Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] The Rocking Review Podcast hosted by J Rock Rude.
[00:00:29] Hello everyone and welcome to another exciting edition of the Rocking Review Podcast. Hello, I'm J. Rock Rude and this is episode 22 of the podcast. And first off, let me just address the elephant in the room. Of course I know that it's been quite a while since the last episode and there was a lot of stuff that was happening during that time. So my apologies for the fact that that ended up happening. But man, wrestling put me in a slump Wrestling put me in a slump for about a week and a half until this weekend. Man, until this weekend, wrestling was very vanilla basic. I disliked everything. I couldn't be able to watch everything I wanted to.
[00:01:25] So I was like, okay, I'll move on and I'll come back to it at a later date. Right?
[00:01:31] So this weekend we had WWE in Perth, Australia.
[00:01:39] So they had a very early start time there. Early start time. On Friday night for Smackdown they had an early start time for Crown Jewel which we'll get into a minute and that by far was one of the top ples WWE has put on all year.
[00:01:58] And then they had this morning, this is being recorded on Monday, October 13th.
[00:02:05] This morning at 8am they had Monday Night Raw which happened again in Perth, Australia.
[00:02:20] It happened at the Rack arena.
[00:02:26] And I there were a bunch of creative changes that were set said to be made over the last few weeks.
[00:02:46] Again, you know, creatively WWE have not been the the brightest.
[00:02:55] But it was reported this weekend by Body Slam Net that WWE is reportedly said to be undergoing creative changes to their team to help improve the overall product.
[00:03:09] Road Dog is to remain the head of creative on smackdown, but there are set to be additions to the team to make the show more enjoyable and more welcoming moving forward.
[00:03:24] So for some reason it didn't just mean smackdown because today, not tonight, but today.
[00:03:36] This morning in the main event we had a world heavyweight title number one contenders match between CM Punk, Jey USO and La Knight. Now the week before, CM Punk and La Knight were in a tag match against the Usos Jimmy and Jay. And at the end Punk delivered GTS to Jay and Knight tagged himself in and ended up taking the pin or pinning Jey USO in the process and he walked out standing tall before they were going to crown Jewel. Of course neither Knight or Punk were on the card.
[00:04:26] So now a week later and we'll get into it more and I guess we'll we'll do like a tiny bit of spoilers, but a crown jewel in the main event in quite Honestly, picking up where they left off in their match at Hell in a cell in in 2022, Seth Rollins and Cody Rhods had their best match ever.
[00:04:59] And with absolutely zero interference, Seth Rollins beat Cody Rhodes clean.
[00:05:07] So Cody took the loss. And then this morning Seth came out and he declared that why he is better than his oppositions like CM Punk and specifically Roman Reigns is because he says that Roman Reigns needed the shield to win. Roman Reigns needed the bloodline to keep on that 1300 day reign that he had for over three years.
[00:05:43] He basically said he didn't need any of that because he is stronger and better than Roman Reigns.
[00:05:49] He said this in the middle of the ring while Braun Breaker and Bronson Reed, who Reed had beaten Roman Reigns and we'll get into that match.
[00:06:02] But Breaker, he did play a factor in that match. He was a key distraction spearing Jay USO that cost Roman Reigns the match.
[00:06:15] So as he's saying this, they cut to backstage segments and Seth Rollins is talking about how proud he is about Bronson Reed and Bron Breaker growing into these mega stars and growing into these superstars that are in theory again, more on that later.
[00:06:44] Are idolizing Rollins and Rollins is the leader of this new vision, right? Of these up and coming rookies or these up and coming stars like Reed and Breaker that are making a name for themselves.
[00:06:58] So it was funny because I had said on the way here because I was able to wake up 8am to watch Monday Night Raw.
[00:07:07] I woke up and I saw that promo and I said to myself, I said, you know what they are gonna do? Basically this is so funny because I swear an hour later this changes. I said to myself, I said, you know what they're gonna do?
[00:07:25] They're going to now build up Bronson Reed. Because people have known Bronson Reed is an absolute powerhouse. Everybody has seen it.
[00:07:35] They know Braun Breaker is already a mega Superstar and already a main eventer.
[00:07:41] So they're gonna build Bronson Reed up and basically he's gonna overshadow Breaker and then there's gonna be cracks in the Vision and then that'll show come like Mania or the Rumble or something like that or something.
[00:07:57] So. So I said like, okay, Reed is going to be the main focal point and Rollins is going to forget about Breaker, right? Because Reed was the one to pin Roman. Breaker was not.
[00:08:09] So instead what they do in the main event, CM Punk, Jay Uso, LA Knight number one contendership.
[00:08:20] CM Punk wins in 7 minutes 54 seconds.
[00:08:25] He wins. He is now the number one contender. The vision come out, beat up all three guys like normal.
[00:08:32] So once again, the Vision stands tall and Seth Rollins is talking his talk.
[00:08:40] And all of a sudden, Brawn Breaker spears the ever living crap out of Seth Rollins, his mentor.
[00:08:52] He spears the World Heavyweight Champion and then he gets up and he looks at Reed, he says, make the right decision. Are you with him or are you with me?
[00:09:05] And Bronson Reed takes a minute and then he drags Seth Rollins, goes to the top rope, delivers a tsunami.
[00:09:19] And Breaker looks at Paul Heyman, the Oracle, and he says also to him, make the right decision. Are you with him or are you with us?
