportunity Kevin gets he's never happy.
Right this guy's had WrestleMania main events against Stone Cold Steve Austin still not happy. You know like how many other people in the locker room today you can go out at a WrestleMania main event with Stone Cold.
I don't think anyone else can.
Yeah this is it. You know he basically goes off to say that Kevin's only really doing this because he's jealous. He's jealous of Cody once he's gold he was jealous of Sami Zayn because he Randy Orton feels that Sami Zayn is a bigger superstar.
Is that something you agree with Adam?
Yeah I mean jealousy, pause, oozes out of every orifice on fucking Kevin Owens body realistically. It makes complete sense.
That's just true.
Yeah there's just there's no way to deny it. It is a case it is what it is. And yeah it's Randy also starts talking about the fact that he's started hearing the voices again.
The voices in his head.
Randy's going to take himself back to that dark place and got a slight theory.
Okay.
It's not quite like a whole theory there's parts to it. But I think with the injuries that Randy's had over the years we are not going to see too much of him in a preservation attempt to try and keep him around a little bit longer.
So it's going to be one of two things we're either going to see Randy week in week out and he'll retire at the same time as Cena does.
Or within 12 months I've seen a retiring or we'll see him every couple of weeks for the next couple of years.
But I think Randy's not going to be around for too much longer.
Purely for the fact that even he's talking about his spinal fusing surgery and the fact he was told you can't do this anymore.
Like you are done.
Even though he's turned around and gone ah fuck it.
The Viper's done and the Viper's done.
Maybe this is the start of the end for Randy and how much we see him and whether he starts taking those big bumps like he used to.
We're not going to see the same Randy Orton we did 10, 15 years ago.
It's just not going to happen.
Age is a fact.
I mean age is always a fact.
Especially in a performer in such a physical aspect as Randy Orton.
It is a case that age is always going to play a part.
Oh yeah, no of course. I'm fully behind that. There are still things that I could do 5 years ago I can't do now.
But um yeah.
Fuck off your wanker.
You're a fucking dick.
Talking about dick comments though.
Randy Orton makes a reference that Pat McAfee is going to be the second best punter in the WWE.
After this selection.
Pat McAfee made a lot of money punting a football for the Indianapolis Colts.
A lot of money.
Not as much as he's probably making off the Pat McAfee show right now though.
Not going to lie.
I definitely swap audience size and paychecks with him.
Yeah I can't say that he'd do exactly the same.
If you could have more information for this one and I could probably talk just as much about football.
Quite possibly.
But yeah no it's uh we've got a promise of a promise of a punting to come.
It's going to be a punt party and Kevin Owens is invited.
Oh yes and as long as he's getting that punt party kicking off with a punt to Kevin Owens plums then that sounds like a damn good way to pie.
Talking about parties though.
We have a little one backstage to be fair because Nick Oldis is backstage having a little party with Tiffany Stratton.
When Chelsea Green and Pipe and Nevin seem to have interrupted.
There's a little bit of a to and fro from Chelsea.
I in the midst of writing my notes actually forgot to write what Chelsea was so pissed off about.
But I don't think it's too relevant.
Adam may probably cut me off here.
But I think for me it was more of a they were having Chelsea mouth off a little bit.
So when Tiffy decided actually I've had enough here you can shut your mouth and if you don't want to.
Me and you are going to go into the ring and I'll shut it for you.
And then was you know politely reminded by Chelsea Green that she couldn't have a match with Tiffy Stratton tonight because later on tonight she's in a street fight against Mishin for the women's United States title.
There is a theme this week with Smackdown as there was last week is very much US title based again this week with both belts being defended in the latter half of the program.
The one match we do get set up from this for this evening is basically we get Tiffy Stratton versus Piper Nevin in a non title match.
So this is just a standard singles match between the two which I thought was a pretty good idea considering you know it kind of rubbed that smirk a little bit of Chelsea Green's face.
She got out of a grin going on going on come on I've got much up with you I've already got one.
Rara Rara look at me I'm so high in entitled and important and then Nick Aldis just theoretically slapped that smirk straight off her face because she knew that Piper Nevin would not be 100% at ringside for her match a little bit later on and that made her look a little bit scared.
Yeah but as always with characters like this there's always a bit of a there's always something else going on.
You really want to know where so Chelsea Green came in talking about well I written down workplace bullying and unconstitutional behavior in the fact that she's been forced to defend her title not just in a street fight tonight but was also forced to to have a match on NXT and everything.
Yeah she's just not she's moaning and whinging about having to work so damn hard is the way it comes across unfortunately.
The complete opposite Bailey on the other hand who appeared on all three weekly programs for three weeks in a row in the run up to elimination chamber.
And I believe yet we saw appeared in NXT PLE as well in that time. Yeah she did she did and in fairness.
It's funny you should mention Bailey because that's somebody we haven't seen in a little while.
We haven't seen her since elimination chamber.
So I'm guessing she's probably not actually that long is it.
It's only a week. This is the third episode that we haven't seen or a program. Obviously we're so used to seeing her each program that it has felt a lot longer but no technically she's probably just had the week to lick her wounds and make herself feel better because she had a hell of a match in the elimination chamber.
She didn't get beat down quite as badly as Naomi did but Bailey didn't piss on Jade Cargill's cornflakes so.
Well we don't even know if Naomi pissed on those cornflakes yet so.
We don't know anything definitive.
Nothing has been said since all we've really heard from Bianca was that neither Jade Cargill that Jade Cargill or Naomi had responded to any text messages and we found that out on Monday night Raw.
We've had nothing released since.
To the point of where we are in recording this episode of the podcast about this episode of Smackdown.
We've had nothing else kind of thrown to us. We've had no tidbits or anything so we're still just trying to work it out for ourselves but after we have.
A section with Nick Aldis and Tiffy and Piper Nevin we end up going into that Tiffany Stratton Piper Nevin match.
Without pissing on your parade.
Not strictly true because we have a couple of VT program.
There is a VT that comes in before the actual match starts. I had the one of the reaction recap from Cena's heel turn written down but there may have been another one that I've missed.
So there was a VT promo for the Punk vs Rollins match at Madison Square Garden on Raw.
The Steel Cage match.
If CM Punk doesn't kill Seth Rollins in that Steel Cage why did he even bother returning?
Yeah well.
But yes we've got that to look forward to on Raw.
And we also had a VT promo for Cena's heel turn. I mean in case you weren't aware that Cena had actually turned heel.
So apparently according to what I've seen on social media and Monday Night Raw this week, John Cena kicked Cody Rhodes in the nuts.
Yeah there was that.
So apparently at the elimination chamber John Cena kicked Cody Rhodes in the balls and that has killed the internet.
I've seen a lot of videos on YouTube of people being hit in the nuts but I've not seen one with the numbers of views that that kick in the balls got.
And I watch a lot of Jackass clips.
And if they were to release another Jackass movie I'd probably watch it.
You watch a lot of videos of people being kicked in the nuts so let's face it.
But yeah it's a case that it's all sarcasm aside.
It is a case that the only reason I've included writing this one down was more to do with the fact that it alludes to a...
That we're going to be hearing off Cody Rhodes later on in the programme.
That is the one and only reason that I have included that on this...
So yeah once those two VTs were done, if you hadn't already realised John Cena's retiring let me break that news to you.
And he did also kick Cody Rhodes in the nuts.
That was being confirmed in...
You don't need a jury of 12 people to find him guilty on that one.
