Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] The Rocky Review Podcast hosted by J. Rock Rude welcome everyone to another edition of the Rocking Review Podcast. This episode nine of the show and today this is a very different episode. I'm going to just tell you that straight. It is a very different episode that I am used to recording. There was a lot of backtrack that ended up happening between now and the last episode, so getting episode nine out has been very difficult. Some snow days, some work days, some all around crazy days. But that doesn't stop the crazy flow of wrestling news like we have gotten in the past week. And every single time that I looked to possibly produce another episode or record another episode, we end up always getting more and more news. And that was made clear Thursday night when the Rock announced that he was coming back to WWE and he would be on smackdown. But what did he come back to announce? We'll go into full detail about that. We'll also go into full detail about the NXT TNA invasion that has definitely escalated in the last two weeks. New Superstars coming in, new superstars showing up on each other's shows. Who is going to benefit the most? We will talk about them here today. We also will talk about the brand new Ryan Nemeth lawsuit that came out on February 14th towards AEW and 1 CM Punk. We'll go into full details about the lawsuit and what Nemeth claims has happened so far at his tenure at All Elite Wrestling, along with some other thoughts about current wrestling events. We'll also be talking a little bit about AEW Grand Slam. We won't go into a full scale about it, but we'll go into a little bit of detail in my opinion. And you know, how was everything going and the different matches that ended up happening in the Land Down Under? We'll talk a little bit about that and then we'll end off the show with Elimination Chamber preview and predictions heading in to Saturday, March 1st. All here and more on the Rocking Review podcast.
[00:03:12] So overall AEW Grand Slam was. How should I say it? It was average because like I talked about on the other episode, aw Grand Slam was not meant to be as a TV taped show. This was supposed to be what is considered a P a pay per view. This is supposed to be such a big event. This is supposed to be held in the Suncorp arena in Australia and it was supposed to be this big stadium show for aew. But then of course ticket prices and the selling of the venue did not go well. So Tony Khan decided to then pivot for some odd reason and I don't know why and I don't know if the people that originally purchased to go to the stadium show did get their money back and they got it refunded into going to this show. But from going to a, you know, 52,000 venue stadium to a regular old basic arena, you know, in Brisbane, Australia, like nothing against Brisbane or Australia, but the fact that Tony Khan basically hyped up the show almost months in advance like he does with some of the biggest shows that he wants to produce and promote and then he ends up giving us this like it was an okay pay per view.
[00:04:48] But overall it wasn't nothing too extraordinary. I mean the opening match got five stars. Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay beating Konosuke Takeshna and Kyle Fletcher in 21 minutes 20 seconds.
[00:05:05] I mean it was okay, but the biggest thing was all about the ring and there were lots of reports coming from people that attended the show. And you know what we'll get to when we talk a little bit about what happened in the semi main event with Okada and Matthews. But I don't know why they ended up doing this small little 16 by 16 ring.
[00:05:30] I don't know if it was just like the shipping of the ring or whatever it was that they had to do, but this ring was, you know, it didn't look like very tiny at first but you know, looking at it from a wide angle of perspective of the audience, this ring was super tiny. And I don't know why that they ended up getting this ring. But the first match pretty good. I mean that's what happens when you have your two biggest stars, you know, team together against the, you know, really the two biggest heels actually on the show because it sure as hell ain't Moxley. But they won their match. Omega is looking to battle Takeshina at Revolution for the international championship and most likely he will win that. And Ospreay on the other hand will be taking on Kyle Fletcher at Revolution in a steel cage match. So a nice little blow off to their feud. The third match to end it all in which I do believe Fletcher will win and he should win because if they really going to produce this guy as a star, they need to have him beat Ospreay in such an environment like a steel cage. We add Mercedes Monet versus Harley Cameron. That went 12 minutes and 50 seconds. Of course Monet beat Cameron. There were some funny little puppet spots. And again like I talked about last week, I don't really like the Harley Cameron character. Her entire thing is that she basically did not know anything about wrestling. And she got into wrestling. I mean like the earliest match she ever did have in the business was in 2022 against Scarlet Bidot and then had her Dark debut against Willow Nightingale and then continue to be on Dark and Russell Pro and then went to WSW for a little while.
[00:07:28] And then since then she got on to Dynamite and she was beat by Mariah May and I guess that was okay, but it wasn't something like super big. Her entire gimmick is that she continues to lose matches. She had one win against Viva Vaughn in Ring of honor on July 28th in 2024 and that was pretty much anything else. She was just a part of a group. Any other ring that she had was in Ring of Honor. So this entire gimmick of like her just getting beat down, beat down, beat down, and then she wins a couple of matches and I don't really understand why people are so hyped on her. The Brisbane brawl between the Deathriders and Cope and Jay White, this was a standard street fight match that had really nothing to do with being on the card. One of the dumbest moments was the fact of people were booing the hell out of the finish where basically Marina Shafir interfered with the briefcase and knocked out Jay White in which then Jon Moxley applied the. I believe it was the choke and then Cope passed out and it was stopped by ref's decision. But somehow that got four stars. I don't know why, but overall it was a decent, you know, street fight that they ended up having. And there was a very cool moment in the entrance for Cope when they were singing Metalingus by alter Bridge. And 10,000 people in that once arena seeing Alter Bridge was definitely a sight to see and a sight to hear. So that was a kind of good, a feel good moment. But overall it was, it was okay, I guess. Then we had the semi main event. Kazuchiko Okada beats Buddy Matthews in 13 minutes 25 seconds. This got four stars out of five.
