This is a script from my podcast/youtube video You can find the video on Sunday here: https://youtu.be/_4zPXKUviBg and the longer audio version on Spotify here: https://bit.ly/3LYKdyn
Hello and welcome, to the Yet Another Wrestling podcast number two. Just a quick moment to say this is available on both YouTube and Spotify so please consider subscribing wherever you're listening. In this Podcast I try to talk about more current topics with more of my own ideas in than I put into my YouTube videos.
Spotify only section:
We're just a couple of weeks away from Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia and this might well be the first week in a while without much McMahon related drama. It feels like Backlash was somewhat of a morale booster what with that hot crowd and some of the bigger moments on it. But now we're looking ahead to the next one, and probably the biggest thing on that night will be the crowning of a new World heavyweight champion. That belt has grown on me from when I first saw it. If I could change one thing though I'd add ruby's, like the previous World title had, but at least the belt itself isn't red. At the time of me recording this we just have one person who has qualified to the finals in Saudi, and thats Seth Rollins. On Smackdown we'll have two more triple threats and a semi final so by the end of that show we should know who Seths opponent will be. The field right now is Rey Mysterio, Sheamus, Lashley, AJ Styles, Edge and Austin Theory.
From all I've seen this week many seem to think Seth is a lock in to win the whole thing and he might well be. I've gotten to like his new Elton John-esque fashion and gaudy character but I still hate that music. It would be interesting to see this version of Seth carrying a major title. As for who his opponent will be my guess at this point would be Edge. Even though he was just drafted to Smackdown Edge made an interesting case in a video on twitter yesterday. He pointed out that the new World title belt looks very similar to the one he was forced to vacate when he retired the first time, a day after he defended it at Wrestlemania twelve years ago. He then said he'd like to win the belt one last time, and retire once he loses it on his own terms. Whether he makes it to Night of Champions or not, the match he has to quality against AJ Styles and Rey Mysterio should be great.
Speaking of AJ Styles, if they're going to surprise us and give an unexpected result I wouldn't mind seeing him win that match, and beat whoever wins between Lashley Sheamus and Theory and go on to face Seth. As far as I can tell Seth and AJ have had five previous matches on tv, one being on pay per view for the Universal title, and Seth has won most of those matches.
As far as the tournament itself, it's a bit of an unusual format. Two three way matches, then a semi final leading to a final at the big event. When I first heard that I was a bit perplexed, but actually I quite like that they changed the format a bit. It feels these days like there are way too many tournaments, I mean right after this one AEW will soon be beginning two separate Owen Hart tourneys at the same time. I partly consider Triple H to blame for starting this trend, having been the man behind the Cruiserweight classic, the United Kingdom tournaments, the Dusty Rhodes tag team and Mae Young classics. Depending on your tastes, some of us are going to be trying to follow the Best of the Super Jr's and the G1 too.
In AEW news it looks like we have another big announcement coming next week, and it's looking like the Saturday night Collision show will be officially revealed. If I could do a cheap plug I've started making shorts on my YouTube channel every time a big announcement is teased, a sort of 'things that won't be announced' video, so that'll be out early next week. Maybe the biggest thing out of this weeks Dynamite was the pretty shocking turn at the end of the show by Don Callis, who stabbed Kenny, by God, Omega with the screwdriver brought into the ring by the Blackpool Combat Club, giving Jon Moxley his first win over Kenny Omega since Full Gear in 2019. Callis' relationship with Omega has been well established for a very long time now, so I hope they have a strong enough reason to have done the turn, because that was a big moment, and I hope it wasn't done in haste. I couldn't hear anything Callis was saying but he did keep pointing to the scar on his head from when Moxley hit him, accidentally cutting him enough to require stitches. Perhaps it's as simple as that. The attack happened on the March 29th Dynamite, the same night Omega had an IWGP US title match with Jeff Cobb. If you recall, right before the match Tony Schiovone approached Omega to tell him about the attack, but Kenny was too focused on his upcoming match, so maybe Kenny's reaction is what caused Don to do what he did this week. I'm hoping we hear from Callis on this coming week's Dynamite and hopefully we make some progress towards Double or Nothing, as we currently only have two official matches set so far, the World and Tag title matches.