But we go into the match and at the start of it, as the bell rings, Piper Nevin comes off at the gate pretty quickly.
And we see a variety of different sort of moves from her to try and show off her strength a little bit.
Where we see more from Tiffy again showing off her gymnastic history to be able to try and either move out the way or avoid some of these bombs that Piper Nevin is trying to land.
It does get taken to the outside reasonably quickly which is not something Tiffy doesn't like having her rhythm broken.
Where Piper Nevin doesn't have the stamina to be able to keep her rhythm.
So she needs the breaks to keep her going but I also think within this Piper Nevin is more of a healy character for where she plays her role for Chelsea Green.
It just gives her an opportunity to kind of either shout at the crowd a little bit or shout at Tiffy or do something that has that slightly more bad girl vibe to it.
Did see her pull off an aero, quite a big air move where it was like a running front flip of the turnbuckle into Tiffy Stratton to drop them both onto the floor outside.
But it's not something I remember seeing a lot of, don't get me wrong, I don't normally give Piper Nevin the credit that she probably deserves because she works for WWE, I just watch their program and pay to make a podcast of it.
You see more from her each week when she comes into the ring, when she first came out it was very closed and cagey and you really didn't get much and the more she comes out and the more comfortable she feels you're getting a lot more from her, which is actually quite nice.
I think eventually.
I think the Chelsea Green combination is probably doing her a lot good but she's getting mentored by someone who's been within the industry for quite a long time.
Yeah, and it never hurts to have a veteran team up with somebody who's a little bit newer to be able to not necessarily show them the ropes but to sort of lift their profile a little bit, which is very much what Chelsea Green seems to be doing for Piper Nevin.
They do keep hinting every now and again at the fact that they need to expand the secret her this.
Well, that's not something we need to talk about just yet.
No, not just yet, but yeah, so fantastic matches it goes between Piper Nevin and Tiffany Stratner. I certainly wasn't angry at this match.
Did you know it's the first time they've ever faced each other in a singles match?
Again, doesn't entirely shock me.
We've seen them a lot in the ring together recently. Actually, have we seen them in a ring together?
Yes.
Yeah, no, we have seen them in a ring together. Sorry, for some reason I was getting them confused with the whole nine jacks thing going on going wait a minute. Have we seen this?
And it's definitely benefited both of them. But Chelsea Green didn't really need too much. Not Chelsea Green sorry, Tiffy Stratner didn't really need too much from this match. This was more trying to give Piper Nevin some credibility, I suppose.
It was a give or a boost, isn't it? Yeah, they're not going to have a pin a champion clean for a win, even if it isn't on title match, they're not going to damage Tiffy's character too much by giving Piper a clean pin.
But she still has an opportunity for a cheeky because she's a bigger girl that you can play off the storyline of her being submitted quite easy or putting in a submission move like a camel clutch or something like that and kind of getting them out.
So it's definitely definitely some different ways.
Now, unfortunately, this time, the match didn't go the way of Piper living. It did go to Tiffy, who took some punishment in this match, but did manage to get off a few things that were quite nice to watch.
There was a sent on from the top rope for a two count that she got at one point. She did receive, she was on the receiving end of this.
I've got it down as a spinning bass. It was a weird style slam that Piper Nevin dropped her on for for a two count. It looked like it was like a hip drop, but not quite.
I'd have to go back and rewatch it to be able to describe it to you exactly in the way I can't read my own writing with what I've written down. It did give us a name for this move.
But yeah, apparently my notes say spinning bass man or spinning boss man, I'm guessing that says.
Yeah, that sounds slightly familiar. I didn't make too many notes during this match, I will be honest. And it wasn't again because it was a bad match. It was more so that I just genuinely enjoyed watching it and sort of let the fan take over rather than the podcaster, which never works out very well for me when I have to come and try and read it all back.
Well, the fan in love the ending to this match, surely for the fact that yes, Tiffy won the match, but that was not the end of it for this one. Adam, do you want to walk us through what happened?
Yeah, so Tiffany Stratton ends up winning the match, wins the match via pinfall after a prettiest moonsault ever. And while she's celebrating that victory, she gets completely chopped blocked from behind by none other than her opponent at WrestleMania, Charlotte Flair.
Now, Charlotte Flair, we're not a fan of on the podcast personally. But why did she come into the ring looking like the cowgirl from Toy Story?
I question a lot of Charlotte Flair's outfit choices, I will be completely honest, because I'm convinced that either somebody's got a bet going on somewhere in the back, or there are some people that genuinely dislike Charlotte Flair and will never ever tell her that she genuinely looks like a bag of shit.
She looks old now. And then don't get me wrong, I know she is getting on a little bit, but she's like we're in our early to mid 30s. And we, so Charlotte's got to have, I want to say decade on us, but she looks like she's got 20 years on us.
She's starting to struggle a little bit now. Keeping on that must as well. She hasn't got the body mass she used to either. She used to be quite a musty girl. Now she just looks like a skeleton in the tracks.
She looks like Madonna.
I mean, Madonna doesn't even look like Madonna. So that's a bit of a poor comparison. But I get what you say.
It's a case that.
Dolly Parton, $10 million ago.
She's not dressing for her right. And we've been through this before is that people dress how they want to dress. But there are certain things that suit certain people.
And that can change as you get as you go through life. There are things that I can wear now that I probably couldn't have gotten away with wearing 10 to 10, 15 years ago.
Similarly, there are things that I wore 10, 15 years ago that I probably wouldn't be seeing dead in now. But.
An Aston Villa shirt.
This, I've never worn an Aston Villa shirt in my life. Thank you.
This is the same for everybody. And that includes Charlotte Flair. Charlotte Flair is dressing as though it was 10, 15 years ago.
Yes.
And it ain't.
And I challenge anybody to say they're enjoying what they're seeing.
Well, I did enjoy seeing Charlotte Flair pop Tiffy Stratton in a figure eight.
It's not very often we see people use.
We see the figure four get locked in a few times, but no one really manages to perfect it in a figure eight form as well as Charlotte Flair does.
So it is nice to see it occasionally. It was just nice to see. It was not nice to see Tiffy on the receiving end of the figure eight.
Well, the figure eight is only really a figure four with a bridge with a bridge put in it. It just applies that little bit of extra pressure, which means that it's going to end up hurting a hell of a lot more.
Well, I let Baldi put me in a figure four and that was bad enough.
Baldi was never going to be able to do the bridge to turn it into a figure eight.
No, he was not.
But I say the figure four was bad enough. So I've had some experience with that.
Baldi was meant to have been the third co-host to the podcast, but unfortunately during COVID this particular gentleman disappeared off the face of the earth and has only been seen a few times since.
Not heard from.
So we are.
So Baldi, if you're listening, fuck you.
But send us an email and let us know what you think.
We'd love the feedback.
Yeah.
So we go from that action in ring to a VT promo featuring Nick Aldous, a whiteboard and a marker.
Which as soon as I saw it was I knew was confusing enough, but he had five pitches of the five Smackdown tag teams.
So that is DIY, the Motor City machine guns, Los Garza, pretty deadly and.
That's the budget. And the only reason I've forgotten about the street profits is because we haven't really seen much of them while finishes and factions has been doing its episodes because they've been on the shelf injured in that time period.
So you'll have to forgive me for forgetting about the street profits, but I'm sure that is not going to happen again anytime soon.
So after a bit of a lengthy explanation as to what's gone as to the history within the Smackdown tag team division, where we hear about street profits injury, how it occurred, how they would misunderstandings about said injury and Los Garza ended up being.