[00:09:36] And in what seemed as defiant at first, Paul Heyman gets in the middle of Reed and Breaker grabs the wrist and raises them up over Seth Rollins's lifeless body. The Visionary lifeless body.
[00:09:56] And meanwhile, what's in Bron Breaker's hand but the World Heavyweight Championship.
[00:10:02] So right now.
[00:10:06] So this was as of three days ago, it was reported that War Games was supposedly going to be CM Punk, Roman Reigns, Jacob Fatu and Jey uso, in which it was not decided yet, but it was either going to be Jimmy or it was going to be LA Knight.
[00:10:35] And it was going to then feature the vision of Bron Breaker, Bronson Reed and Seth Rollins, the World Heavy Champion, Brock Lesnar and Austin Theory. Now, of course, Austin Theory has been in talks with being a part of the Vision for a very long time because a lot of people were talking about War Games early on in the summer and they were saying, okay, what's the deal with this?
[00:11:06] Is, is Seth basically going to have a fourth member? Is he going to get a fifth member randomly? That also just hates CM Punk or Roman Reigns or something like that, you know, who is he?
[00:11:24] So instead of that, they now just completely threw that out the window.
[00:11:34] I have no idea what their hopes are going to be with War Games.
[00:11:42] A dumb decision is maybe they don't have War Games be the main event this year. I could see that happening.
[00:11:52] And instead for War Games, because we saw on Friday night smackdown, the return of Tama Tonga.
[00:12:10] He came back and the mft, Talatanga, tongaloa, JC Mateo and Tamatonga, they were all wearing black and white face paint, some of them black and red face paint, like the original Gorillas of Destiny in New Japan.
[00:12:37] So with that being said, they then came out and they basically they, they beat down Sami Zayn, they beat down Shinsuke Nakamura, who had answered the open challenge for Sami Zayn.
[00:12:58] And then later in the show, they came out after the tag team title match between the Wyatt Six and the Street Profits, which by the way recently a lot of superstars have been requesting their old music back.
[00:13:19] So it looks like something's happening with Death Rebel.
[00:13:23] Looks like they might be on the chopping block.
[00:13:27] But anywho, the Wyatt Six beat the Street Profits and then after the match in the Strobe Lights you saw MFT with their face paint come up and confront the Wyatt six.
[00:13:48] I don't mind it, but I could definitely see them doing some type of war games. Just with the Wyatt 6 and the MFT.
[00:13:58] I mean I could definitely see just a regular 4 on 4 basic match between Gacy Loom, Howdy and Rowan against Mateo Talatanga, Tama, Tonga, Tangaloa and then I guess Solo and Nikki Cross just sit on the sidelines. But like that's the only way that I see them doing any type of war games match because I don't know what you end up doing. Do you really have after all this time Seth Rollins reunite with Roman Reigns after Roman Reigns is trying to make Jay USO a heel.
[00:14:56] Like it makes zero sense to me. But before we get into everything like that, let's let's dial it back a little bit now.
[00:15:07] Let's dial it back to a a little report that came out basically before Crown Jewel and it is that according to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, WWE is reportedly planning for John Cena's final match to be against Gunther the Ring General.
[00:15:35] This was originally reported back in July with multiple sources confirming it.
[00:15:41] The storyline is expected to involve a possible tournament that would be announced by Triple H Paul Levesque, with top stars competing for an honor to face Cena in his retirement match, ultimately leading to Gunther being the chosen opponent.
[00:16:03] If reports are accurate, this would mark the second major retirement for Gunther that he delivers in 2025 as he previously retired Goldberg at Saturday night's main event in July.
[00:16:16] Gunther's last appearance came after losing to CM Punk at SummerSlam and he's taken a break following injuries and giving Cena's limited schedule. The rivalry might feature a face to face segment culminating possibly at Survivor Series. So the rumor and it has been confirmed that it will happen in Washington D.C. on December 13, but the rumor is that Gunther will be the last person to face John Cena.
[00:16:52] Now of course, as we talked about it, John Cena has four more dates with Survivor Series and Saturday night's main event being one of them. His other two dates are going to be in November leading up to Survivor Series and the rumor Surrounding John Cena and Survivor Series is that in fact Cena will be going after the one title that has pretty much eluded him from having in his career and that would be Dominic Mysterio and the Intercontinental Championship.
[00:17:54] Now Meltzer reported that the show could see John Cena challenge Dominic Mysterio for the Intercontinental Championship. It's the only title that has kept Cena from being the Grand Slam Champion.
[00:18:12] He has never challenged for the title on television or a premium live event, although he had some attempts from live tours in 2015-2018 or yeah, 2018.
[00:18:29] This would mark also the first time we've ever seen Cena and Dominic Mysterio one on one on screen because they have talked about it.
[00:18:45] And if Dominic Mysterio wants to amp it up a little bit, then I think that is very, very good.
[00:19:00] Because if we see Cena versus Dom Dom for the Intercontinental Championship and we'll talk about his match later on that he had today against Penta, if that ends up happening, I don't mind it at all because number one, Dominic Myerio was the second to last competitor to face John Cena in his retirement is a huge step because eventually he will lose that title.
[00:19:32] Who he will lose it to could be Cena, it could be somebody else.
[00:19:39] But in all honesty, Cena has only taken two losses his entire in his retirement run. So it makes sense if Cena ends up winning this match and then maybe he faces Gunther and Gunther is a two time Intercontinental Champion.