In slightly related AEW news that was announced on Friday morning, London based promotion Rev Pro are going to be hosting their biggest ever event on the day before All In. It's going to be at the Copper Box arena, which was built for the London 2012 Olympics, and as far as I know has only ever hosted pro wrestling once ever, and that was NJPW Royal Quest in 2019. On the same day fellow London based Progress wrestling will also be running about an hour earlier, so unfortunately they're going to clash. Progress are running at their home venue the Electric Ballroom in Camden, and earlier in the afternoon US based indie Defy Wrestling will also be running there. Back in 2018 when Progress had their Coast to Coast US tour they had a stop in Seattle which I think was assisted by Defy, so its nice to see Progress return the favour. When All In was first announced it was pretty much expected that other companies would run shows in London especially those too. I wouldn't be surprised if Scotland based ICW put a show on too, they ran I think at midnight in Wales on the Clash at the Castle weekend, and they have ran in London before. As I said before this will no doubt be Rev Pro's biggest ever event, it's also their eleventh anniversary show. It's also worth noting that one of Rev Pro's biggest stars is Will Ospreay, so it'll be interesting to see if he will be there given that the weekend will be a couple of weeks after the G1 ends, so he might be in need of a rest by then.
And in one more story that caught my eye this morning, EC3 who wouldn't normally be on my radar told The Wrestling Outlaws podcast that following the brawl out at All Out, he contacted Tony Khan, emailing him an inspirational message about what it takes to be a leader. You might be shocked to hear that Tony never replied, e had a lot on his plate to deal with in the days that followed that event and frankly I wouldn't have been checking my emails either. I'm sure EC3 meant well so I'm not going to mock him too much but I do wonder what he was expecting might come of it. If you're ever feeling inclined to send an unsolicited inspirational email to someone you don't know well, ask yourself what EC3 would do. and maybe do the opposite.
YouTube section:
And so with no real transition heres the main topic I have for today. Celebrity involvement with wrestling has had a very dubious history to say the least. Many credit the success of Wrestlemania 1 with the involvement of Cindi Lauper and her friendship with Captain Lou Albano, along with Liberace, Muhammed Ali and more. From there we get into Mr. T getting in the ring at Wrestlemania 1 and 2, not trusting Rowdy Roddy Piper to do business as planned. Fast forward 25 years, and Mickie Rourke could have had a much better Wrestlemania moment had he trusted Chris Jericho. What happened there according to Jericho, is that he did a joint interview on Larry King Live with Rourke ahead of Wrestlemania, where he was talking trash to Rourke, but doing it completely in character. Now Rourke who actually trained in the ring for his role in The Wrestler, a movie I keep threatening to cover on my channel, but he clearly couldn't tell when a wrestler was working with him, as this caused Rourke to feel threatened. When we got to Wrestlemania, Mickie apparently arrived with Frank Shamrock, brother of Ken for attitude era fans, to be his backup if Jericho tried anything. To me mostly because of my love of The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke is the one that got away in terms of celebrities I would have wanted to see in a match, but as a silver lining we got to see Ricky Steamboat come out of retirement and put on two amazing performances at Mania and Backlash, so theres one good thing to come out of it.The ones that got away are such an interesting thought to me. For many years Shaquille O'Neal was one of those, specifically in a match against the Big Show that was rumoured on and off for many years. Eventually they had a brief moment when Shaq entered the Andre the Giant memorial battle royal at Mania 32, but it wouldn't be until March 2021 that he would have an actual match, in AEW of all places. I think it's fair to say that when the Cody and Red Velvet versus Shaq and Jade Cargill match was announced most of us had low expectations from all the other poor celebrity matches that have proceeded it. O'Neal himself didn't help this by barely bothering to promote the match in the way he probably should have. The whole point of bringing famous faces in is to use them to promote your show after all. To be fair though I haven't seen it since but I remember really enjoying the match, but the pedant in me still wants to know what they were thinking with the empty ambulance bit at the end. What were we supposed to think when they did that?