It basically it filled in a lot of blanks even for me. So I sat and watched this with great with great intent again to the point that I didn't really make many notes on it.
Because again, it filled in a lot of blanks.
Since finishes and factions has begun, we started partway through this Smackdown tag division storyline, if you like, or storylines.
I'm not sure if it's one or really being a storyline as such. It's been all out fucking war and devastation.
It's been a brutal path beat down after ass whipping after trail after beat down after ass whipping. And you know what, I think at the moment Smackdown is the place to be for tag team wrestling.
Very much so.
Because we get a we get one or two match announcements following this.
One of them is for tonight.
And one of them is for next week.
So next week's match is title match between DIY, which is to Massa Champa and Johnny Gargano versus the street profits, which are Adam.
I couldn't tell you if I tried.
I think one of those want to put I knew I knew you were going to try and put me on the on the frigging spot with it as well. That's the worst thing.
I want to say I want to say the Angelo Jackson and Montes Ford.
Yeah, I think I think we're pretty much bang on with that one.
Try to get that payback for earlier, but that didn't work.
And then we find out, you know, the answer that tonight. Yeah.
We have a tag team, a triple threat tag team match between pretty deadly motor city machine guns and Los Garza to find out who is the number one contender for the tag titles after next week's episode where we have that tag match.
Which is going to be an interesting state of affairs because I'm actually starting to turn into quite a big motor city machine guns fan within the tag division of SmackDown.
And I'd like to see them go through and win that tag match to go on to face either DIY or street profits. I think if it does change hands next week, they won't be another one for a while.
Because like I said in the past, swapping titles from team to team to team to team just devalues the title.
Yeah, so I'm going to make a slight correction on myself because I did actually have to look it up because you put me on the spot.
It's Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford. I wasn't too far off, but yeah, I had to correct the record on myself with that one.
So yeah, we go next into the triple threat to try to assign that number one contendership to find out who is going to be facing the winner of next week's match in a triple threat tag team match, which in all honesty made no sense whatsoever.
Yeah, so obviously we have mostly machine guns pretty deadly and Los Garza will come out to the ring. We don't see all the entrances and pretty sure there was a commercial break.
But once the match started, it didn't look right.
And I've explained why I feel it didn't look right. So when the match started, there were two people in the ring.
We're looking at a match featuring three different tag teams.
Yeah, so over the course of my time watching professional wrestling, which has been a fair amount of time.
A tag team matches always been one person from each team is in the ring and one person from each team is outside the ring waiting for the tag to be able to go through.
Hence the tag team match.
So I expected it to start the match to have three people in the ring, not two.
But it turns out that the tag teams had to tag themselves into the match to have the match and possibly get tagged out by a random 13 at any point because there's any two legal men in the match.
Because of the way they built this match and the way this match was done, I have little to the way of no fucking notes at all.
Because I was really confused about what was going on and the match didn't last particularly long anyway.
So by the time I was kind of like, huh?
It was done.
And it was a really, really strange finish as well.
Like, well, it didn't make sense to from the off.
I didn't get many notes, if anything, either, because quite honestly, without stopping every second to be able to take down 10,000 details, which would have been more of a case that I could have them fed my notes into a computer and generated an AI version of the exact same match.
I just watched.
To within a reasonable degree of accuracy, it would have been way too labor intensive to try and keep up with a match that fast paced.
Especially as Rich said, as it didn't really last very long because...
I had more notes about when the entire SmackDown division went off in an absolute war last week than I did on this match this week.
And one was a complete fuckfest and it was hard to tell which one of the 10 wrestlers was grabbing hold of who.
And this time there was only six, but the two legal ones, it was just, yeah, it was tap-tag wrestling, pretty much.
Yeah, so the match devolved pretty quickly, really.
It's a case that because they were trying to run it like a normal tag match with a team of Gusbrees on the outside, it was never really going to last very long.
Had they done this in traditional triple threat style like we think they should have done, then do you know what?
I actually think this could have been a really half decent match.
This definitely has the ability to have on paper to have been a contender for match of the knife.
If they'd have done it the way that they would have done it, 99 other times out of the 100, they set these matches up.
I don't think, and without going too far into researching it, right into it, I don't think I've ever seen a tag match like that before in my life.
I think I've seen it in other promotions and it basically goes exactly the same way that this one did, is that the entire premise breaks down because it doesn't make sense.
It's written that way, which sort of makes it worse.
It's a case that I'm not going to keep rehashing what I'm going to say each and every time for this match.
We're going to sort of find a way out of this maze.
The ending to this match is that pretty deadly end-ups for all effects and purpose.
Stealing a win over Motor City machine guns to become number one contenders to the Smackdown Tag Team Champions.
I don't think they've got a chance against either DIY or Street Profits, but I'm going to say that I believe DIY are going to defeat Street Profits next week
and pretty deadly are going to steal the titles of DIY closer to Mania, but it won't be a Mania event.
No, and do you know what? I agree with you on that.
It seems that I don't think Street Profits are going to win their title match.
They'll get their title match and it shuts them off.
That's what Nick Aldous is trying to do, is to shut some of these superstars up because he's got a lot of trouble on his hands on that Smackdown roster.
Yeah, it's a case that I agree that DIY will retain next week and then maybe a week or two afterwards
we'll see DIY defend against pretty deadly and I've got a feeling that Street Profits will interfere in that match
and basically hand the titles to pretty deadly without meaning to.
To be fair, Street Profits would be better off trying to take on pretty deadly for the titles over DIY
so if they can help Street Profits, and if Street Profits can help pretty deadly beat DIY to take the titles, it's just an easy kick down there.
But it may not be on the fact that that would give pretty deadly hell of a lot of confidence.
They're not a bad tag team.
No, they're not.
They're not one that I'd be willing to send an email to my mother about, but they're not bad.
They're a little bit odd, but yeah, I can certainly get behind the tag team.
It just reminds me of Fandango and his tag team partner at one point.
Tyler Breeze.
Yes, that is the one.
Tyler Breeze, the one that used to dress up in all fur, which was just as odd.
Yeah, definitely.
And so we have the two British wrestlers from pretty deadly cementing themselves as the number one contenders for the SmackDown tag team titles, which I'm not mad at to say the name.
No, it could have been so much worse.
Another recap of Elimination Chamber, which by the way, we did get one of those.
Another recap.
It was more about the Jade Cargill incident when she ran into the chamber.
Looked like she was going to give Liv Morgan the slap that would remove her lips.
But instead, as we all know, beat the living shit out of Naomi.
We then ended up going into an in ring promo from Bianca Bella.
Basically, kind of just saying, look, you know, these guys are my friends.
They're fighting, you know, and I shouldn't shouldn't really be having to worry about this.
I've got a WrestleMania match coming up against EO Sky for the women's title there.
So she's she's got a fair chunk going on at the moment.
She really doesn't need the stress of this thing between Jade and Naomi.
She doesn't believe it was Naomi, but at the moment, no one's responding to her texts and calls when she tries to get hold of both Jade Cargill and Naomi.
So she's feeling like she's been a little bit ghosted at the moment.
So she basically says, look, I need to find out what's going on and calls Naomi out to the ring.
To which Naomi comes out wearing a neck brace in a very sort of a very sort of submissive demeanor.
She wasn't she wasn't running around like a normal entrance.
She's still feeling the effects of that chain cargo beat down.