[00:09:44] The main key to this match was as Buddy Matthews was making his entrance. Apparently when he got off the top rope, the top turnbuckle, he went to put his foot back down. He basically ended up completely rolling his ankle for the entire match and still delivered a halfway decent match. Kazuchi Okada of course won with the Rainmaker at the end. Buddy Matthews was walking around Australia with Rhea Ripley and was in a crutch. And I'm thinking, how many times are they going to trust this company with, you know, their safety? And this is Going to definitely shed light on the lawsuit coming up. And we'll talk about. But this entire sequence of Matthews apparently not having the padding on the ring apron to step down like he wants to. And in return he ends up rolling his ankle and then has to go out and wrestle an entire match with Okada. This match particularly this made me realize, and I realized this later on today was what has been going on with the TNT Championship. Daniel Garcia has not been doing anything whatsoever. And the craziest thing is that Garcia has been the champion for over 84 days. Okay, 84 days. It's incredible. His last match that he ended up having was a trio championship match on Collision where they lost to the Death Riders. It was Parker Garcia and Matt Menard. Why is 2.0 and Garcia Wrestling again and getting beat for no apparent reason? Like it makes zero sense whatsoever. His last defense, televised defense, was a three way match between Kyle O'Reilly and Lee Moriarty which got three and three quarters stars. Like, okay, that's okay I guess.
[00:12:02] But still, why on earth is that like not being pushed? He is. Since winning the championship, he has only defended it a total of four times and only three of them have been televised. A match with Mark Briscoe, a match with Kashiori Shabata, and a match with Kyle O'Reilly and Lee Moriarty. And then a Cruise match with Jay Lethal. That is it. Daniel Garcia needs to be pushed more and or they need somebody to take the title off of Daniel Garcia. And you know the first person I'm thinking of after Revolution that should be taking the title off of Garcia if they do not take it off of him at Revolution. And I don't even know who he's gonna face at Revolution. Heck, I don't even mind if Ricochet ended up winning it between now and Revolution because then that means that Swerve can end up being a Triple Crown champion, which I'm interested in doing. That match at Revolution if Tony Khan wanted to do it.
[00:13:09] I actually think that's a very good idea. I think that if Ricochet ends up getting that TNT Championship, because I don't know anybody else that could be able to take that TNT Championship off of Garcia that is relevant right? Right now. But basically if Ricochet beats Garcia on a collision or whatever, and then Swerve challenges Ricochet and Ricochet doesn't back out of the fight because he already beat Swerve.
[00:13:46] Swerve either loses or beats Ricochet at Revolution. And then on April 6th in Philly, swerve beats Ricochet wins the TNT Championship and then have him do whatever that you need to do at Double or nothing, which I haven't mentioned before we get into the main event, AEW Double or nothing for the first time outside of Jacksonville and Las Vegas will be taking place in Glendale, Arizona at the Desert Diamond Arena. I looked at this and I said, why on earth are they booking this pay per view for Arizona of all places? It's double or nothing. What case in mind does, at what point does Arizona speak Double or nothing at all?
[00:14:44] I couldn't tell you. The only thing that can speak to mine is that Arizona close to Texas and basically that's where they're gonna have all in Texas show. I don't know why they did this. They're used to doing it at Las Vegas. And whether they're doing the MGM or T Mobile arena this year, as we know, WrestleMania is in Vegas and they will be using the T Mobile arena for both NXT Stand and Deliver and the smackdown and the hall of Fame. So I did tweet it out that possibly AW got salty because they're so used to having a decent relationship with the Vegas, you know, arenas like T Mobile and MGM that basically when they announced that they were going to have the all those WWE events right around the exact same time that AEW likes to do double or nothing, that AEW basically said, okay, we can't do it in Jacksonville because that was daily place. And we did that for Covid. So now we're just going to move it to Glensdale, Arizona which by the way has a decent following. But nobody has ever really been that invested in going to a Glensdale, Arizona show, a wrestling show, and especially aew because whenever they have done shows in Arizona, I look back, they went from 12,000 to 9,000 from their last time there. So I don't know what this is meant to accomplish, but we will see in the future.
[00:16:24] But going back to Grand Slam, we had the main event. We had Toni Storm who's from Auckland, New Zealand and Mariah May who's from Tottenham. So two people that aren't even from Australia. The only person that was from Australia in this show is Buddy Matthews and Kyle Fletcher and of course Harley Cameron. But the main event saw Toni Storm beating Mariah May in a 15 minute flat small package win. And this is exactly what me and Lucas talked about last week. As we said, if Toni Storm basically wins this match, it is going to look like Mariah May was only there as a placeholder. So that way Toni Storm could be able to take a break off and then she comes back and then all of a sudden is champion once again. She's doing the same gimmick. Now, granted, the gimmick is very successful, but jeez, the fact that they immediately knew that they had to take off the belt from Mariah just shows you that, you know, maybe they do bet, yeah, end up going back to Mariah, but I don't know where Mariah goes from here. Does she go on and face Mercedes for the TBS championship? I have no clue. If she does, then that's good. She probably won't. I don't know who is going to take the title off of Mercedes.
[00:18:00] Personally, I think that the person who should take the title off of Mercedes has to be, by all means, has to be Statlander. Statlander has to show she can come up with a victory and win. Now, yes, she hasn't TBS champion before, but out of anybody on that women's roster, you can look at Megan Bain, she's new, but anybody else I don't see happening at all. She's been through everybody.
[00:18:37] If only there was some talent out there that could be good enough to fight Mercedes and win that championship, then it would be interesting. But since then, no, I don't think there's anybody on that women's roster that's even remotely close. They've had a lot of blunders currently with Thunder Rosa. Everybody on that entire women's division in AEW is not good. That was AEW Grand Slam. Overall, I thought it was a decent show.
[00:19:06] It was.
[00:19:07] It was an okay show. The rings were small, the talent was the strongest thing. That's what they had. And again for the fact that this was produced basically at 2:30am in American time. And there was a bunch of spoilers that ended up coming out during that morning and then later on, like they had the televised debut since it was taped, you know, and it looked pretty good, but apparently the crowd was just very dull. The crowd did not care whatsoever. And it was only for like the big moments. So crowd wasn't hot, but it drew a million dollars at the gate. So good is good for Tony Khan now shifting into some real cross territory.
[00:19:54] NXT and tna.
[00:19:57] So it was basically set up that late last year that TNA and NXT were going to have a cooperative agreement of having both NXT stars and TNA stars on each other's show on Tuesday nights on CW and Thursday nights on Impact plus or Access TV or wherever that you watch Impact.
