At Verizon, anyone can trade in their old phone for a new one on us, with unlimited ultimate. Which means everyone in your family can get a new phone and stay on your family plan, keeping you close. Hey Mom, you seen my toothbrush? Yeah, I'm almost done with that. Oh, maybe too close. At King Super's Pharmacy, Care is what's most convenient for you. Care is being here when you need us, for open evenings and weekends. Care is helping you save more. Most insurance plans and discount cards are accepted at your local King Super's Pharmacy. Care is saving you time by managing your prescriptions online. You can request free fills, check order status and more. Care is convenience that works for everyone, King Super's a world of care is in store. Services and availability vary by location, age and other restrictions may apply for coverage consult your health insurance company. You know what, we haven't done a show in about five or six weeks. Of course, I'm joined by Rich Stamboline. What is up, my babies? How are you? How's everybody in the Beyond the Belliverse? The Beyond the Belliverse. We're back. This is our first show back. The Beyond the Belliverse. That's a good show when they go back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Beyond the Belliverse. We saw one. We saw one Bella. One Bella was there. I'm convinced that they're the same, though. You know what, Bella means in Persian Armenian? What? Like, it means like the troubles. Like a trouble. Really? You're bringing, like, troubles to me. You're bringing the Bella. The Bella. And then you do the little dance. Yeah. A little toro. It's been how long since we've done a show? Like five weeks? I think before Thanksgiving, November 15th, this is the longest break we ever took. But much needed. We won't need anything. I haven't seen you since then, either. No, not at all. We haven't seen each other at all. Except for every holiday event that happens in my house. Whatever holiday my wife has made up for the week. Oh, Merry Christmas. Yesterday was Christmas. Yes, Merry Christmas. Yes. For people who are confused, you can look it up. We're taking Christmas back. We're taking Christmas back. Yes. To New America. What can I say? A lot to talk about last night, Monday Night Raw debuted on Netflix. You know what's funny? It was almost like a year ago, because I was in L.A. when they announced a Netflix deal. Yeah. And it had to have been last year around probably like around this time, it was January when I was there. Yeah. And a lot of people were talking about, you know, what is the presentation of the show going to be? What is it going to look like? What is it going to feel like? What did you think of last night? It looked incredible. It looked phenomenal. And you know what? Like you can hate on WWE as much as you want, but like yeah, they do a big beautiful show. That intro with the curtain, I thought was absolutely wonderful with Triple H narrating the canvas being painted. I really love that. And you know what? I popped for the curtain drop. Yeah. They did a good job. There he is. So there was a couple of things, right? Like I didn't care as much as I thought I would about the branding on the mats. I mean, it's a huge paint style kind of. Listen, is it is it gaudy? Yeah, a little bit, but you know, I like the black, I like the black apron. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That building is incredible. Oh, I don't think every money and I was going to look like this. But that is the most state of the art building that they could have been in. It looks incredible. I'm willing to bet within the next, I don't know, 14 months, every major stadium is going to have those lights on the seats. Yes. They had such depth to the building. It gives you like like modern stadiums, I think, just give you such like an overall experience, you know, and why not? It's about time, right? Yeah. You go to these things and you're paying an exorbitant amount of money for food and drink. Why not have something cool to look at and entertain yourself while you're there? Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed it. What did you think about the intro? I thought the intro was great. We're going to talk about New Japan also in AEW as well. Also Q&A at the end of the show. Remember, I'm getting my bearings back. It's the longest break I think that I've ever taken. From broadcasting. Yeah, in general, right? In general. Same here. In the... It's going to be, what year? 2008 was my first podcast. Mm-hmm. Well, Qunal. That was the big brothers. In my basement. No. In my basement. What was that? The Angels? The Angels. The Angels. The Angels. The Angels. The Angels. The Guys From Queens podcast. Wow. And then, that was the first time we did... No, 2000, maybe seven was the first one? Yeah. So, this was a long break. So... We're back. I'm