She had a neck slammed in she had a neck slammed in the elimination chamber door.
Freaking neck brace.
She got her ass handed to her in a big silver platter.
And that is, you know, from last week's coverage that took her out of the elimination chamber match.
And this week, you know, this was was basically all about finding out what happened.
Bianca outright asks Naomi, were you involved?
And Naomi beats around the bush.
She doesn't answer the question.
She starts talking about how Bianca should be concentrating on WrestleMania and she avoids the question better than some politicians.
I was about to say she should she should run for to be a politician trying to take Kane's job off him as the governor of Tennessee.
She avoided that one very, very well.
And then hit a number of different notes here where I've actually as well as avoiding the question.
Naomi tries playing for sympathy.
There's a lot of tears involved.
Naomi starts saying how she feels like she's been neglected and forgotten before she managed to team with Bianca and that cargo was basically just riding Bella's coat tails.
And this was the point.
Big statement to make considering yes, Bianca has had a lot of success within the tag division.
She's not necessarily a household name outside of wrestling fans.
You don't see her on TV shows and stuff like that.
So you're not really going to know who she is unless you know who specifically watching that wrestling.
Where the same with Jade Cargill outside of wrestling fans.
No one really knows who she is.
So when we look at it from a wrestling perspective out of the two, Bianca is the big star.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
She's been on the grandest stage of them all a few times and competed at WrestleMania already.
So she's no slouch when it comes to big events and holding titles.
No, she's held world title.
She's held like world championships before now as well as and yeah, it's been a few years.
But yeah, she's been sort of slumming it down in the tag division almost, I suppose, is one way to look at it.
I don't think she's been slumming it.
I think she's been working to help improve the tag division because the tag division wasn't as strong as it was before we had Bianca's input within the tag division.
Now the tag division has got a lot stronger.
No, this is it.
And yeah, at this point during this promo, sort of emotions are running high.
We're seeing a lot of tears, anger, everything else.
And eventually after quite a lot of cajoling from Bianca Bella, Naomi admits in floods of tears that she was the one that attacked Jade Cargill.
Yes.
That she was the one that put Jade Cargill back on the shelf for months.
And she did it in a way that would pay homage to her father-in-law.
Because she had her I did it for the rock moment.
It was one of the first things I thought of when watching it back was the, yeah, sorry, you are 100% having your I did it for the rock moment.
Well, I said to a meme, didn't I, before I'd actually watched SmackDown purely because I'd seen the image and gone, Rikishi did it for the rock.
And then Adam went, I know you haven't watched SmackDown yet, but you do not realize how much of an impact that image is.
And then when I went back and watched it, I was just there like, oh, shit.
Because Adam did call this a fair while ago.
This was going to happen.
And we then find out afterwards that Glowest is done that tag team has been finished, which is a pretty obvious one to be fair.
Yeah.
They basically cuts all ties with Naomi and you believe me alone.
Fuck off.
In not so many words.
Netflix wouldn't allow them to say that.
So it's, I found it quite impressive how quickly Naomi's tears turn to anger.
Yes.
Naomi is playing the narcissist perfectly right now.
She is going to turn this all back onto Bianca.
And yes, this is definitely not the end of this triangle of hatred because we, as we've seen in the last few years,
we, as we see Bianca Belair walking up the ramp back to the backstage area,
we, we see on the titan that there is a video like a live feed video from backstage of a rather nice vehicle driving into the into the shot with a
Jade Cargill game out of it and walking basically straight through the back small little backstage area straight through gorilla straight down that ramp straight into the ring.
And yeah, Naomi tries to run away from from the incoming Jade Cargill, but Jade catches her and starts giving her a ruthless beat down.
Bearing in mind that Naomi's neck is still pretty mangled from last week.
We're not even a week before we're talking maybe six days since that she got that ass kicking from Helen the elimination chamber.
And now she's getting another one on the floor of Philadelphia as a Phil Wells Fargo arena.
Yeah, one of the things that I did notice and I'm not sure if you sort of caught onto it is that both Bianca and Naomi came to the ring dressed in all black.
Yes.
Not really something we're used to seeing from either of them, especially considering Naomi is known as the glow.
Yeah, and normally comes out in practically if we get a story like this about how Naomi's lost her glow.
I'm going to be very annoyed.
She bought it off for herself.
I mean, yes.
And it's not the first time that we've had a superstar losing something that has been completely bought on by themselves.
But yeah, basically this segment ends with Cargill having laid Naomi out in the middle of the ring.
And yeah, this isn't done by a long shot.
Yeah, no, it's it finishes with J Cargill.
I'm standing over Naomi's body giving us some absolute shit.
We didn't get to hear what was said. There was no microphones involved, but J Cargill still looked like she gone make someone burn for what they did.
So I think we're seeing a possibly night to mid card match between between Naomi and Jade Cargill to settle the beef there.
And that all sort of bring that that little bit maybe to a close.
But I also think that we're going to see a Naomi interference in the Bianca Belair match in the Bianca Belair match and that will set up the feud for them.
So I've got a feeling that as we've said before, even on this episode, changing titles too often devalues the title itself.
Now, Bianca Belair is going on to face EO Sky at WrestleMania for the women's world title that she has only one within the last week.
I is not going to drop that title at Mania in an app.
I think I'm going to disagree with you.
You think?
Yeah, so I think the original feud between Naomi and Jade Cargill, the winner of that feud, however you put it, will go on to face Bianca, obviously.
But I think it will keep it relevant. They'll give Bianca the title at WrestleMania so that then becomes a title storyline where they focus on the fact that Naomi tried splitting up or Naomi split up the tag team.
If Jade Cargill can't have, for example, if Jade Cargill beats Naomi, it will go she'll go on to face Bianca, but it will be a little bit of a can't have the tag titles.
I'm going to have your title. You know, you cost me that tag title by setting this up.
You know, I'm taking your title from you and I'll give that one, which I don't think they'll have Bianca drop it to Jade, but I think she'll hold it for a while. But it will be a title run, a title contention run for Jade Cargill just to see if the crowd like what she can do.
Yeah, maybe.
And then we'll answer up for future main events and stuff like that just to see what they can push.
It certainly holds a lot of ground. I can't deny that. I think we're just going to have to wait and see how this all sort of pandas are.
And we're just speculating just as much as you guys are about what's what's going to happen. But one thing we do know happened was that Drew McIntyre and Damien Priest had a little bit of an issue this morning that involved drew given Damien a little bit of a wake up
call and a slight ass kicking. And so we got a slight recap of that. And then we actually saw Byron Saxton backstage asking Drew about his attack and whether whether it was deserved or not.
And then Drew kind of gives us his standard McIntyre response.
Yeah, so I think we've skipped over a few bits here. So there's a few bits that I want to sort of cycle back to, but we'll finish this little breakdown of this little break this little promo first.
So, yeah, the promo for the promo between Byron Saxton who really earns his money tonight in fairness.
Yeah, basically says her appearance contract at the moment. I think he got his appearances in today.
Oh, 100%. I think he got his appearances in for the month in today.
But it's a case that yeah, obviously drew McIntyre drew McIntyre was eliminated elimination chamber at the hands of Damien Priest.
Hence, hence the attack on the way into the arena at the beginning of Smackdown. It's drew called the attack on Priest provoked because of this.
And then makes a comment about going to going to prepare for his match against the black sheep of the family.
Mr Jimmy. So yeah, big Jim.
But before we move on to the next bit because one bit I do want to focus on is coming next.