[00:20:25] And it has showed a lot of promise because now we are finally getting the now stars and some of the stars back then of TNA that we were hoping could come to wwe finally show up on. Even though it's the developmental brand, it is still a wide audience, is a wider audience for some of these people that have been stuck in TNA to go to nxt. And actually made it easier this week because in fact TNA was at Full sail, the old stomping grounds for nxt. So that made it a lot easier for TNA talent, NXT talent to cooperate together than just have them fly over for wherever they were doing their tapings. But you know, they were doing their Florida tapings, their Orlando Florida tapings during this week, so they got a chance to use them.
[00:21:25] But it was on nxt.
[00:21:28] Obafemi came out and kicked off the show the NXT world champion.
[00:21:36] He was attacked by this new group called Aces and Shields, as it has been reported, full of these rookies that have been in the PC for the last year.
[00:21:51] And he basically came out and he said, those fools that jumped me at Vengeance Day after my match, they made one very big mistake. They did not finish the job. They hit me with their last shot, their best shot. But I am still standing here unfazed. So why don't you fools come down to this ring and finish what you started.
[00:22:09] Now the lights go out and it looks like they're going to show up and attack Oba again. But instead we only see one man, not four. So music plays and then we have a silhouette on the top of the entrance ramp and it is the one and only Moose, the X Division champion, Moose.
[00:22:34] Regardless what anybody has said over the last eight or so years, maybe more, that Moose has been in tna, Moose has always looked like a freaking juggernaut, multi time world champion, that guy.
[00:22:57] He might not be the best at promos, but damn, in the ring he is amazing.
[00:23:06] Doesn't matter, it works no matter what. Moose has always provided that big draw whenever TNA needs it. And I've always thought that Moose, he's not like the future because again, like he's a little old. But Moose is always a good fit for no matter which promotion has him.
[00:23:31] AEW freaking fumbled the ball with Moose when he faced Kenny omega back in 2021 and they could have had him. That would have been great. Moose would have been a amazing contender for any of the Mid Car Championships, the World Championship, he would have been great. But instead WWE finally has a chance to utilize Moose. Moose came out, he grabbed a mic and he said, oba, I just burst the bubble that you've been living in because I'm the one man you can't rule over.
[00:24:13] And Oboe responded with in that place, you're the man. That's your bubble. But in here I am inevitable.
[00:24:21] So trying to one up Moose and his intensity.
[00:24:27] And Moose responded with that this match has to happen. Obafemi versus Moose. And Oba reassures him and says, oh, it will.
[00:24:38] Now the rumor is that as announced from the recent TNA tapings which we'll talk about, one of the tapings that happened this week is the rumor is that at NXT Roadblock at the theater at Madison Square Garden on March 11 that we will get that match between Moose and Oba.
[00:25:07] But the rumor is that it is going to be a winner take all match. So that means that one Moose is going to defend his X Division Championship and Oba is going to be defending his NXT championship. Now, in case you are wondering, Obafemi is going to win this match. Now, funny enough, Moose is already scheduled to take on Jeff Hardy in a ladder match for the TNA X Division Championship. Now, of course anything could end up happening, but the fact that that event will be happening, TNA Sacrifice. That event will be happening about a few days after Roadblock, it really offers and begs the question what is gonna happen with the X Division Championship? And I really don't know.
[00:26:11] So my guess is that they're probably going to end up vacating that championship and it's going to be decided it might be for Sacrifice, but it also might be for Unbreakable. Because I believe that there will be an Ultimate X Match. If I'm correct for Unbreakable, that will also be happening, I believe in April. So I think that is the plan currently for the exhibition championship once Moose ends up losing to Obafemi.
[00:26:40] Later in the night though, we have another segment that ended up happening because upon the arrival of the TEEMU Shield for nxt, we also got the appearance of Ricky Starks, or we should be saying formerly known as Ricky Starks because later on that night Eva came out and introduced Ricky Starks to the ring to sign his NXT contract.
[00:27:14] Ricky said that people talk about making it in NXT and saying it's the dream, but not for me. It's reality. Said main eventing every NXT ple that's reality. Winning the NXT championship, that's reality. And the absolute truth about all of this is that I am the man in nxt. I am going to do what I always do to the best of my ability and that show up and show out because Right now, the revolution begins. And before he could put pen to paper, out comes old running mate Ethan Page.
[00:27:48] He comes out, he says, let me guess, in that contract somewhere, it says that your first match will be for the NXT championship, right?
[00:27:55] He said, but I want to come out here as your friend and tell you face to face that there is only one Ethan Page, and he's right here.
[00:28:03] So basically telling Ricky that he's not going to cop his style.
[00:28:10] Ricky then says that I got you in your feelings, huh? Is it because that I showed up and you know that the spotlight is not big enough for the both of us?
[00:28:22] And also, you know me well enough, my man, that I walk the walk and I talk the talk, and I'm here to take this place to a whole nother level.
[00:28:31] Paige then responded with, as big as a superstar as you are, even you won't be able to reach the bar that I set for people coming into nxt.
[00:28:42] And Ricky's like, I don't want to do this. Come on, now.
[00:28:46] This is a time for celebration. Celebrating the fact that I'm signing with the hottest pro wrestling brand right now. And you, Ethan, your big victory over Javon Evans at Vengeance Day, we should be celebrating that. But there's one thing I know. Javon showed that he got that dog in him. And the one thing is people like Javon always come around to whoop dat ass. And all of a sudden, Javon Evans came out, started doing his. His hits. I don't know, you know, I'm a fan of Javon Evans, but just the way that he's throwing hands, it's ridiculous. But they brawl into the crowd. Ricky goes back to sign the contract again, but now Wesley comes out.
[00:29:26] Wesley's been causing some mayhem backstage.
[00:29:30] Lee then says, you're also new around here, that I'm gonna give you a pass. But you gotta understand that there are some rules around here. And the number one rule is you don't disrespect Wesley. Now, signing this contract might be a good idea, but Ava, if he does know that, I want to be the first one that shows him the ropes around here and welcome him to nxt.