[00:20:02] I mean, why not? The statistics show Gunther basically has been a champion his entire time in wwe. So if Gunther wins the Intercontinental Championship and he beats Cena in his last match, Cena goes down in defeat. He has his last match. He passes the torch off to Gunther, which nobody would expect, and he gets to do it in front of the President.
[00:20:33] Oh yeah, there's that report going around that because it's in D.C. the president will be there.
[00:20:39] And in the recent months Triple H has made his appearance at the House of White.
[00:20:47] So I wouldn't be too surprised if he had some connections to try and lure President Trump to come to that show at the Capital One Arena. But so far that is speculation.
[00:21:01] But let's talk about Crown Jewel.
[00:21:05] Crown Jewel quite literally has got to be one of the best pay per views. The top three pay per views all year we have gotten pro wrestling because everything we saw from Crown Jewel was exactly what we should have had back at Russell Palooza.
[00:21:39] So say what you want about how everything turned out to be, but man, was it something out of this world.
[00:21:58] We started off with Bronson Reed versus Roman Reigns in an Australian street fight.
[00:22:08] ESPN gave this a C level grade.
[00:22:13] This was a pretty standard no disqualification match disguised as a Australian street fight.
[00:22:20] As. As if all no disqualification matches are exactly just street fights and just like any other street fight is exactly like a no holds barred.
[00:22:30] And every single no hold barred is quite literally an unsanctioned match. It's all no disqualification. If there's no rules, there's no rules.
[00:22:40] The only thing that's different is the winning predicament in which that you end up gaining the victory. If it is putting somebody through a table, it's a table match. If it's climbing a ladder, it's a ladder match or a TLC match.
[00:22:55] Reigns worked the crowd during a long stretch of dominance early on, but Reed managed to get some offense to balance things out.
[00:23:05] Ultimately, this match dulled down a bit.
[00:23:11] It wasn't particularly violent for a street fight and wasn't as heated as you would expect considering Reed put Reigns on the shelf for almost a month.
[00:23:23] The action picked up. Braun Breaker inserted himself into the match intercepting a rain spear attempt on the outside with a spear of his own.
[00:23:32] The USO's then joined the fray to assist their cousin Reigns and a narrative was set when Jay miscalculated and accidentally hit Reigns with a spear through the table.
[00:23:45] Jay's involvement cost Reigns the match when Reed then hit a tsunami to pick up the win.
[00:23:53] And then after the match, Reigns was frustrated at the USOs basically said that that is not how you win.
[00:24:03] And he was visibly mad about everything that happened and he basically said I don't want to see you guys till Christmas. So he basically just said I absolutely hate you too and do not speak to me until you are spoken to. And that was it.
[00:24:36] So I don't know exactly what will end up happening.
[00:24:45] But you know, I guess when it's talking about building towards, you know, building towards Jay's eventual run in which he will end up turning heel possibly on his brother and he'll go into a heel run, he'll ditch the yeet stuff and everything else and whatnot.
[00:25:20] But overall I think building up Bronson Reed pinning Roman Reigns in this manner was very precise and I think they did a great job on building Reed like I had said.
[00:25:35] So kudos to them.
[00:25:38] We then had the first of the two Crown Jewel championship matches.
[00:25:55] The Crown Jewel match was slightly okay.
[00:26:05] It was given a C minus grade.
[00:26:09] Champion versus championship matches without any real stakes or heat between the participants. Are difficult to pull off and the hope is to keep both title holders strong for their respective brands. Unfortunately, this ended before it really got strong and totally missed the mark. The Caribbean in about 10 minutes treating the SmackDown WWE Women's Champion ship at a second rate started off when Stratton showed off her athleticism early, hitting an excellent Alabama slam from a cartwheel transition before her miscalculations cost her the match.
[00:26:49] It's hard to justify why this match was so brief outside of an injury, forcing an audible with Stratton eating the pin after a missed prettiest moonsault ever and getting hit with the corkscrew moonsault AKA the Spot final tap. There's no real drama or near falls in the match as both have had better and more competitive outings On Raw and SmackDown. You'd expect a lot more from two champions that we got.
[00:27:19] A story of Stratton's inexperience being the difference maker would have been fine if Stratton had been champion since WrestleMania, but it didn't work here and made her look weak. Hopefully this is a good reason to explain why we had such a brief match between these two.
[00:27:46] They.
[00:27:47] They could have gotten a lot better time with this match. I mean, this match was not to appease anybody.
[00:27:54] This was the shortest match on the entire card.
[00:28:00] And you, you know, last year they started this, it was between Liv Morgan and I had Jax again. That one wasn't as good, but still it was something decent.
[00:28:13] But again, when you got two strong champions like Vikir and Stratton, you don't want to basically make the other look bad.
[00:28:21] So giving them a nice brief little matchup and Stephanie Vacuur winning, you can definitely tell who Triple H is probably leaning more towards being the face of the women's division, especially in this new era.
[00:28:37] This morning it looks like they're gonna be starting a program with her and Roxanne Perez, which I think is going to be very exciting. Picks up a lot what they were doing over in nxt, so very good for them.
[00:28:50] We then had the tag match.
[00:28:54] Oh, excuse me. We had the.
[00:28:57] Actually, no, I'll talk about the tag match first. We had the tag match between Rio Ripley versus Rhea Ripley and Neo sky versus Oscar and Kyrie Sang Ripley and Sky picked up the win. This was given a B level match.
[00:29:20] This match happened after Cena and Styles though, but I'll wait for that for the main talking point.