back. We're back. There we go. And we're going to be back on Friday too. Do you see how that worked? Look, look, look. It's like a few days. Do you see our screen here? Look at that. Nobody else could see that. Just two sweatshirts. Just two sweatshirts merging into one of my babies. And we'll be back on Friday. And then we're on Fightful right now. But Matt, man, we'll be back on Friday. Matt, man, we'll be back on Friday morning. I thought it was a fantastic open. I thought... As far as a production goes, okay? I mean, it is everything that Vince McMahon ever envisioned of professional wrestling. You think it is, or you think it's beyond that? I think they've hit... No, this is everything he wanted it to be. You know, look how the show started up, right? Yeah. You had Triple H did his big unveil of the ring because now it has ads. The Fortnite ad is interesting. And I'm curious what this means for them in Fortnite. You know, Fortnite's going back to like the old school 2017 style. Is it? Yeah. I don't know for how long. But like, that's like... My... I gotta tell you, I played it. It's fun. Fortnite's fun. Fun. My kids love it. Yeah. And every one of their friends love it, right? That's that pocket. That perfect age group. They're the perfect age group. You know, and you're wondering, like, why is it important for them to have that on the screen? Well, it's as important as when we were kids and how big those WCW games were and no mercy was, and WrestleMania 2000 was to creating a new audience. And I say this all the time and people think I'm nuts. Like, I talk to people within wrestling that tell me I'm wrong here, which shows the ineptitude of some people. The video games triggered such a huge migration of an audience that wasn't familiar with your product. I mean, I remember I was in eFeds with people that never watched the TV and just played the game. Yeah. Isn't that wild? The eFeds? EHW? That was my eFed? Yeah. OCW was another one. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's wild. I remember because that was, you know what my character was? He was a crisp and wild. Oh, yeah? Yeah. So I remember all that sub vividly in like junior high and then high school and then going into college. And I remember as part of the college radio station, one of the guys, a big wrestling fan, brought his original PlayStation and the SmackDown game. And guess who didn't go to class for like two days? Like everybody at the station, we were all just like playing SmackDown on us. Bring that a little closer to you. Like this? Yeah. Like this? Yeah. Okay. Jamie, can you turn his audio up? Listen, I know, I know that they have Fortnite skins already, right? Yeah. They've already done this before, but it the expanding the whole WWE universe into that thing. Oh, fun. A major focus for them to market is huge. It also translates extremely well, you know, like imagine your skins, you have a skin of the rock, Roman, Cody, you know, I think you have some of those guys already. But listen, it is, it is going to cater to a whole different audience. Oh, yeah. You know, my son loves orange Cassidy. You know why? Because they were on that floor as lava game. Okay. Yeah. Okay. He loves orange Cassidy. He went to his first AEW show to the Hammerstein Ballroom. That was so much fun with his godfather and me. Yeah. We had a blast. Boys night. Boys night. We had a boys. We'll talk about that too. But I thought it looked tremendous. I thought that open was great. Again, we're going to talk about the wrestling also, but as far as a visual goes, I, man, they, they, they have, we said this in 2021 when we went to that show in Vegas. Yeah, SummerSlam. Well, what's a SummerSlam? And that was still such a half-assed operation because they were just becoming the stadium-based product. Comparatively. Comparatively. Comparatively, right? And we thought at that time, oh man, this is a whole different experience than what we're used to. Yeah, absolutely. And listen, I've got the wrestling shows my entire life. It was just evident in a modern stadium, what they are attempting to do. It is no longer about wrestling and blood feuds. Obviously, that's part of it. But it's a, my wife said it perfectly last night. We were watching this. She goes, this isn't wrestling. I said, what is it? She goes, it's a spectacle. It is a spectacle. And you know what? Just right. That, if you look at it from that perspective, and this is, I'm sure you, I feel like you felt the same way, where you got about two and a half hours, there wasn't a whole lot of wrestling, but I didn't mind it because of the spectacle. I didn't mind it because of the spectacle because everything was, was boom, boom, boom. So much to look at. So much to look at. Right. And they upscaled to 4K, right? I don't know. I need an answer here because I was told straight up that they are