[00:29:52] Ava responds, and he says she's. Ava responded and said she could make that happen, but Ricky grabbed the mic and said, why is everybody so angry? He replied that either way, you and Ethan, y'all are like two peas in a pod. L. Y'all always talking above your limit. So let me tell you this, I'm going to do you one better, actually. Next week, you And I how about that? And Lee basically says that it's one and done once he signs the contract and Ricky tells him that he will welcome him to the revolution.
[00:30:23] Lee tried to attack Ricky, but Ricky punched him before he could do anything and sent Lee out to the ring. And then we finally put pen to paper. Ricky Starks is a NXT superstar, but he's not Ricky Starks, he's Ricky Saints.
[00:30:46] The Ricky Saints stuff, I guess it's okay, doesn't roll off the tongue like Ricky Starks, but again, the dude is from New Orleans, so I'm definitely guessing that he wanted to do something with that. Probably wanted to follow his likeness of, you know, where he's from. So good for him. Good for Ricky Starks or Ricky Saints, whatever you want to call him. But definitely looking forward to him on the NXT roster. And most likely we will get a match between him and possibly Ethan Page, possibly even a world title match against Oba at Stand and Deliver. Maybe. I don't know if it's too quick for that, but you never know. We then went backstage to the no Quarter Catch Crew. So it was Miles Bourne and Tavion Heights and the rest of the gang and they wanted to challenge for a tag title match against Fraxiom, which by the way, missed Tag Team of the Year by the Wrestling Observer Awards to the Young Bucks. And I don't know why Young Bucks only put a fraction, not even half. I'm talking about a quarter of the work that Fraxiom has been putting in this entire year, making banger after banger in the tag division for nxt, in a division that does not look like it has any stars, but somehow they make stars anyway. So instead of challenging Fraxiom, they actually challenge to cross the line and they challenge the Hardy Boys to a tag match in Cincinnati. And later in the show the Hardys did end up responding and said that they will face Miles Bourne and Tavion Heights next week on NXT. So this will be the first time since 2018, if I'm correct, 2018, 2017, there'll be the first time since then that they have tag together in WWE. If you remember, Matt left in 2020, Jeff wouldn't leave until about 2021, 2022, and then they would have him go to AEW and then he ended up going back into rehab again and then he finally got out, went to TNA where his brother was and they've been there since and they are currently the tag team champions.
[00:33:30] So that'll be cool to see. The Hardy Boys back in WWE after so long not being together. Later on, Moose and Lexus King, the Heritage cup winner, they ran into each other backstage. Lexus said that he would love to trust the system, the system being the group that is led, I believe by Moose.
[00:33:55] But he doesn't trust the way that they came into NXT challenging him for his title.
[00:34:02] So there was a match between jdc, AKA Fandango the week before with Lexus King and he begs the question of would Moose even put his X Division title on the line.
[00:34:20] And he basically looks at Lexus and he said all he had to do was ask and Moose says that he is going to destroy Lexus. So we got that match.
[00:34:30] We then get an altercation later on between Saints, Evans, Paige and Lee in the back and Ava announced that Instead of Saints vs Lee next week it will actually be a tag match where it'll be Ricky Saints and Javon Evans taking on Ethan Page and Wesley.
[00:34:55] So a very nice looking card for NXT on CW next week. I actually have the full card right here. From Cincinnati, Ohio at the Andrew J. Brady Music Center. We have a tag match between the Hardy Boys, Matt and Jeff against no Quarter Catch Crew, Miles Bourne and Tavion Heights. We also have the WWE NXT women's North American title match between Stephanie Vicure against Carmen Petrovic. There was a number one contenders match on that episode of in which Carmen ended up winning and then it later produced into a six women's tag that included Julia Vikir and Jordan Grace. So most likely I believe Grace will have her world championship match at Stan and the Liver in Las Vegas. We got an X Division title match between Moose and Lexus King and then the main event most likely will be Ethan Page and Wesley vs. Javon Evans and Ricky Saints. So nice looking card next week for nxt and it's very rare when you get a very loaded card like that for a regular NXT show, but they're bringing out all the stars and they're crossing the line with NXT and tna.
[00:36:07] Speaking of tna, their Impact tape show from Full Sail, it kicked off with a Joe Hendry concert in which he talked about being in the Rumble when all of a sudden the Colon brothers came out and they look like they were going to attack. And all of a sudden at the top of the ramp, Elijah, AKA Elias, he came out and there was a tag match set for the main event between Joe Hendry and Elijah against the Colon brothers. So nice little surprise there. Colon brothers showing out of nowhere and Elijah who has reportedly signed a Actual contract with TNA Wrestling, so that's good for him. We then had a NXT TNA match between Tyson Dupont and Tyreek Igway.
[00:37:10] When I saw the highlight for this match and they showed the entrances, Dupont looks so freaking meaty.
[00:37:20] And meanwhile they both got very big energy. Wesley, who basically have been the backer for Dupont and Igway. So Iguay and Dupont have been Wesley's bodyguards trying to defend him from the Rascals, his former teammates, his former brethren.
[00:37:42] The Rascals went after Tyson and Tyreek before the bell rang and hit stereo suicide dives to the outside.
[00:37:50] Igway lifted up Zach with one arm and powerbombed him onto Trey. Miguel Wentz then hit a knee on Tyson and Tyreek on each corner and hit running shooting star presses on Tyreek for two. The Rascals hit a double super kick on Tyrique, but Tyreek took them down with a clothesline. Trimigal then hit a Meteora followed by a Swanton onto Tyson for the win.
[00:38:20] After the match, Wesley got on the mic and suggested that the Radicals so Zach Wentz and Trey, Miguel and Ace Austin would face himself, Dupont and Igway at sacrifice and that was made official. So there will be another crossover match at this sacrifice pay per view where it will be Lee Dupont and Iguay against the Rascals and Ace Austin.