[00:29:28] They said that the Cena Styles match was going to be a tough act to follow, but this tag match really did exactly what it was supposed to do by keeping the fans engaged as all four women worked extremely hard and it was a fun outing.
[00:29:42] Sky was isolated by her former friends Oscar Insane early on, which only built the anticipation for Ripley being tagged in. I expected the roof nearly blew off of the Rack arena when Ripley from Australia entered the match. It's no surprise that everything worked so well with the four women all being amongst the best in the business. That is no lie. That is true. That is facts.
[00:30:06] Sane was the key in the match as she managed to effectively balance her allegiance to Oscar while being torn about turning on sky. And the finish was handled pretty well to protect Asuka as Sane sacrificed herself for her friend. Ripley clobbered Zayn with a riptide and sky followed up with the over the moonsault for the 1, 2, 3.
[00:30:27] Well, Zane's loyalty ended up costing her. Asuka remains the ruthless warrior that sky will eventually have to overcome again.
[00:30:41] This was mostly there just because Rhea Ripley being from Australia, I think everybody really wanted to see a lot out of them.
[00:31:00] This little program that they have started with Asuka turning heel and Kyrie Sane being torn about who her allegiance is with, whether it's with Ian CEO or whether it's with Oscar, you know it's proving to be very good television. And in fact it was the main event a couple weeks ago on Monday Night Raw between Ria and Oscar.
[00:31:22] So this turn of now making Oscar being more powerful than she was before when she had returned the first time during this year, it shows you that they want Oscar to continue being strong, but they know that Rhea Ripley is just going to be the top person until that she's out with an injury or she takes some time off or something ends up happening. Because there's no other way to explain how good Rhea Ripley is. Not just in the ring for the company itself because they are generating more income than they could account just solely based off of Ria being in the building or not. So the other day is very good and we'll move on to the main event of Crown Jewel. There's still one match after the main event that we'll talk about and that was Seth Rollins versus Cody Rhodes for the men's Crown Jewel Championship match.
[00:32:24] The match was all about Rollins. This was given a B level grade.
[00:32:33] This match was all about Rollins where the outcome was just as important as the match itself for Rhodes. He simply served as the mountain that Rollins had been unable to climb and be able to overcome. Despite being the World Heavyweight Champion, Rollins teetered between hubris and madness as he became increasingly desperate to end his losing streak. To Rhodes it was 3, 0. He lost to them at WrestleMania 38, WrestleMania Backlash, and then in that amazing Helena Cell match between those two.
[00:33:14] Early on he pulled out his normal bag of tricks, but as expected, nothing normal would keep Rhodes down.
[00:33:21] The visionaries descent into desperation saw him retrieve the Rolex watch that Rhodes had gifted him for helping the bloodline and the feud and him capturing the championship, the undisputed championship at WrestleMania 40.
[00:33:38] But he immediately changed his mind as he wanted to do it without the assistance.
[00:33:45] The brief pause nearly cost Rollins as he absorbed a Cody Cutter on a crossroads for a near fall.
[00:33:51] Rollins took things a step further with a flying coast to coast headbutt and an avalanche Spanish fly in a rock bottom for yet another near fall. That coast to coast headbutt was insane.
[00:34:07] I have never ever seen anybody do that type of move and you know probably reasons why but man I would love people started doing that move. That was incredible.
[00:34:22] Ron's determination allowed him to survive a wicked Avalanche Crossroads. I like that they have brought that now into the, into wwe. They, they, they had done avalanche crossroads beforehand in AEW and now WWE is starting to do it, which is great and eventually saw him resort to the nefarious ways by using the Rolex to knock Roads out cold and clobber his rival with a pair of Curb Stomps. First the win.
[00:34:49] Rollins winning by any means necessary, but without interference from the Vision like I talked about was the only way to go here and establish him as the top heel with a firm grasp on the championship.
[00:35:03] This match wasn't on par with their previous matches.
[00:35:07] You know they said that I think it was, it was pretty good, but it was well handled from a storytelling perspective.
[00:35:16] So again like I talked about with what happened in the match and how the match was and how everything turned out to be for this recent thing of Monday Night Raw.
[00:35:36] Hey everyone, did you know that the Rocking Review podcast is on on both X and Instagram? That's right. For every single episode we end up doing a prelude to that episode on our socials. We are on Twitter nx@rockingreview. That's R A W K Review. And of course there you can be able to look at all of our previous posts and upcoming posts. Thank you very much. And now back to the episode.
[00:36:17] The fact that Seth Rollins finally got his RIN over Cody and basically the entire buildup was him asking Paul well what happens, what happens if I lose to Cody?
[00:36:31] And Paul basically telling him while you lose the Leadership of Braun Breaker, you lose the leadership of Bronson Reed, you even lose the leadership of me.
[00:36:41] And Seth kept on asking because he knew that Brock Lesnar is in the distance.
[00:36:51] And I swear to you, if that's what the goal is, and it's basically Brock helping Braun win the title, I'm okay with that. But then again, I'd rather see Braun Breaker win the title without any interference from either Bronson Reed or Brock Lesnar.
[00:37:14] So with that in mind, I thought that the match did what it was supposed to do. They had to have Cody lose.
[00:37:24] But this is not going to change anything and Cody is still going to be a very strong champion with the hopes that Randy Orton is supposed to turn heel soon.
[00:37:36] But the last match we'll talk about was John Cena and AJ Styles.