I do want to cycle back to a few of these bits and pieces that we've that I think that we've missed it could I could potentially be wrong.
So we were treated to the fact that there are some celebs in the audience for Smackdown this evening.
The only ones that were I say celebs because in Philadelphia, you're not going to get bigger than the local NBA team at the 76ers.
Currently not doing too well in the league, but they're it's not going to it's yeah, they're not they're not making championships this year, but let's face it.
Also, we missed out WWE in Philadelphia numbers.
So this was the 24th Smackdown ever to be broadcast from Philadelphia.
As you mentioned earlier on, it's hosted not one but two different WrestleMania's.
I must have been still writing notes. I missed this bit. I've got nothing on this section of tools.
So yeah, it's hosted not one but two different WrestleMania's obviously we had last year's WrestleMania WrestleMania 40.
And we also had WrestleMania 15 back in 1999, which I believe the the main event for that one was at Stone Cold versus the Rock.
If memory if memory serves me correctly.
As well as that, Philadelphia has hosted three Royal Rumbles, the 2004 Royal Rumble, the 2015 Royal Rumble and the 2018 Royal Rumble.
And one of the biggest things that ever happened in Philadelphia, it is the birthplace of ECW.
Yes, it certainly is. We had a few different sort of references to ECW throughout the evening from different different superstars as well.
Yeah, most definitely. And we'll sort of we'll touch on those as things move forward now.
Skipping forward as I have fit in the blanks that I felt we missed. The next thing we see.
We go too far. I do just want to chip in that the main event match at WrestleMania 15 was indeed the Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
And I believe it was a Hell in a Cell match.
Well, fair enough. I've got a feeling that Stone Cold won that one, but I'm not a lot of sense.
He did. He did.
My memories doing well. There was no research involved in that.
Fair enough. So yeah, I mean, for a city called the City of Brotherly Love, it's certainly got a huge heart for some want and violence.
So a little bit later on in the episode as well as the City of Champions, because the Philadelphia Eagles are this year's Super Bowl winners beating the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl final in New Orleans this year.
So yeah, the baseball team, so I may not be doing very well, but they had a great season for football this year.
Yeah, fair enough. I said before I'm not a huge follower of football. I try and keep up with NBA as much as possible.
But I know you're a basketball fan. One thing that we go into. So they've done it again this week and they've bought out a superstar to the ring.
This particular superstar was the biggest SOB, Mr. Braun Strowman. And then we got a VT and it was basically just reconfirming that this week, Cody Rhodes went to see his good friend Lex Luger to inform him that he was being entered into the
2025 class for the Hall of Fame, which I think is well deserved considering when he was told this. He was sat in a room with the already Hall of Famer, Diamond Dallas Page doing some DDP yoga.
So yeah, he's been doing a lot of work with Lex Luger trying to help him basically walk again. Lex Luger has done a lot of silly things in his life, but he's been an absolute legend in the golden era of WWF as it was at the time.
And I'm getting a small idea for, we said, so we've spoken off podcast and I'm bringing this up now because it might be an interesting way of sort of discussing the idea that I've had.
So rather than doing a Hall of Fame episode where we watch the Inductions for the Hall of Fame because time and yeah, time, it might just be an idea instead of doing a possible bioptic bonus episode of finishes and factions.
Does the class of 2025 in the Hall of Fame and basically just go over some of the some of the achievements of the class of 2025. I mean, what a class to have that we've got so far.
I mean, Lex Luger, Triple H, Michelle McCool.
Yeah, it's definitely been an interesting class so far. But yeah, no.
So that might even be a solo project for me in fairness. I might, because as we've established already, I do like my little bits of research that I like to do that I do for these episodes. So going back and learning about some of these Hall of Famers, going back through finding out championship reigns, longest reign, shortest reign, most championships held.
Yeah, I'll be all for that shit.
100%. We are also treated to a backstage promo. This was from Byron Saxton talking to Charlotte Flair briefly about her beatdown on Tiffy Stratton. And Charlotte basically just tells us she told Tiffy that she was going to come and find her every week and that's what she's doing.
So basically she's only got herself to blame and she feels that the women's division has got soft at which point we get to see BFAB come into the screen.
Basically saying she better not be calling her soft and not everyone's going to be bowing down to the Queen because let's face it, she's not what she used to be and everyone kind of sees her for who she is, which is self-absorbed narcissist.
And she plays that role very well by saying, well actually, you know, I'm going to make sure that the women's division knows who I am and I'm going to make them all bow down one by one starting in Spain next week when they do their European tour.
They are in Barcelona and Charlotte Flair and BFAB will be having a match there. So yeah, we get to see a singles match from Charlotte Flair. So that sounds like we've already got a next SmackDown episode to T-Break sorted.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's also exciting to see the beginning of the European tour. I mean, they normally do, I think, two European tours a year or a season if you like, between from WrestleMania to WrestleMania.
And yeah, I mean, who's not looking forward to that shit?
Well, I did look into getting us tickets to go and watch a television recording for either Raw or SmackDown.
And for us to go and you found out that you couldn't sell your ass for that much?
Well, I found out for us to go and sit in the highest altitude of the arena and have to use our cameras and our phones to see what was going on. It was going to cost me close to £500 for the two tickets.
And then by the time you throw fuel, food, possibly accommodation into it, it was looking at best part of a £1,000 evening. And I was like, would you respect fuck that?
Yeah, I'm still happy to sit and watch the recorded episodes for TV.
On Netflix when they go live for my six ninety nine a month or whatever my subscription is these days.
No, so we finally get back into our next match, which was Braun Strowman versus Solo Sikora.
Well, I'm going to make one more comment on the European tour because do you know what really works for the European tour?
What really works?
It's a case that they don't put the shows on to accommodate the American audience.
They have a tendency to they're either going to play out live at local time, either that or it's going to be like they're going to open the doors at like midday in Barcelona and broadcast it and broadcast it at normal time for the rest of their home audience.
It's just not going to make sense.
Because for it to be an evening show, it would have to be early hours in the morning in Spain for it to line up with with the US time.
Spain is one hour ahead of us in the US six or five to seven hours behind us.
It's going to be a case that the internet is going to be or social media is going to be flooded with American WWE fans who will no doubt have a bit of a moment at the fact that it's on so much earlier or so much later than it normally is.
It's like when they did the first clash at the castle.
The social media comments were hilarious.
The American fans that were just going off their nut that they had to stay up until stupid o'clock in the morning to watch.
And then you've just got all of the European fans sat there like, yeah, welcome to our studio and welcome to our world, bro.
Not that I'm bitter about it or anything, but fucking how I loved it.
Yeah, it was great.
I mean, so is this match.
Yes, 100% this men's singles match between the biggest SOB Braun Strowman and the former the former tribal chief solo so coer was an absolute fantastic match.
And I mean, there's actually some back stories of this match as well with it.
It's a case that so coer and Strowman have had a few run ins or they had a few run ins together over the last three or four weeks where solo has been trying to ingratiate himself to Jacob Fatul.
And it's just not it always seems to end up with him being on the wrong side of Strowman.
Yeah, no, Strowman's got fucked over a few times by solo, especially in his match against Fatul last time where he got some moments spiked by solo in the corner of the ring.
But these guys, it was wasn't I was expecting a slugfest and lock and a lie purely for the fact that both big, big fellas, right.
Strowman's huge anyway, but so does the cow is not the smallest dude in the locker room by any stretch of the imagination.