not doing 4K. That's fascinating. Because like, I guess it's such a clear image because like when the rock comes out and he does the goosebumps thing, you could see his, the pores on our skin. They all got muscles out of it. I don't know if they were doing some sort of upscaling. They were doing some sort of, you know, like, YouTube TV has something called 1080p enhanced. Okay. Where they gimmick it up a little bit. Okay. I don't know if it was a, it was manipulation of like higher bit rate versus, uh, you know, some sort of upscaling. I don't know, but it looked ridiculous. The cameras that they're using are definitely higher quality 4K cameras. I don't know if this was a 4K stream, but just to, just to let people know, do you know what the Smackdown feed was on Fox 720p really? I want people to. Fox is still 720. They're not 1080. Huh. 1080, because it's still that argument on cable that 1080i, because it's, I'm going to get what the techie here, uh, 1080i interlaced, right? They cannot do progressive. They cannot do 1080p. They can only do 1080i with cable. YouTube however does not do interlaced, you can TV. It's, it's progressive scan. So it's 1080p, MG, MG's 1080p. You're getting a little boner here of my tech talk? You know, that's how we found me this, this, this stalker. MG is straight up 720 all day. He's like, yeah, let's talk about bitrate. Let's, uh, can we take a quick, uh, chat? Yeah. Yeah, let's go. All right. Let's see. It was just a statement. Uh, Tenruza says this was not a good show. Nothing happened. Having Riyadh and Hogan on the mat and him in person, man, Fed is going to Fed, WWE is just ridiculous now. This is what it is. Listen to Hogan thing. I think. You know, they, they should have, if they were going to bring them out, if they were going to bring them out, maybe they should have done it in New York where they would have been a little bit more welcoming. No, no, I think, I don't, I think the, the New York crowd would have booed him. I don't think so, dude. I, I think it should have been somewhere else or not at all. You know, did you think he had this conversation backstage where he was like, you know, guys, you know who I support and you know what day it is? Should I go out there? Should I go out there and hawk this beer? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hogs do what you got to do. And he went out there and he got effort booed out of the building. Yeah. But like you said, he stuck the landing. He pushed through. Dude, he pushed through. He hoganned. He hoganned. You know, he did look a little upset as he was stomping back to the backstage area. I, I did you know when Jimmy Hart takes off his glasses, it's just two black pits. It just glows. Dude. He pays for the sins of Hogan. Yeah. Yeah. So he's the hungering one. You were going to say, you know, this is the time of the day where I get all the deranged messages. Yes. And they're all coming in at the same time. So I'm so sorry. Why not? Okay. Why I said this is seems like a guy here. Why not show Mikey's? Why not show Mikey's? Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think obviously they did that deal with Hogan's beer company, right? Yeah. Did you try the beer? I haven't had it. No, they don't have it here yet. Yeah. I have no problem trying it. Yeah. Listen, listen, listen, listen, the character of Hulk Hogan. Yeah. Okay. And I'm not doing this like, Oh, can you separate Chris Benoit from? I'm not doing that. Right? But as, as a child of the eighties, yeah, I, there's something very warm about the character of Hulk Hogan. Yeah. You know, is the man flawed? Yeah. I mean, yeah, severely, not, not, not. Hulk Hogan, the character. Dirty bullet. The other thing is, you know, what a world winded chaos, I, but I go with, I have such a different like, I don't know, I look at people like, I don't, I don't keep everybody at my, my value level. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm like, yeah. Is it disappointing to hear that? You know, to hear the stuff about it. Yeah. Fuck yeah. 100% is disappointing, but I'm not going to let it ruin my childhood. Right. So, yeah, I mean, like that stuff is beyond. It's a cartoon. That's how I see it. It's a cartoon. It's a cartoon. Yeah. It's, but he got booed, uh, relentlessly by that Los Angeles crowd. Did you expect that? I, I was surprised. I was also surprised. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause WWE fans normally they'll be like, Oh, yeah. Oh, a severely flawed human being. Okay. You know. But it was just, listen, it was just weird placement and hang on, we got like a, we got like a follow up super chat from the same guy, uh, 10 rousa also after Omega kid. This was going to be trash. I mean, listen, again, let's go back to this. Okay. Let's go back to what I was saying. Yeah. I view WWE as a very different product than what a w is. And last night was evident of that. Okay. Yeah. I, I don't know what to describe this as. I've just, I have not been, I've said this is no longer professional wrestling. This has become what, what Vince always wanted. And that's sports entertainment where all the rules are out the window, right? All those things that we were told is a rule in wrestling and this is how it's supposed to be. It's out the window in that opening promo triple H says, yeah, if heel or a face or you don't know if it's a work or a shoot and they show the pipe bomb. Yeah. And I'm like, it's gone. Dude, that veil has been eliminated. It's gone. This is Disney on ice. Yeah. Yeah. It's a live theatrical. It's Broadway. This is the most, do you think this is the most corporate it's been? Oh, yeah. This is, it has to be. This is, this is, listen, I'm able, we spoke about the hammer send ball. That is the wrestling that I love. Oh, yeah. Okay. I want to sit in a, in a, in a, in a fucking opera building. Yeah. Ampa theater, an opera theater. And I want to watch Brian Danielson. Oh, yeah. There's someone in, in a, in a submission move for like 10 minutes straight. Yeah. Okay. That's what I like. I also like other things, but that I've, you want me to tell you myself? I like the, I like the Benoit style. I like the Danielson style. I love Omega. That's the third Benoit offense you've made today. Oh, yeah. I can't, no, no, no, I said it twice. I can't see it a third time. It's not good. What happens? Especially don't do it in the bathroom. The lights off. Uh, brother, I, I have a very specific style that I like that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy this if I'm watching it. But again, it's, you know what it is, like name two cop shows, name two cop shows, name two, like, um, live PD and cops. Okay. Like, like that kind. No, no, I'm not like a drama. See, uh, SVU, let's say SVU in the wire and the wire, right? Where you're like, I watch the wire, it's the bomb. And then, you know what? That's okay. It's the same premise, but it's, it's done differently. Yeah. That's wrestling. Listen, it's, it's, it's, it's, it will never be everything you want it to be. Yes. Because wrestling is so much larger now. It's no longer regional where you watch a specific style. This has become the circus. And it is wild. I mean, here's, here's another super chat. It's wild that Vince is gone, but his dream came true. Absolutely. Yeah. Because he built a foundation for this. This is what his version of wrestling is. Okay. Okay. Ease is in the chant room by the way. Yo, big up. Say hi, ma. Shout out to Esa. Shout out to Esa. So one of my favorite people in wrestling media. Same here. Tolic top. I would say top three. Yeah. For sure. The other two mean you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I. Did you talk about ourselves? I put you on the air. Did you just boo me? Yeah, he did. Yeah. Cause I, I thought I was on that. Oh, stop talking. He's off now. Um. Robin. Robin. He's. We gotta get the giggles at it. We haven't done this in like six weeks. I'm sorry, you're getting a matte man light today. Yeah. Um, and there's nothing wrong with it. No, listen, this show is all over the place. I think people tune in to this show hoping they get wrestling. It gets mad men. It gets mad many. Oh, I'll get mad many. Check these out. Oh, I like that. Well, we got a nice. Is it the glasses that Hogan was wearing, right? Oh, like brother, like he was trying to hide from the crowd. You don't know who I am. Like a kid. If I put these on the kid, see me brother. Oh, was this a mistake? I don't know anymore. Yeah. Uh, you think Triple H was back there? Like, I don't know what I think they left. They left it all. But I'm sure that I'm happy about that advertising deal. Whatever they did, that's going to be on the map now. They had, they booed Netflix. Basically, they booed Netflix. They ripped that shirt off. They were like boom. They booed Andre. They booed on Netflix. I think that was his, his spin on trying to get the crowd back. Yeah. Like mentioned, mentioned Savage and mentioned Audrey. No, nobody gave a shit. Uh, he should have turned, dude. He's like, you know what he could have done? The ultimate turn. Oh, I should have ripped that shirt and that other shirt would have been on the knee. The shirt, the shirt that he was wearing when he got off the plane. He got off the plane. Was this a good idea? Yeah. It was just a good idea. Oh boy. Uh, yeah. Sorry, we got to get the Google that. Again, I, this is something different now. And, you know, thank God we have AEW. Thank God we have New Japan. Thank God you have TNA. Because guess what? You have another option. If this, you don't want to watch it for three hours every single week. I, it's fine. That's, that's free. That's good for you. Listen, I watched it. Uh, I