[00:37:54] Now, this was the first time the two had faced each other one on one since the Royal Rumble in 2017. They had a three 101 matches previous. It was Money in the Bank 2016, SummerSlam 2016, and then Royal Rumble 2017.
[00:38:14] They had had a couple of matches, including a six pack challenge match back in 2018 at Fast Lane that they had been a part of.
[00:38:29] That was one of the most recent meetings of A.J. styles and John Cena.
[00:38:40] And basically like I talked about on the episode previous, John Cena had went out and he had said, I want to have a match with aj, make it happen. And Triple H said, okay, we're gonna make it happen. In Perth, Cena had no appearances up until Crown Jewel, so AJ had to build it on his own. And in the Go Home show, he basically told everybody and he said, we are going to tear the house down. And that is exactly what they did.
[00:39:20] This was given an A grade.
[00:39:25] AJ Styles came out and he wore his total non stop action wrestling gear that he had wore when he first came into tna. So he didn't wear the long tights, he wore the trunks, the blue and white trunks. And man, he looked complete. He looked so different from everything he had done beforehand.
[00:39:57] So I loved it. I was not expecting it.
[00:40:02] I'll go over the takeaways and then I'll go over the grade of it.
[00:40:10] They're quite similar. I'll think I'll divide this up.
[00:40:17] The grade was an A.
[00:40:19] He said, no build, no problem. Cena and Styles have had an incredible rivalry since 2016, with a series of matches that helped Cena escape the quote five Moves of Doom label that he had been saddled with during his lengthy reign on the top of WWE.
[00:40:39] Both 48 years old and nearly a decade removed from their last encounter, Cena and Styles had to find a way to offer something different and engaging for their last dance.
[00:40:53] And they absolutely delivered with a match that was unique from their previous affairs but also served as a love letter to their respective histories inside the squared circle.
[00:41:06] And this was the takeaway.
[00:41:09] Cena vs Styles might go down as the best match Cena has had during his retirement tour full of tributes. It began with Cena passing on paper to ring announcer Alicia Taylor with a special introduction which he included references to Total Non Stop Action Wrestling and the Bullet Club.
[00:41:30] And this is awesome Chance started even before the match began. The match started up with an easy catches catch can with several lockups and shows of sportsmanship with both wrestlers clearly respecting the other.
[00:41:45] The tributes were as follows of a skull crushing finale, an accolade Coquita clutches, Angel's Wings, sweet chin musics, RKO 619s.
[00:42:11] But the biggest one was of course the two huge ones of Cena pin Styles following a tombstone pile driver into an attitude adjustment.
[00:42:31] But it was the Sister Abigail after Styles went for in a phenomenal forearm and in the same way that Bray Wyatt, God bless him, the eater of Worlds caught AJ at Elimination Chamber 2017.
[00:42:51] John Cena delivers Sister Abigail and after he looked up he saw the fireflies all around the Rack arena which by the way everybody in this arena completely had Cena's shirt on.
[00:43:08] And that that just tells you how much this marketing system of making a new shirt every single time you he does a date or he does a tour date or whatever because there was legit 80% of the crowd had these John Cena retirement tours on that were made especially for Australia.
[00:43:31] Continuing on with the grade, it was an absolutely brilliant way to surprise fans with their in ring limits. Styles was masterful as ever and deployed a springboard for 50 as a reminder that he's one of the best ever.
[00:43:50] Cena was equally entertaining and hit a Sister Abigail in a touching salute to labor Wyatt.
[00:43:56] After hitting sweet chin music, Styles went for a splash off the top rope at Cena, caught him and rolled through a nod to their Michaels encounter at WrestleMania 23. Instead of hitting attitude adjustment, he transitioned to a tombstone and then CENA put in one last attitude adjustment for the 1, 2, 3.
[00:44:20] So the overall grade for Crown Jewel was giving a B level grade.
[00:44:34] That's right. Not a C grade but a B grade in conclusion, a show that fumbled.
[00:44:48] So after going over all those matches, the final grade that was given by of course now the only journalist that they care about Andres Hale or Andrea's Hill.
[00:45:09] It was given a B grade, not a C grade compared to Russell Palooza.
[00:45:15] A show that stumbled out of the gate with a relatively tame street fight in a far too brief fight between the women's champions was rescued by an absolute stellar match between Cena and Styles that put an excellent book book end to their rivalry.
[00:45:33] Rollins finally getting his comeuppance against Rhodes by any means necessary and the women's tag match were both strong and anchored a memorable bounce back for WWE after a middling Russell Palooza.
[00:45:51] So also on top of that, John Cena picked up his 100th ple pay per view win. Only the Undertaker has more with 107.
[00:46:07] So unfortunately because there's not that many ples left, that means that that record will probably not be shattered for a long time.
[00:46:25] Real quick, the records are as follows.
[00:46:33] John Cena 100 wins, Triple H 92 wins, Randy Orton 81 wins, Roman Reigns 77 wins and the Undertaker sits on top with 107.
[00:46:48] Sign you so that was crown jewel. But now let's shift from WWE of course to AEW.
[00:47:05] Because AEW man, there's lots of stuff I could say about AEW. Man.
[00:47:15] AEW, AEW had one of its lowest rated programs in the 18 to 39 demographic that it has ever seen before.
[00:47:38] So just so you know, the rating that they had gotten for their fifth anniversary or their sixth anniversary show, this was a week ago, was 465,000 average viewers in a rating of a 0.09.