So when these guys started getting into it, I'm just sat there like, what, like, how did that happen? Why is that happened?
But one thing one griper will have with this match was it is not as long as I wanted it to be.
But we had some some huge spots. I've got one where solo so co a Samoan drops Braun Strowman.
Now to get a guy Braun Strowman size up on your shoulders and then be able to hold him long enough to not not drop him to be able to perform a Samoan drop.
Fair play. Like that is three, four hundred pounds worth of impressive being lifted up and slammed onto its back in the center of the ring.
I've also got here the solo so co us hits Braun Strowman twice with the running hip attack.
We've come to see quite a lot from Jacob Fatul.
We also see it later on in the evening actually from Jimmy Uso at one point as well. So that seems to be the move of the week is this running.
Hip attack. He does. Yes, he does that twice before he eats a massive big boot from Braun Strowman and then a cross body.
Like that's not normally something you expect to have from the from the big man. And then after solos rolled out and kind of trying to get some breath on the outside.
We hear the chewing of the Strowman Express come running around the outside of the ring and miss.
It's not very often we see Strowman when he goes for a run for that shoulder to like running shoulder tackle that he misses.
But yeah, he didn't connect with the first one.
But he did connect with one a little bit later and managed to also connect after dragging solo back into the ring with quite a powerful slam that he
tried to get a pinfall off before I go too much further.
I don't know if it's anything I want to throw in or no.
No, you're pretty much covering it at this point.
I mean, the only points that I was going to bring up that you don't seem to have covered is this was actually so Coa's first solo match.
First single combat, which was on the 6th of January. So that was the debut episode of war and the debut episode of finishes and factions.
So, yeah, we haven't seen we've seen so coa in the ring since but not in a solo singles capacity.
I haven't seen solo go solo.
We have now.
Yeah, there's a reason that there's a reason that I use used so coa rather than solo for that that little bit because even as I wrote it, it was it didn't make a massive amount of sense to me.
Well, if solo went solo, that means he was riding solo. Do we think solo knows Jason Derulo?
That's a stretch. That was a big stretch.
Yeah, my brain died. My brain farted for a second. But yeah, so after Strowman hits this slam and goes for the cover.
All hell breaks loose.
Tamatonga comes from the outside and drags Braun Strowman off of solo coa, which then the referee had the ring that had the bell rung.
Yep.
It didn't get his bell rung, but the bell got rung ending the match with a I've got it down as a Diki finish, but I'm not entirely sure if that's the way it worked because they seem to be getting a little bit iffy with their disqualifications on their like draws, so to speak.
I think it got put down as a no contest in that in that regard. But yeah, it's a case that Tamatonga comes in the ref or or anybody else doesn't get their bell rung, but Tamatonga sure as hell does as his little insurrection is put down rather quickly by a very pissed off SOB.
And this is when we see or when we hear Jacob Fatou's music hit as well. And this was the this was the fight that everybody really wanted to see.
I mean, personally, if I was WWE built it reasonably well so far, I think we're going to see the Samoan werewolf versus the biggest son of a bitch at WrestleMania. And I think it's going to be one of the like, it won't be a main event, but I think it will be like the match before the main events.
And I think it's going to be a hell of a barnstorm.
Oh, 100%. These guys have already given us in this in this segment alone enough for us to be able to build reasonable speculation and absolute absolute fucking pan shitter of a fucking match.
Bronstrom and don't back down from no one. And Jacob Fatou has told us all a lot recently. He's all gas and no breaks. If you know what I mean.
And these two are just staring each other like none of them are blinking is and they're mirroring each other's moves as they step up onto the turnbuckle, you know, holding the up onto the sorry step up to the apron.
Sorry, holding the rings, the rope rings, ring ropes. Yep. Just glaring at each other. And then we get we do we do get a fight.
It's a brawl brawl breaks out which spills out not just of the ring to the outside it really spills out into the crowd itself.
Well, they end up in tech at the end of it. So they go through the crowd into the tech area, beating the living breaks off each other.
And well, I say beating the breaks off each other. It is mainly Braun Strowman beating Fatou around.
Don't get me wrong. Fatou is still getting in some, you know, some moves himself, but it's mainly a Braun Strowman beat down and just throwing Fatou around like a rag doll, which is kind of hard.
Not kind of impressive when you think that Fatou is 340 pounds himself and Braun Strowman's making him look like he's tossing around a child's toy.
Yeah, but this isn't unusual territory for us to find ourselves in when it comes to Braun Strowman.
No, we know how all in the front of the bridge thrown around like thrown around like children's toys when he's 40 pounds is a lot of dude.
Like Jacob Fatou weighs twice as much as I do with a little bit of pocket change.
But yeah, there's still a lot of lot of Fatou to be throwing.
If you know what I mean, you were trying not to make an LA night reference then, weren't you?
I was so hard. Yeah.
I got myself some top dollar this. It's okay.
But yeah, essentially they end up out in tech out in the tech area and work their way at well managed to fight their way on top of one of the crates where Fatou was going to try and use it to his advantage.
Strowman said otherwise.
Yeah, Braun Strowman said, no, I fuck that. I ain't taking that bump and it ends up well just absolute.
It was like a meteor cross crashing to earth as Jacob Fatou was thrown through those tables.
Notice though the entire time those two were fighting nearly every member of security.
So every member of security must have looked each other backstage and gone.
Short-term.
I'm sorry if anybody said if I'm working security that night at a WWE event and then to start teeing off against one another.
I'm like, no, it's time for my break now lads. I'll see you in 15.
I don't think this job is quite what I anticipated to be. Thank you for the opportunity. I will be leaving them.
That's pretty much how my conversation with my manager.
Like if I was working WWE security in those two decided they were fighting, I would be like, yes, not really my thing.
I think I'm more suited to go back to knitting. See you later.
What was more impressive than any of that though was after being thrown through a table,
Jacob Fatou was still no selling.
Yeah, I wasn't sure. Was he stayed down for a little while, which was enough to be like, oh, yeah, okay, cool.
And then kind of got back up and just wobbly things like, oh shit, the cameras haven't gone yet.
I'll just wobble around a little bit. Like LA night.
I've said before that his the fact that they've given him free reign to no sell is a dangerous thing to do.
In regard of like keeping the performance alive at any point, because if he's no if he can no sell moves like that to that extent,
what is it really that's going to take to put him down?
Yeah, but I think this is what we're building to.
I think what we're going to get is he's going to no sell a little bit longer,
and then they're going to let Braun Strowman step up a gear and then he's going to be told, you know what,
he's going a little bit stronger, a little bit harder, you're taking a step down, there's no sell stuff.
It ain't no more.
I think they'll they'll use it that way and they'll give they'll give Braun Strowman the opportunity to batter the living breaks off this guy
and show that he's not invincible.
If they have him be Strowman, it shows that he is invincible and he's basically going to be the next Roman Reigns who is the next John Cena who was the next stone cold.
Well, while we're talking about beating the brakes, we'll move on to we'll move on from there and go into the next backstage promo which sees Byron Saxton again.
But this time interviewing L.A. Knight.
Yeah.
And he's still in the house of Bray Promo, don't he?
I don't care what anyone says.
He's such an entertaining guy to watch.
Realistically, this is he is one of the more modern favourites I have.
And I don't put that like it's not me blowing smoke up his ass or anything like that.
He is genuinely entertaining, not just in the mic, but in the ring as well.
He does deliver on all fronts, admittedly, on the mic, he is much is better.