[00:38:56] Later on in the show, we had Leon Slater taking on JDC Fandango in a nodiq match.
[00:39:07] Leon took JDC to the apron and pulled out a table from underneath the ring and looked to powerbomb JDC from the apron, but he fought out.
[00:39:19] Leon set JDC on the table outside and went to the top turnbuckle and delivered a star studded Swanside 450.
[00:39:28] He took JDC back into the ring for a pin, but all of a sudden the System.
[00:39:33] So Edwards and Brian Myers came out and put Leon Slater through the table.
[00:39:45] The fans were chanting Oba after JDC pinned Slater for the win. After the match, they continued to gang up on Slater when the Hardys ended up coming out.
[00:40:00] But after they had the numbers advantage, finally Oba Femi the Ruler came out and evened up and took out the System on his own.
[00:40:13] And then it was announced that on the next tape show that Obafemi and the Hardys would take on the System. So Obafemi will be on a impact show.
[00:40:26] That is incredible. I cannot wait to see how that goes down. It has pretty much been taped and I already know that Femi and the Hardys won that match. It was also announced on that show that Cora Jade would be facing Masha Slamovich for the TNA Knockouts Championship at TNA Sacrifice.
[00:40:51] So currently the updated card is only those two matches. The other match that has been announced is that there will be a 10 man tag match where it will be Joe Hendry, Matt Hardy, Elijah and Leon Slater and a to be announced tag partner versus the system of Eddie Edwards, Brian Myers and JDC and the colognes of Eddie and Orlando. Nice little five on five tag match. We also got Mace Warner taking on Sammy Callahan. Pretty interesting.
[00:41:33] Very interested into seeing how that sacrifice show is going to happen and that will take place on March 14. Shifting to some big news, some legal news that ended up happening with one Ryan Nemeth. Now if you remember when we had the talk about the first Ryan Nemeth incident in which he filed a complaint to AEW about harassment and everything like that, it was basically pushed under the rug. Nobody really cared about that it was what it was. But it was reported that Ryan Nemeth filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles superior court on February 14 against AEW, Tony Khan and CM Punk alleging assault, breach of contract and intentional interference with his career.
[00:42:39] Now in this was a full lawsuit filled with different claims that Nemeth had. So here are a few of them that are basically summed up from the lawsuit.
[00:42:53] It alleges that CM Punk has had history of violent outbursts, including the assault on Matt and Nick Jackson in early 2022. Despite this, AW and Tony Khan did not take any action against Punk, reportedly due to Punk's popularity and Khan's personal admiration for him. As stated in the lawsuit, Khan made conscious decision to keep Brooks being Phil Brooks Punk as a part of aew, although he knew that Brooks was prone to lashing out in violent episodes.
[00:43:27] And then there's the detail about a June 21, 2023 assault in which Nemeth was assaulted by Punk in the AEW locker room where Punk allegedly shouted at Nemeth, do we have an effing problem? Do we need to step outside and handle this like men? Despite Nemeth's attempt to de escalate the situation, no disciplinary action was taken against Punk. The lawsuit claims that following the assault, nothing happened to Brooks as far as punishment from aew.
[00:44:01] After the assault, Nemeth was allegedly benched for over two months, meaning that he was excluded from being booked for matches resulting in a loss of income. The lawsuit states that because Nemeth was not booked for the matches, his income stream from AEW dried up. It Further claims that this was done at Punk's request as Punk wanted to ruin Nemeth's career. Now this is alleged remind you of Punk wanting to ruin Nemeth's career. Now again, remember Nemeth, yes is a pro wrestler but his brother Nick Nemeth, formerly known as Dolph Ziggler has always been the bigger star. So just saying. It was then reported that during a August 12th Greensboro event Nemeth was allegedly ordered to leave an AEW event after Punk reportedly took his phone and sent a message. The lawsuit states that this humiliation caused irreparable damage to marketability and the reputation of Nemeth. It claims that the expulsion was engineered by Punk with Tony Khan supporting the decision due to again his deep admiration for Punk. So basically he's blaming Punk for two different instances. One him not being booked for two months and then two that he was at an event right before Punk left the company in which Punk basically ordered that Nemeth was not to be on the show.
[00:45:35] The lawsuit also alleges not just Punk but also alleges Tony Khan.
[00:45:41] It says that Tony Khan used his resources to blackball Nemeth from professional wrestling industry making it impossible for him to find work.
[00:45:56] It asserts Tony Khan blames Nemeth for Brooks leaving AEW and has used his significant resources to make sure that Nemeth can never wrestle again.
[00:46:09] So again this is not talking about his time in TNA where he has been his brother's lackey. This is basically saying that Nemeth can never really wrestle in other companies.
[00:46:21] I think that does suck for Ryan Nemeth. But then again you have to think about that he has not really been that great and this is a case of him basically wanting to capture the moment and capture as much attention that he can because he knows that his brother is the biggest superstar. He's always done this no matter what.
[00:46:45] And Then of course December 2024 Fightful select reported that Nemeth had submitted a formal complaint to executives detailing abuse, harassment threats he faced from Punk and others at. The complaint reportedly included a detailed timeline of events which Nemeth claims caused significant harm to his career. So this is the second time in the last three months where Nemeth has tried to reportedly say that AW did not care about him or or his well being and basically he was blamed for the firing of Punk when the fact is is that Punk was fed up with AEW already and he was more focused on the aspect of Tony Khan did not know what he was doing when running his company. So that sucked.
[00:47:35] Nemeth is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and has demanded a jury trial. The lawsuit claims that the actions of aew, Tony Khan, CM Punk were malicious and intended to harm Nemeth's career, reputation and financial standing in the wrestling industry.
[00:47:58] Like, why on earth wouldn't he do this if he just was just. He's just looking for money. He is looking for money. And this is the lowest that I have seen in years of a wrestler or anybody ever try and get something out of the situation of he is not good and he just was not being booked for anything.
[00:48:23] Now the funniest thing is that in this, this is a direct quote from the lawsuit. I have the lawsuit pulled up.