[00:48:12] Now in retrospect, the lowest rating which happened in 2010 for TNA, remember because that's the recent conversation is whether or not tna we'll talk about TNA in a second.
[00:48:30] Is that Whether or not TNA, if they got a TV deal, would they over step AEW as the number two promotion?
[00:48:38] The lowest rate of TNA ever was 0.80 was 0.84.
[00:48:51] Now of course this could be something that is not as accurate, but of course there are new Nielsen rating systems.
[00:49:13] Big Data plus Panel uses massive device level data from set top boxes and smart TVs. The panel data is also a new methodology to validate the big data and scale and measurements.
[00:49:29] What does this mean for wrestling TV ratings? Is that the change in this methodology from Nelson almost certainly explains the decrease in what we saw last week in the TV ratings from the Programming Insider and others in general, under Big Data plus Panel you can expect that there will be telecasts with generally higher viewership measurements.
[00:50:04] Still Other telecasts measure higher, which seems like telecasts have a younger age skew in some cases tend to measure lower in the big Data plus panel, but it's by no means consistent.
[00:50:21] So basically what it'll show you is there's what the panel only and then what the big Data plus will tell you. So when it comes to viewership from different things, the total viewership this was as of September 23rd to September 27th.
[00:50:50] NXT on that day on CW according to panel only did about 707,000 viewers.
[00:51:02] All the Wrestling on on Dec. On Sept. 24 panel only says it did 638,000 viewers.
[00:51:18] But however the Big Data plus panel says that NXT actually did under 13% of what its reported amount was said it did actually 617,000 and meanwhile AW did 554,000 AEW collision, which by the way is on the edge of being canceled anyways.
[00:51:53] The panel only said it did a 261,000 viewers, but in reality only 5% of that is true because it did 248,000 viewers. And then the ratings because some people have said that they cared about ratings, but honestly the ratings don't really matter.
[00:52:18] They say that the ratings for NXT on that September 23rd episode did a 1. 17.
[00:52:25] In reality on the big plus it did 0.12.
[00:52:30] Awesome. Said it was supposed to do a 0.14. In reality it did 8.11.
[00:52:40] And the good news is that plus 26% AEW collision and what it would be presumed for panel did a 04. Actually that did a 05.
[00:52:59] So you're seeing a dramatic decrease of everything happening so far. Meanwhile you know everything else like smack down because because now RAW is out of the equation.
[00:53:18] So you know when you're looking at it average year, quarter, total viewership, everything in between, you know you're seeing your your quarter four at the start of the year they were at 618,000 and so far they're at 465,000. That is a near 200,000 audience decrease. And you wonder what is happening with your product with your program.
[00:53:53] Collision started off this year at 334,000. This year so far as of the quarter three it's at 295,000.
[00:54:07] They are losing viewers by the by the quarter it's only increased was about close to 10,000 viewers between the first quarter of the year and the second quarter of the year.
[00:54:28] NXT is also decreasing because they decreased from the third quarter at 672,000 to 625,000.
[00:54:47] So I guess that just shows you where the ratings are. But let's talk about Koda Ibushi now. Koto Ibushi had just came back, right? He had just came back after being gone for well over a year, well over a year and a half.
[00:55:07] And you know, know, they brought him in. He did a couple of matches. He was a part of that lights out steel cage match at Forbidden Door that gave G Osprey a send off. Now Abuji, there was a taping of Collision on the Wednesday night following the title Tuesday edition of AEW Dynamite, which by the way AEW Dynamite for that title Tuesday did 321,000 viewers with a.05 rating in the 18 to 49 demographic. So oh man, I don't know.
[00:56:11] But overall they, they did a taping of Collision earlier in the week with reports saying that Kota Ibuchi suffered a leg injury during his match and he was stretchered to the back.
[00:56:24] And then finally, as they had been promoting it the entire week, AEW would show the results of what had happened on the October 11th dynamite or the October 11th collision.
[00:56:41] Abusi rushed Josh Alexander in singles action.
[00:56:48] He had started moving gingerly after a slingshot, a slingshot plancha early in the match.
[00:56:56] Then Ibushi moved for the rest of the match was very questioning.
[00:57:03] Despite the pain and the selling Alexander's focus on the left leg, Ibushi still executed a bunch of flashy offense including a standing moonsault.
[00:57:14] The unfortunate moment where the injury ended up happening was towards the end of the match after Alexander got a Aushi on his shoulders for Fireman's carry on a turnbuckle.
[00:57:26] But the balance was lost and Abusi fell awkwardly down off the floor and did not get up.
[00:57:37] Bryce Remsburg, you know, you know the very official doctor and also ref of AEW made the 10 count and then on top of that after the match Mark Davis also returned from his own injury and choked Ibushi on the floor, landed a few punches and then Omega came out and that was to set up a three hour special of Dynamite and Collision on TBS where it will be Kenny Omega and the Jurassic Express of Jungle Jack Perry and Luchasaurus against Mark Davis Hiches and Josh Alexander AKA all guys just to take a pin. So that way that you know that Jack Perry and Kenny Omega is the only thing that these people care about in aw.
[00:58:38] So the result of what happened.
[00:58:42] It has been reported that he had suffered a broken femur and this was Tony Khan's response. Listen to this response. We are all very grateful for the Golden Star Kotobushi. In my opinion, he one of the greatest wrestlers that I've ever seen. He is adored by the AW locker room and and fans worldwide. We wish him the best as he recovers from the injury let from the leg injury he suffered on AW collision tonight with an exclamation point.