With that said I'm going to pose a question to you here, is there a celebrity, an athlete or someone who could have had a match or even made an appearance, that you wish had that didn't. I'll give you another example from Wrestlemania 19, I kinda wish a famous rapper had stepped up to John Cena. I doubt anyone like Eminem would have showed up to answer the challenge Cena put out, but anyone answering the call would have been preferable to the promo Cena ended up having to cut to cardboard cutouts on the stage. If you have an idea like1 one of those celebrity matches that could have happened, let me know in the YouTube comments.
This past week Bad Bunny, a man who I admittedly know nothing about beyond his WWE appearances, put on a show stealing performance in his match with Damian Priest as Backlash. Of course a big part of that is the slew of people who ran in, it was especially cool to see Carlito and Savio Vega, and of course Damian too, but Bad Bunny definitely held up his end. He's not the only outside celebrity to turn heads in WWE lately either, as Logan Paul has impressed far beyond what anyone expected of him every time he's wrestled, even going as far as to main event with Roman Reigns. Lets go further, Pat McAfee and Johnny Knoxville have both put on stellar performances in recent history. If it hadn't been for the pure nostalgia of seeing Stone Cold Steve Austin having one more match, my absolute highlight of Wrestlemania last year would have been Knoxville and his match with Sami Zayn. Isn't it interesting that the two biggest moments from last years Wrestlemania involved Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, and this year they were in a main event together. That only dawned on me when I was writing this.
The lowest point for me at least, was the Raw Guest host era. I thought about covering it a while back so I looked up a list of all the Guest hosts, and there were way more than I thought. Maybe I just repressed a lot of it. There were one hundred and five individual guest hosts from June 2009 to April 2016, plus the Muppets who I'm counting as one act, so 106. Over seven long years. Of that 106, thirteen were injured or retired wrestlers, leaving ninety four celebrities. Many would just take part in talking segments, and you could absolutely tell who couldn't care less about being there.Off the top of my head without researching them all, the ones I remember being good were Jesse Ventura, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and the aforementioned Muppets. Maybe Hugh Jackman too when he decked Dolph Ziggler. Contenders for the worst? Lets not get into that right now, although one guest host that I'd totally forgotten about was Grumpy Cat. There is a ton of evidence for WWE being stuck in the past but never forget their flagship show was once hosted by a meme.
Since I've had a go at WWE I'll be fair and point out a naff AEW cameo too. When Miro arrived in the company and had that bizarre video gamer gimmick or whatever that was supposed to be. On the September 30th 2020 episode of Dynamite in a pre-taped segment, Miro was planning a bachelor party for Kip Sabian, when he would be joined for a game of Pac Man by Billy Mitchell. I have no idea how well known he is in America, but I had no idea who he was, and I had to have that explained to me by fans on twitter. Knowing who he is now and why he is famous, it felt like an odd choice on a few levels. Billy is famous for appearing in the documentary King of Kong, and claiming to be the greatest Donkey Kong player ever. He's very controversial though as many claim that he is actually just a cheater, and he has been very litigious towards those that accuse him. Why you would have him appear in a random segment on a pro wrestling show is curious then his presence being a surprise and leading to nothing going forward. He wasn't even mentioned by name, making this seem even worse.
At the start of this I used the word 'dubious', not to be relied upon, to describe the history of famous personalities getting in the ring. For every spectacular moment like Logan Paul Launching himself through the air, theres Jeremy Piven repeatedly saying Summer Fest instead of Summerslam. For every Bad Bunny, theres a Kevin Federline, in music and in the ring. The bar for celebrity involvement in wrestling feels really high right now, but for so many years it's been at rock bottom, and there are tons of examples that I haven't even hinted at. I can only speculate on this, but I wonder how much of the success of all the names I mentioned earlier is due to them being aware of the stigma caused by poor performances in the past. How much of it involved wanting to prove the fans wrong for doubting them? I'm not aware of Logan ever expressing that he was a fan before joining WWE, but I've heard Bad Bunny was, and Pat McAfee knows his stuff too. Maybe we suffered through guest hosts, to get to the performances we see these days, or maybe, I'm just thinking too much, and booking celebrities in wrestling is like a box of chocolates, I'll let you finish that quote.
No comments:
Post a Comment