Yeah, but not by much.
No, he's phenomenal both aspects.
There is a he does make a little reference of Jacob Fatou not being all gas and brakes now because he just got absolutely beat down by Braun Strowman.
Therefore, he wasn't going to be able to get involved in L.A. Knight's title match against Shinsuke Nakamura later because he's going to be running off a lick in his wings.
Which is a fair thing to be able to rely on. Wouldn't necessarily be the cocky enough myself to put that out there knowing that the Samoa werewolf is walking around backstage.
He's just opened himself up to a possible ass whooping before his match to the point where he might not actually even get to his match.
Yeah, but you don't walk around backstage at WWE being scared.
You don't because after this little section with Byron Saxton and L.A. Knight, we see a very messed up Piper Nevin backstage in another...
I'm not sure if it's like a live recording type thing, but yeah, Piper Nevin was feeling the after effects of her match with Tiffany Stratton earlier in the episode.
And we see her and Chelsea Green as well basically freaking out that she's just realised that she's in a lot of trouble in her match later on against Mishin in a street fight for the women's US title.
This is the point where Chelsea Green is trying to pull Piper Nevin back together again so that she can at least be of some use to her when she goes out for her match.
This is sort of where I feel a little bit sorry for Piper Nevin because she gets reassembled, thrown back through gorilla by Chelsea Green and out onto the ring ramp to then go and basically crumple up in a corner somewhere and feel sorry for herself.
Right, I mean I definitely want to be crawling up the ramp and feeling sorry for myself after having the ass kicking that she got from Tiffany Stratton earlier in the evening.
But we do see Zalina Vega who...
Yeah, a bit of an unsung hero of mine because I just don't think she gets anywhere near the exposure that she should be getting.
But we find out that Zalina Vega has been sort of floating around the last couple of weeks since she made it to SmackDown trying to figure out what her goal was going to be.
And it seems she made a decision.
Her goal is basically Chelsea Green and the United States title.
So we're going to see a bit of a little bit more of Zalina Vega I'm thinking.
I'm definitely hoping so because she's not someone that I have a lot of experience with but I know that you speak quite highly of her within SmackDown roster so I'm looking to see more of her.
I know she's capable in ring. I haven't seen a lot of her wrestle recently.
And it would be nice to see what she can pull together because I've seen her in matches before where she's always been strictly mid card which is a shame because she is a very capable individual.
And this is why I think she's a bit of an underutilized talent which when she got out of the LWO by being transferred over to SmackDown a lot of people saw it as a negative thing.
I saw it as a positive because it means that Zalina Vega now has the opportunity to strike out on her own rather than being part of a tag team for it.
But we'll see how that progresses as time goes on. Let's dive into this next match because this next match is the women's United States title match which was a street fight which sees Chelsea Green versus Mieshin.
It does but before we get into that we had a VT about the international reaction to John Cena kicking Cody Rhodes in the plums at Elimination Chamber.
Oh you see I didn't even make a note of that on account that we had no...
I decided that we were going to get some finishes and factions podcast bingo cards made up and I think one of the squares on that card is going to be Elimination Chamber recap or probably PLE recap because we get at least 8 or 9 from the previous recap per episode and then we get another PLE announced
or the recap promos turn into... oh this is what's coming up, super slam or whatever they decide to throw into the contention.
Yeah this is it.
Yeah so...
We had Chelsea Green come to the ring paying homage to a hardcore legend in a what is technically a hardcore match.
Chelsea Green came dressed as Cactus Jack for this match which I thought was quite cool.
I mean I prefer to have seen Cactus Jack in this match instead of Chelsea Green but yeah it was good enough.
WWE only endorsed mixed gender matches in 2K25 apparently.
Yeah well I'm going to choose to remain silent on that one but one thing that I'm not going to remain silent on is the quality of this match.
When Mishin walked out for her entrance she came out dragging a trash can on a trolley.
Well it was a trolley with a trash can on it and in the trash can she had a whole selection of fun.
When she gets down to the ring she starts throwing that fun into the ring before she jumps in and we see some interesting bits here.
I made a note of we saw things like a crowbar, there was chains, there was steel trays, I believe there was a kendo stick in there, there was chains at one point.
There was just an awful lot of different inventive processes in that trash can that they put down.
It was a bin full of hurt is what it was.
And it was a bin full of hurt that both of them had the enjoyability of sharing the pain for on that one.
But it starts off with all the weapons in that bin.
Mishin chooses to use a steel tray first and as Chelsea Green tries to come out of the ring towards her gets that wrapped squarely around her side.
And then there's a few different bits here. You get a few bits where Chelsea Green hits Mishin with the bin but ends up getting suplexed onto the chains on the floor of the ring.
Mishin bites the end of Chelsea Green's finger at one point, attempts to get a table out from under the ring,
but Chelsea Green puts it back after sort of beating her up and throwing her back into the ring.
And then we had, well Mishin was still on the outside. I'm not sure where this came from, I think there was a commercial break between these two little spots.
But Mishin sprayed an entire fire extinguisher right into the face and eyes of Chelsea Green
and then tries to take the table back out. Piper Nevin gets involved from the outside.
Obviously this is a street fight so there are no disqualifications.
And then she puts, Mishin takes it out, Piper Nevin puts Mishin back into the ring and puts the table away.
At which point we see Chelsea Green go coast to coast using the dustbin as well.
Don't see those very much more now. Shayno Max not kicking around too much.
I know Rob Van Dam was another big lover of the old coast to coast, which was all fun and games for quite a while.
I quite enjoyed seeing the old coast to coast as well. I'm not going to lie, nobody kicked someone a bin through someone quite like Shayno Max.
But Mishin definitely gave it a damn good, sorry, Chelsea Green definitely gave it a damn good college try.
Yeah, this is it. And shortly after that we see B-Fab come out to try and level the playing field a little bit by basically chasing Piper Nevin out with a Kendo stick, I think it was.
It definitely was. Yeah, I'm not going to lie, I think I've run away from B-Fab with a Kendo stick as well to be fair, but Piper Nevin took her tail, stuck it between her legs and ran off through the crowd with B-Fab in a hot pursuit.
Well, we've got to remember that Piper Nevin's still reeling from her own match earlier in the night.
She's out here trying to work double duties, but she hammered a little bit earlier.
So this is when sort of Mishin makes her third and final attempt to take the table out and actually manages it in fairness.
What she does to the ECW chance floating around the Philadelphia arena, obviously Philadelphia was not only the home of ECW, it is actually where Mishin trained.
Ironically enough, Mishin is trained by an ECW legend, Mr. Tommy Dreamer.
So with the table finally in the ring, it is actually set up by Chelsea Green, not Mishin in the corner.
And Mishin starts setting it up, seems to take a fucking age to set it up.
And then I met a bit of an odd observation while this match was going on, is that Mishin set up the near side leg, then got interrupted before she was able to set up the far side one.
So the far side one was set up by Chelsea Green, table was flipped over.
We then see Chelsea Green hit with an eat defeat.
On to the table.
On to the table, which then the leg that Chelsea Green set up then collapses.
So she's at a bit of a weird angle.
But Mishin's not to be deterred by that as she seems to do.
Well, I think they classed it as a double foot stomp.
It also looked curiously like a coup d'etat.
Obviously used by Finn Balor.
It's coup d'etat.
Yeah, I was close.
Yeah, pops her through the table and we get an interruption from a masked figure who pretty much kind of just pisses over both Mishin and Chelsea.