[00:59:15] This guy legit only cares about promoting his shows and when he promotes his shows it's absolute garbage.
[00:59:22] I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but can somebody tell me that on your show in which you're going head to head with NXT as NXT has their first cross branded all exclusive special show involving TNA which they're promoting further pay per view that would be happening that weekend.
[00:59:54] Why Is there only two matches that involve championships in which it's a 90 minute match between Mercedes Monet and the recently oft released wrestler of Kaden Carter, AKA Lacy Lane and then you have a double jeopardy eliminator match with the Don Callis family of Kazuchik Okada and Konosuke Teshna. Which by the way, this morning at Kings of Pro Wrestling, Kinosuke Takeshna finally beat Zack Sabre Jr. And is now the new IWDP world heavyweight champion.
[01:00:40] So now, now you look at Don Callis, Don Callis's family, which by the way includes Kyle Fletcher, Trent Beretta, Lance Archer, Brian Cage, Mark Davis, Josh Alexander, Rocky Romero, Kazuchiko Okada, Hinchasero Wardlow, Andrade L Clone and that's it.
[01:01:11] Like, are you kidding me?
[01:01:13] How many people do you need to have this thing like this has been going on for two years and there's like 50 members in this one group.
[01:01:24] And by the way, the other matchup which was awarded by the way four and a quarter stars was Kyle Fletcher versus Kyle O'Reilly for the TNT title.
[01:01:35] So why on that for a card that's titled Title Tuesday, do you also include Jon Moxley beating Tomohiro Ishii in a four and a half star match? Get the heck out of here man.
[01:01:55] 12 minutes of a waste time of no selling.
[01:01:59] You get a random six man tagged street fight between the Hurt Syndicate and the Demand, which is Bishop Kong, the Gates of Agony and Ricochet.
[01:02:12] You get the Jurassic Express beating some jobbers.
[01:02:16] Then you get the main event of Orange Cassidy beating Pac, which by the way, Pac is absolute juiced to the gills. This man came out wearing clothes. He was not wearing baby trunks, he was wearing tights.
[01:02:35] He was wearing a singlet that showcases massive chest muscles. That dude has Been legit on the Juice for the past couple months that he's been off tv.
[01:02:48] Unbelievable.
[01:02:52] But why on earth like are you promoting your show and then putting on these matches and presumably personally they're just matches that you like and. And then they're also things that you don't even think about until the match ends up happening.
[01:03:10] Like this card right here that we're gonna get. Jamie Hayter versus Sky Blue. The conglomeration of Kyle O'Reilly and Orange Cassidy against the Death Riders of Daniel Garcia and Willer yuta. Roderick Strong vs. Claudio Castagnoli. Dates of Agony against the Hurt Syndicate. We already seen a hundred times. Six man tag match Omega and Jurassic Express versus the Don Callis family like I just mentioned. And then the trio's title.
[01:03:39] The ops of Shabbata Hobbs and Joe as Joe is about to face hangman Adam Page at Russell Dream for the World Heavyweight Championship.
[01:03:52] For the AW Championship against LA faction in Granable Julie to Kill Roofs in the Beast more than.
[01:04:03] And this is a three hour card.
[01:04:08] A three hour card. And mind you on collision there is no matches.
[01:04:14] It is in within two days and you already don't have any matches.
[01:04:22] Oh my God.
[01:04:27] Aw. Supposed to be the alternative but you know what was the alternative and you know what we'll close on. We'll close on Bound For Glory.
[01:04:35] Bound for Glory happened pretty much yesterday.
[01:04:44] A lot of people are not liking it but quite literally it was their best pay per view that they could have done.
[01:04:57] This took place in Lowell Massachusetts at the Satonga center at UMass University of Massachusetts.
[01:05:11] This was a very very long pay per view was a five hour pay per view, one hour pre show and a four hour ple.
[01:05:24] And just so you know, the reports had came out that several contracts are to be up after this show.
[01:05:41] There is talkings about the inspiration which is the iconics.
[01:05:49] They are said to be expiring pretty soon.
[01:05:54] The hardies are set to expire next month.
[01:05:58] Cedric Alexander is to be expiring.
[01:06:06] A whole bunch of people are expiring pretty much after the show. The Rascals Zachary wants Trey Miguel.
[01:06:17] They will be released almost or they will not have a renewal of their contract.
[01:06:23] So. So you got all these people that are waiting on contract and meanwhile you got a whole bunch of stuff happening here. So let's, let's talk about this.
[01:06:43] We had Steve Macklin beat Frankie Kazarian become the new international title.
[01:06:52] So we had Steve Macklin beat Frankie Kazarian for the international title.
[01:06:57] Basic match. A lot of these matches were Very short and sweet.
[01:07:01] Other than the call your shot gauntlet, we had Tessa Blanchard beat Gia Miller, the referee.
[01:07:12] Then we had the call your shot gauntlet. This was by far one of the other worst matches.
[01:07:18] This match featured a bunch of stars including BDE, which is Brandon Does Everything, which is a YouTuber, skinny old YouTuber from Dayton, Ohio.
[01:07:34] He's been mostly involved with of course the main Ohio promotion, Pro Wrestling Revolver.
[01:07:45] He's had a couple of matches, he's actually won the remix title from AJ Francis.