[00:48:34] It says the following before it goes into the details. It says that Ryan Nemeth is a successful actor, comedian and stuntman.
[00:48:48] Nemeth also followed his older brother Nick's career and has established himself as a star performer on the professional wrestling circuit. Nemeth was under contract with aew. AEW is owned by Tony Khan. Shad Khan is the owner of the NFL franchise Jacksonville Jaguars. When his son Tony managed to alienate most everyone within the Jaguars organization, including star NFL players, Tony was moved to the leadership role in the Khan family owned Fulham Football Club.
[00:49:26] Tony ended up mismanaging Fulham leading to multiple lawsuits against the club. Since he was a child, Tony loved professional wrestling and had his obsession with certain wrestlers. The Khan family formed AEW to provide Tony with something to do safely away from the family's other ventures. Tony serves as AEW's chief executive officer. So what it was was basically setting up this, this is a description of the people, or I should say at least the, the three people because it does go into the Phil Brooks and then it goes into many, many different things. It, it says all the way from 14 all the way to 42. Where it ends with the conduct of each defendants was malicious in that the defendants intent to cause injury to the plaintiff. Defendants acted willfully with a conscious disregard for the rights of the plaintiff. So this is like serious, serious, serious, serious stuff. So I don't know what's going to happen at the end of this, but all I know is that this is a very poor excuse for a wrestler to end up getting some money out of this. Whatever ends up happening. We could end up seeing Tony Khan and CM Punk in a court and them together again. But for a phony little brother of a more famous wrestler just trying to get some money, looking for compensatory and damages and wants A jury trial, like how low you got to be? Like this. Seriously, most ridiculous thing ever. So definitely see where that goes. So Thursday night I'm sitting for a early screening of a movie that I'm looking to go see. I'm hyped. I'm sitting there, I'm sitting in the theater and I look on X and as I'm scrolling, what do I see but Triple H, Paul Levesque and WWE make an official statement that on February 21st at the smoothie King center in New Orleans, the Rock is going to show up. And for what? We have no idea. We didn't know if this was going to be to produce a storyline with the bloodline, but the late rumor was apparently that he was going to announce that WrestleMania 42 will be in New Orleans.
[00:52:17] But before we get into that specific promo, because that is the one thing I'm gonna talk about, the rest of this show was considered possibly one of the worst smackdowns so far this year.
[00:52:36] And unfortunately I think that this is one due to this promo and it's two due to the fact of they have no big stars really other than like guys like Drew, Cody, Kevin and the entire bloodline.
[00:52:55] And you can only make room for some certain stuff. You can only work with what you got. So the total match card, it's funny because this looked like a dynamite type thing.
[00:53:10] We had Jimmy Uso beating Drew McIntyre in a surprise win in 11 minutes 15 seconds. We had a tag match, random tag match where it was Carmelo Hayes and the Miz beating La Knight. In our truth, we had Tiffany stratton beating candice lerae in a non title match in 13 minutes. Then what was considered one of the worst matches on the night in a note contest because they both got beaten up by the street profits. We had DIY defending the Tag championships against Pretty Deadly. And then the main event which was the the biggest thing, the only decent thing on this episode, main event tag match between Braun Strowman, Damian Priest and they beat the team of Jacob Fatu and Solo Sikoa in which Fatu ended up accidentally super kicking Solo. So like I said before, the rumored match is probably we're gonna get FATU versus Solo Mania.
[00:54:20] So I don't know where the pivot came from.
[00:54:23] It's funny because that means that the storyline is not going anywhere.
[00:54:30] And after this promo it's definitely shown that there is far more bigger things for Cody to worry about.
[00:54:38] So the show initially kicked off with Nick Alda saying that the final boss wanted to see Cody in The middle of the ring tonight. Now, originally, Cody was actually in a tag match with, I believe it was Braun Strowman.
[00:55:00] And he was supposed to tag, but instead he got pulled for Damian Priest.
[00:55:05] So the Rock comes out.
[00:55:09] This was at the who, I want to say 9:30 mark, maybe more.
[00:55:16] This segment felt like it went for ages.
[00:55:22] And I think this is showing you that the Rock loves repeating stuff.
[00:55:31] He loves repeating stuff.
[00:55:34] It is what it is.
[00:55:37] But, man, this promo was long. It was confusing. But he came out. He came out to a remix version. So he comes out and he says that finally the Rock has come back to New Orleans.
[00:55:51] And he also says that WrestleMania has returned to New Orleans because in 2026, WrestleMania 42, live from the Superdome. Now, of course, the last WrestleMania that happened in New Orleans was the iconic WrestleMania 30, one of the top three WrestleManias of all time.
[00:56:17] Yes, Movement, Bourbon Street Miracle, whatever that you want to call it.
[00:56:24] That main event that night, that entire WrestleMania pay per view was. Was special. He started singing when the Saints Go Marching in. And he, he turned heel halfway through. He's like, this ain't sing along with the final boss. You sit there, you shut your mouth and let the final ball sing the song.
[00:56:41] So he laughed off.
[00:56:44] And after teasing the crowd a little bit, he finally says he wants to get down to business. And he calls out Cody Rhodes. He says, I'm going to call out a man who I respect, who I admire, who we all admire, and that is our WWE Champion. And he calls out Cody Rhodes, and he shares a hug with the ring. He kind of kissed him on the cheek. And he talks about ever since last year, WrestleMania, we've become good friends.
[00:57:09] He talks about that night in Los Angeles. We went to the back, we had some tequila for about two hours, talked and had a great old time. We chopped it up. We had a blast.
[00:57:21] And then he basically called him a great champion. He said that he carried this company like an incredible champion that he is. And he said, thank you, Cody. He then said that, cody, you are a great champion. But, my friend, I want you to be something that's more than a great champion.
[00:57:39] I want you to be something more than our champion. I want you to be my champion.
[00:57:49] And he talked about that, the fact of. That the Rock is at a bigger position than Cody. He talked about how the final boss, the Rock, was on the board of tko. He's a director.