Mishin and Chelsea Green for all of about 30 seconds before it is revealed to us that the mystery member or the mystery person is Alba Fire.
Yeah, so Alba Fire has not been seen in a little while. In fact, I think the last time she was seen, it was, I want to say NXT.
Possibly.
I use not a name I remember writing down for a while.
So Alba Fire is normally seen palling around with Shotzi and Gigi Dolan.
We've seen Shotzi recently, but we've not seen much of Gigi Rollan recently.
No, this is it. It's a case that they've been curiously absent. And I'm pretty sure Alba Fire makes up the third that makes up that little trio.
Yeah, because we last saw Shotzi when she faced Fallon Henley for the Women's North American title. I want to say two weeks ago on NXT.
I think it might have been longer than that in fairness.
Possibly. I know it was the end of January we saw it. So yeah.
There we go.
Just over a month ago was the last time we saw much of Shotzi.
Yeah, so I know it's quickly anyway, but it doesn't make too much of a difference.
No, it doesn't. But we like to try and remain as accurate as we can.
Yeah, so Alba Fire comes out and it appears that we do indeed have a new member of the Secret Hervess that Chelsea Green has been, well, apparently building.
It's been hinted at the last few weeks that we were going to get a new member, but we were all thinking, well, you suggested it could possibly have been Naomi.
But we've had our answer given to us in Alba Fire.
Yeah, this is it. So we've got to wait and find out what happens with that moving forward.
We then went from in-ring to backstage.
Was this the one where Lugardo del Fantasma were getting reamed?
Yeah, pretty much. This was Santos Escobar really sort of berating Los Garza on yet another loss.
And how he sort of, I think he was doing this in an attempt to try and maybe sort of inspire them.
But I think they just look more like beaten dogs by the end of it, if I'm completely honest.
Pretty much.
And it appears that Andrade was thinking the same thing as he came and gave Humberto Carrillo a bit of a pep talk afterwards saying, look, mate, basically you deserve better than being treated like an absolute mug by this moped.
I mean, and they're not wrong to be fair. And we went from there talking on the line of Muppets into another, believe it or not, elimination chamber recap.
This one was building more towards the fact that next we are getting Cody Rhodes with an in-ring promo to basically, well, ask what he normally asks.
He comes down to the ring and he says, well, Philadelphia, what are we going to talk about?
And then he goes off to say, well, I think it's pretty obvious what we're going to talk about here. We're going to talk about what happened at elimination chamber and why he had to tell what he describes as a Cody lie to his four-year-old daughter about what happened to his face.
He says he kind of fell into a wall and to be fair, he says, you know, it's not too much of a lie. He just fell into a rule that was designed by the final boss and his Muppet Travis Scott.
Of course, we saw Slap Cody Rhodes elimination chamber. It was actually Travis Scott that caused the damage to Cody's face with a really poor slap rather than John Cena, who they had beaten down afterwards to make it look like he'd caused that damage.
I was going to say, because Cody comes to the ring with an absolute shiner of a black eye.
No, I'm not on the back of a black eye myself over the years. That was impressive. I've never had one that style.
You've never been bitch-slap by Travis Scott?
I haven't, no. I have on the other hand been tased and that is equally just as unpleasant.
Yes, very much so. But yeah, as you were saying, it's a case that he had to tell his four-year-old that he'd ran into a wall and yeah, it was sort of a wall created by the final boss, which I think to a certain degree is probably giving the rock a little bit too much power over him.
Yeah, I just think it's a case that he then starts going into all the different elements that made that up and he touches on Cena despite the fact that John Cena, the man we can't see, went for years round talking about wearing t-shirts with the phrase emblazoned on it about never giving up.
It's giving up.
Yeah, exactly.
Cody Roan says he drove him around for two years while I was travelling from show to show and then tried to learn what he could from what is theoretically one of the greatest superstars that WWE has ever had. Not necessarily for his in-ring ability but for just the general package. No one has done what he's done.
I think you needed some research a few weeks ago, didn't you, for something we were talking about? He's had something like 22 different titles or 22 different title runs.
Yeah, he's had an insane amount of title runs. There's no, I really just don't see, apart from complete vanity, as to why he needed to sell his ass to his once rival, The Rock, just to potentially get another shot at the title.
Cena helped Cody beat Rocket WrestleMania in Philadelphia last year and now he sold his soul to the guy that he helped defeat. It seems a little bit, but it's a kooky one.
You know, we get there. He asks, he basically just kind of says, you know, John, I think I'm going to ask the one question. I want to know the same as what everyone else wants to know. Why? What can Rock give Cena that Cena can't already give himself bearing in mind Cena's already in Hollywood?
He's probably, he's got multiple of millions of social media followers, maybe not quite as many as Rock, but I really don't think Cena cares too much about social media followers. He's quite a...
No, this is it. It's a case that he's basically asking John to justify his actions. And honestly, at this stage, I sort of hope, I sort of expected some Cena music to hit.
Yeah, I did. Instead, I wanted to see Cena come down to this point. Instead, what we got was a story from Cody Rhodes about how his dad didn't like being in Philadelphia, where Cody's, because they never, they never really cheered for his dad.
They didn't really like Dusty Rhodes too much, where they've always cheered for Cody there when he had his mustache and one, believe it, was Money in the Bank. Then they had his back.
You know, the Philadelphia crowd, he says then chose McGann at WrestleMania 40 last year, where he picked up his title against Roman Reigns, where we, you know, an incredible...
And then starts talking about how at that WrestleMania, John told Cody that that title gets heavier with every day and basically turns around to face the camera, look at dead down the lens and say, John, this title is lighter than ever.
And then quotes a famous line that we've heard replays of for years and years, which was John Cena basically issuing an open challenge. But now we hear Cody say it.
We hear Cody come out with, John, if you want some, come get some.
Which was always nice to see and hopefully he is going to bring it.
Oh, it got one hell of a pop from there, realistically. But yeah, it's a case that...
It's a case that we went from that in-ring promo to a backstage promo, which I've got to admit, it was sort of spoiled for me on social media this one.
I see. I didn't see anything about this. So for me, it was quite interesting to sit back and watch.
We got to see Carmelo Hayes and the Miz backstage with Nick Aldis. And Miz is pitching an idea of basically having what he refers to as an episode of mellow don't miss TV, where he interviews...
I remember who was trying to interview them. Who did you...
He wants to interview Cody Rhodes because he thinks that he can get that last little bit of info out of Cody Rhodes on how he really feels and all the rest of it.
I think he's just looking for a bit of an excuse to poke fun at our WWE Champion, if I'm completely honest. And honestly, Hayes really isn't into the whole talk show angle.
And instead sort of goes off on a little bit of a mini tirade talking about how if the final boss had made him an offer, instead of somebody like Randy Orton, who has spent four months sat on his ass playing Fortnite.
Which Randy Orton comes in and says no. Fortnite is a kids game. I've been playing Elden Ring.
Which, I mean, you can't deny the honesty in that in fairness. It's one of them.
But yeah, it's after that little altercation where it's basically Carmelo Hayes running his mouth, as per usual.
We also see a match made for next week in Bartholona that sees Randy Orton versus Carmelo Hayes.
Which Carmelo Hayes is going to get wiper build quite badly.
Due to the length of this episode, we are going to end part one here. And then we're going to come back with part two to cover the last two matches and last bits of information that you are going to need.
So we will see you in part two. Thank you very much.