[01:07:53] Jake something was in this. Matt Cardona was in this. Myron Reed with straw, Ryan Nemeth, Santino Marella, the hometown man, but eventually Nick Nemeth. Because how this call your shot gauntlet works is that after you eliminate a superstar, you basically have the final two men and you end up, you end up having a standardized match until one of them picks up a 1, 2, 3 or pin.
[01:08:34] Essentially both Nick Nemeth and Frankie Kazarian pinned themselves and they were the co winners of the call your shot gauntlet.
[01:08:45] Mind you that Frankie Kazarian, if I am not mistaken, won the Collier shot gauntlet last year at Bound for Glory.
[01:09:02] So I, I was, I was very, I was questioning a lot of what had happened.
[01:09:12] I, I did not understand why that happened, why did he win it again?
[01:09:18] Kind of stupid, not gonna lie, but that happened. They could have had a lot of other people win that match. We had the knockouts world title. Kalani Jordan beat Indy Hartwell.
[01:09:33] We had hardcore war. This is when I tuned in. We had the system of Alicia Edwards, Brian Myers, Eddie Edwards, JDC and Moose. The order for Jason Hodge, John Schuyler, Mustafa ali, Special Agent 0 aka Bill Kohler and Tasha Steeles.
[01:09:55] And then what was the match of the week next to Cena and Styles?
[01:10:01] TNA X Division title match, Leon Slater and Javon Evans.
[01:10:06] This ended in a no contest after a 20 minute time limit.
[01:10:12] They were awarded five more minutes by Santino Morella, director of Authority.
[01:10:18] And then in three minutes Dark state came in, interfered and the match was called off like it was ridiculous.
[01:10:35] It was the most, it was the most stupidest thing I had ever seen in a match that was doing so good. It was a five star match from two very athletic young men.
[01:10:56] Both Leon Slater and Javon Evans are 21 years old.
[01:11:04] Where else are you gonna find two young 20 year old talents to go and have a match like they did?
[01:11:12] That followed up with the oldest tag team match to feature one promotion and the developmental promotions tag team belts where the Hardys ended up retiring.
[01:11:27] Team 3D, the Dudley boys, Devon Dudley, Bubba Ray, Bully Ray. In a tables match, they first eliminated Jeff Hardy, then Jeff Hardy eliminated Devon.
[01:11:42] So it was basically like a best two out of three falls, I guess in tables concerns.
[01:11:49] But overall the Hardys were going to hit Bully Ray with shares. And then Bully Ray, like a sad puppy, slowly just turns to them. The Hardys throw away the chairs, they pick them up, Choke Slam, put him through the table and they beat him.
[01:12:07] And then after the match, they all gave a big hearty hug.
[01:12:12] Just imagine that ending scene of Hell in a cell at WrestleMania 28 with the Undertaker, Triple H and Shawn Michaels just very slightly older.
[01:12:24] And the Dudley boys took off their boots and they gave them to the Hardys and they have officially retired. And then of course the main event, which everybody wanted to see and they knew they were going to see after they decided not to do it.
[01:12:39] Mike Santana became the new teenage world champion, beating Trick Williams.
[01:12:45] So when it comes to tna, I think TNA have a very good chance at being a top promotion still.
[01:12:56] It's gonna take a while, but I think they did very, very well. So I give them credit where credit's due. They completely sold out again. It was rumored to be over close to 7,700. In reality, it's probably close to about 6,500, 6,800 that they had sold for that one arena. It was the highest attended Bound for Glory in company history. They have had career highs one after the other, including slammiversary.
[01:13:30] So that was very good. Also on this, the pre show, Mickey James and the tag team of the Beautiful People, Angelina Love and Velvet sky were inducted into the TNA hall of Fame which includes such talents as Sting, Jeff Jarrett, Kurt Angle, Earl Hebner, Gail Kim, Abyss, Ken Shamrock, awesome Kong, Raven, Tracy Brooks, Rhino, Team 3D who by the way were inducted in 2014 and Don west and Mike Tenay. The Blue, the Beautiful People, Angelina Love, six time Knockouts champion and one time knockout Tag champion, Velvet sky. Two time Knockouts champion. Meanwhile, Mickey James, that was a five time Knockouts World Champion, so, so very, very good.
[01:14:37] Very good for, for those ladies taking the cake, they will do it only at Bound For Glory.
[01:14:47] So I'll be very interested to see who gets inducted next year.
[01:14:56] A lot of people come to mind. I'm definitely guessing that honestly the Hardee's will be inducted next year.
[01:15:05] I could see, honestly a whole lot of people, there's definitely some people that need to be inducted. I wish Austin Aries could be inducted if he wasn't so much of a prick, but that was the weekend in wrestling.
[01:15:21] Only going to get bigger from here as we now look towards Survivor Series which will happen on November 29th in San Diego, California.
[01:15:37] And this is just in.
[01:15:41] Seth Rollins apparently is wearing a sling in Perth and he was wearing a sling before Raw, so I have no idea what the plan is.
[01:16:04] Somebody is suggesting that the War Games is going to be Jay, Seth, Roman, Punk at la Knight versus Theory Breaker, Lesnar Reed and Obafemi. They're really going to bring in Obafemi? No.
[01:16:20] Now, by the way, speaking of Trick Williams, I definitely expect Trick Williams to make his main roster debut very, very soon.
[01:16:27] That was the Rock and Review podcast. I want to thank you guys for listening a little bit of a rant show, an organized show, basically just me speaking my mind a little bit longer. But thank you so much. And as always, it's belt R a W K because we talk about the W's in pro wrestling.
[01:16:48] Thank you everybody.