[00:58:04] He talked about his good friend Ari Emanuel. Every single time he goes on television, he always talks about every big executive person that's involved with WWE or tko, because he wants them to know these are the guys that's running it, not you people. He said, orey, can you believe that you own the wwe? And Ori said that he doesn't own the wwe. The Rock owns wwe. And he said that I'm the most powerful. But he shifted back and he told Cody, said, if you become my champion, I can open up doors of possibilities that you can never even imagine. He talked about that he doesn't want Cody to be just his champion. He wants him to be on a whole new level. I want you to be here.
[00:58:55] That's what I mean by my champion. Cody, if you become my champion, every dream you ever had, I can make come true. Every dream, your wife, every dream, your little baby, who I know I can make all come true for you. So basically, he told Cody that, hey, if you want this big opportunity, you really think that you're the biggest guy, then you should be my champion. He talked about bringing joy to the world. That's Cody's motto. He talked about him having over half a billion Instagram followers. He said that the Rock is the most followed American man in the world. And I want that for you, Cody. He says, cody, I'm a very lucky man. I got it all.
[00:59:40] I know it.
[00:59:42] You know it, you have it all. We're lucky boys. We're mama's boys. We're girl dads. We're lucky boys.
[00:59:49] He says, the one thing I've never had that I want more than anything is a brother. And that's what you can be.
[01:00:00] And then he gives the flashbacks.
[01:00:07] He says that last year when he wanted to face Roman Reigns, he knew that was best for business. He told Triple H, he told Nick Khan, he told Cody to move aside. And what did Cody do?
[01:00:25] He stood up to him.
[01:00:28] He said that he admire Cody's strength and conviction.
[01:00:33] And he said, you did the one thing that nobody ever does. And he slapped a Rock.
[01:00:41] So totally ignoring that, he was the first one that slapped Cody.
[01:00:46] But he said that that's why you're so special, because a normal man wouldn't be able to do that. He's like, that's why you should be my champion. That's why I'll take you from here to here, and I'll make sure that every dream you ever have comes true and every desire comes true.
[01:01:06] And Cody basically said that, listen, you want me to be your champion, but you know that I'm their champion. But Rock kept on playing along. He said, cody, be my champion. Here's the thing, I don't want you to answer me tonight.
[01:01:23] I want you to think about it. I want you to go home, talk to your wife, talk to that baby of yours. I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna talk to my wife, I'm gonna hold my babies.
[01:01:32] And he says that on March 1st at Elimination Chamber I will meet you in Toronto, Canada and you will give me your answer then.
[01:01:41] So, my God, we got the Rock in Toronto. We got whoever is gonna face Cody at Mania. That is, unless something happens before the end. Cody's like, are you talking about you want this? You want my championship? Is that really all that you want? And the Rock, like, this is the most coldest line so far this year. He says, no, no, no, no, my brother, I don't want that. I want your soul.
[01:02:14] And meanwhile, Cody is just starstruck. He doesn't know what to say.
[01:02:21] And the Rock just walks away.
[01:02:24] Now again, I'm wondering what on earth is gonna happen.
[01:02:31] And we'll talk about that with the predictions as we end the episode.
[01:02:36] But I'm wondering what is gonna happen with Cody and the Rock because the first thing that popped into my mind was Austin and McMahon in Houston.
[01:02:50] 2001, WrestleMania 17, we had Rock and Austin McMahon comes out, he interferes with the match.
[01:03:04] Austin takes the steel chair from Vince and whacks the Rock.
[01:03:09] And Austin sold out to McMahon and then they had the two man power trip with him and Triple H and then Triple H had his injury and then later on the Rock would then turn wwe. He would go with WCW and the evasion angle and then that field and then the Rock went back and then Stone Cold went back and everybody, everybody, it was just, it was a gnarly situation. But at the time, the idea, and this is an idea that has been repeated since then of the corporate sellout, you have seen it all over the place. We had the Rock when he had his corporate sellout. We had Austin when he had his corporate sellout. We had Randy Orton. 2013, he had his corporate sellout. 2014, Seth Rollins, the. The architect thakcher heard around the world turning his back on his brethren of the Shield.
[01:04:11] And now we have a chance.
[01:04:15] Like I mentioned, we saw shades of that at the Royal Rumble with Cody and Kevin Owens and Cody posing with the two titles over the damaged body of Kevin Owens.
[01:04:33] We saw that little bit, that little edge that Cody needs to be up to here and that's what the Rock wants. He wants Cody up there.
[01:04:48] So does Cody do it? Does Cody sell out or do we wait until Mania and then it's either Cody that sells out or it's somebody else that sells out and takes that favor.
[01:05:07] They take that word from the Rock and they take them up on that offer. They align themselves to the Rock, the corporate director, the evil boss and his lackey there with the world Championship.
[01:05:28] And he is not their champion. He's not the people's champion. He's the final boss's champion.
[01:05:35] It's looking good.
[01:05:38] So real quickly, we have the preview for the elimination chamber that will be held on March 1st at the Rogers center, home of the Toronto Blue Jays.
[01:05:54] This is one of the first big shows in Toronto. This is the first time that they have been there at the Rogers center, or I should say that was before the Toronto Superdome, since, ironically, if I remember correctly, WrestleMania 18, that was the Rock and Hogan.
[01:06:18] So we have a tag match with Candice lerae and Nia Jax versus Tiffany Stratton and Trish Stratus.
[01:06:31] Stratton and Stratus. Goodness gracious. That is a hard tag team name that they are going to have to try to get right on commentary. I think this is pretty much obvious that Candace is there to take the pin and Trish somehow came back. There was a very weak annihilator on both Stratton and Stratus on smackdown, where basically Nia Jax just, basically just sat right on them. Just so gingerly. It's ridiculous.
[01:07:07] It was very, very rushed, I will say that. Super rushed.
[01:07:13] But we got a very clear winner there. Tiffany and Trish will win that match.
[01:07:21] An unsanctioned match between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.
[01:07:28] The Raw after the Royal Rumble, Kevin Owens ended up delivering a package piledriver to Sami Zayn. That took Sami Zayn out for about two weeks. But then Sami Zayn came back and he demanded a match with Kevin Owens. After Kevin Owens said that he is going to ruin Zayn's life. There was actually a promo that Owens cut outside of Zayn's house.
[01:07:57] Zayn was in the house with his wife and his kid. And basically Owens cut a very deeply passionate promo.
[01:08:07] So where this goes, I'm hoping for another match at Mania, but I decided they wanted to go for this because of course, it's Canada.
[01:08:16] And I think that Owens does end up beating Zane. I think we get something of a ref stoppage.
[01:08:23] I say we get not one, but two package pile drivers. And the ref calls it, even though it's an unsanctioned match, but we do something where Sammy, he's gonna persevere and he's gonna ask for Owens one more time at WrestleMania. And Zayn's gonna get the win.
[01:08:44] And there you go. That's how you set up their mania match.
[01:08:47] Two brothers.
[01:08:50] Finally the end all be all chapter or possibly. We get the return of Randy and then we get Randy versus Owens, which I believe was the scheduled. That was the reported plan. We were gonna get Orton versus Owens. So I got Owens winning the unsanctioned match.
[01:09:13] We have the WWE Women's World title number one contenders elimination chamber match.
[01:09:20] So it was announced that Charlotte Flair will be taking on Tiffany Stratton for her Championship at WrestleMania. So they need somebody to challenge Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania. And the six contenders in this match are Naomi Bailey, Alexa Bliss, Liv Morgan, Bianca Belair, and Roxanne Perez.
[01:09:46] Now, the odd woman out of this entire situation is Liv. And I am praying that Liv does not end up winning this match.
[01:09:56] So that means that the only other person I see that could technically win this match, and I don't know if that is going to be good, is Alexa Bliss.
[01:10:09] Because Naomi and Bianca and Jade, they have their storyline right now. I'm sure that Bianca is going to be revealed or it's going to be Naomi is going to be revealed as the attacker of Jade, and then that is going to set up their match for Wrestlemania.
[01:10:26] Roxanne and Bailey are having their rivalry going on and Liv is in the middle of the Naomi Bianca thing with her and Raquel.
[01:10:40] So I don't know really if that's what it would be, but really looking at it, the only person that has no storyline that could end up building a decent storyline would have to be Alexa Bliss.
[01:10:54] Now, is that what everybody was hoping for? No. Everybody was really hoping for Iyo, Sky. EO sky is going to challenge Rhea Ripley for the Women's World title coming up soon. So maybe they do the surprise and have Iyo win the title and then maybe we get Bliss versus Iyo. I feel like that's a more common matchup than having Rhea Ripley, Buff Rhea taking on Alexa Bliss. But of those six women, Alexa Bliss is the only odd person out that I would definitely see that could definitely win this and end up having a storyline that will not coincide with any of the other women, because all the other women have storylines of their own.
[01:11:46] We then have the WWE Undisputed Championship, but we have CM Punk, Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre, Damian Priest, Logan Paul and John Cena. Now, the two biggest people this match that I could definitely see going in and facing Cody has to be Punk and Cena.
[01:12:16] And that only means two things.
[01:12:19] Punk wins, we get Rollins and Reigns at WrestleMania and that is not a main event, but it will be a damn good match.
[01:12:29] Or we have Cena win and we have Cena versus Cody. Whatever type of decision ends up happening with the Rock. Now that has been the assumption. The assumption is, is that Cena is going to win the Chamber because he has clearly stated he is going to main event WrestleMania and he's on the chase for the 17.
[01:12:54] And it was released that John Cena will be a part of of the three of the four March Raws.
[01:13:07] And more importantly, they are the three March Raws that will be happening on their international tour. So he will appear.
[01:13:16] He could possibly be in dark matches for the smackdowns that will be happening, but it is unclear if he will be. But he will be there for three straight weeks, three straight Raws in which he can have promo battles with Cody. Who knows what's going to happen with the Rock. But the assumption is that Cena is going to win the Chamber, he's going to face Cody, Cody's going to go against Rock's offer and Cena is going to take up the Rock's offer even though Cena is already, you know, somewhat as big, pretty much up to that level with the Rock. And the Scene Nation is going to be turned corporate and it's going to be about the MII Nation in his last run.
[01:14:06] And then Punk is going to beat Cena as the Babyface and win the championship. Or the other way around is Punk ends up going corporate and he does the unthinkable. He aligns himself with the Rock. He already told Cody that he's going to stab him in the front, not the back. So Cena ends up not getting his championship at Mania. We get Cena and Paul at Mania instead. Because that's the only way I see it. I see it as Punk either eliminates Cena and Paul to win or Paul eliminates Cena and then Punk eliminates Paul, if that makes any sense. And then whoever gets eliminated by Paul ends up facing him at WrestleMania. And as far as McIntyre and Priest, the rumor is that they will both face each other at Mania, which I don't really care, that's an average match, but there's nowhere else for them to go. So. And as far as Paul goes, like I mentioned, and then go with Seth, Seth and Roman. So my final prediction is that John Cena is going to win this match and we are either going to have him beat Cody and possibly turn Heel or Cody's just going to beat Cena and that is the official in ring. Pass the torch of Cody and Cena or Cody turns heel at Mania. Who knows. But overall, those are my predictions for Elimination Chamber and and that is it for this episode of the Rocking Review Podcast. I want to thank you so much for listening. A reminder that we are on both x Twitter and Instagram at the Rocking Review. That is the R awk ing review. That is where we post all of our upcoming episode information and when we drop our episodes and you can always catch them on both Castros and Spotify and make sure that you hit that follow tab and that notification bell so you can get notifications every single time we drop new episodes. We are also on the wnyo889.org website in which that you can find our other esteemed podcast here at WNYO and where you can listen to them. And as always it's spelled R A W K because we talk about the W's in pro wrestling. Thank you everybody.
[01:16:56] Sa.