would say this was the most enjoyable Monday night row I watched in a long time. The presentation was so big and over the top. And I hope that they continue with this because if they continue with this, they've really transitioned wrestling into something else. And I'm willing to bet everybody else is going to follow. I, I 100% agree with you. And I also think they did a really neat thing where you see it NBA games where after, at the commercial breaks, they were showing all the celebrities in the audience, you know, but Colleen Culkin got pop of the night. I thought Topanga did great too. But they didn't mention Wilfredo. Who's sitting right next to her. Corey's brother. They didn't mention, no. No, they didn't mention him. They just said Topanga. Topanga. This is Topanga. Um, but you know, like cutting, cutting back, like an NBA game, cutting back from a commercial and being like, Oh, look, who's in the crowd tonight? It's Adam Sandler. You know, like, and listen, that's like, it's going, it's not going to happen at like, wherever other state New York, Los Angeles, mostly LA, it'll happen. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I thought this was where the next week they are somewhere good next week. I'm not sure. Fluffy was there. Fluffy was there. Fluffy's always there. Yeah. Where are they next week? So what building? I think we're still talking about the opening of the show. I know. Yeah. But look how the show's starting, right? Triple H comes in, does his thing. They go to a video package. Then Dwayne comes out. Yeah. Fantastic. Which he was not in character. No. They're in San Jose next week. Great. No promo, no nothing, shout out to Cody in the front row, smiling, hugging, kissing. What are they doing? Yeah. And then they go into the main event. Yeah, exactly. Roman Reigns solo. Straight up main event. Here's a note. We had another super chat from 10 Ruza. Thank you. Go cleanse your palate and watch New Japan. Wrestle Kingdom, Wrestle Dynasty. Yeah. Listen, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about all that stuff. It's beautiful. So you're main event, which could have been a main event. I mean, you had two main events on this. You had two mega main events. This could have been a main event in any other show. Roman Reigns solo. Travel combat. Mm hmm. For the Ulfala. Fala. Yeah. Thanks for pronouncing that correctly. I was a little worried about myself. Ulfala. Yeah. Ulfala. Ulfala. Yeah. Tomatanga, Jacob Fatu, the Usos, Sami Zayn. Old would interfere. It was a big Schmaz at the end. Big like a WrestleMania ending. Yeah. I know it's an attack Roman until Cody will come out and it ended up, they brawl into the crowd. Roman wins. The Rock comes out, presents them with the Ulfala. Did you think he was going to put it on himself? I thought he was going to turn. Was there like two seconds of him being like. Well, you did say that he is a tribal chief multiple times. Yeah. They kept announcing it too. Michael Cole also, Michael Cole did a phenomenal job last night with every single call he made. Trying to bring this new audience over into what exactly they're doing. Not that. Yeah. Stop. Sorry. Are you just talking to MG? I'm just talking to myself. Yeah, I'm messaging them. I thought it was fine, you know. Listen, we're, it's, that was the first match and they had so many things going on. And I'm dying to know what number they announced. I'm willing to bet it's going to be something insane. They're not going to announce like three million, four million. Yeah. There was a lot of conversation yesterday also is the importance of this because they keep saying it. We're global. This is a globally reaching product. Yeah. And a lot of people said like, listen, they've been talking about that since the 90s. Remember that? With over five million countries, you know, around the world. But that was on TV. Right. It wasn't here. Yeah. It's never been here. The right, you know, and here's something for like Americans to realize is most countries that are consuming content. Yeah. Outside of the United States, outside of, you know, Canada are consuming it on a phone. Yeah. And they know that. They've seen that analytic. Oh, yeah. There's a much bigger reach to have Netflix on your phone and to be able to watch it versus being on the USA network. How are you watching it on the USA network on the go? You can. Right. You can. But do you. Right. And it's there. It's just always there. It's always there. So this is going to be a gigantic number, whatever they announce. And that's the whole point of this. Yeah. They showed. Did you get ads? I got ads. I got a shit ton of ads. But they're all on ads. Yeah. I think next time maybe a VPN. No. I wouldn't you. Everybody have ads? No. What do they get? A couple of people were tweeting us yesterday that they were using VPNs and they weren't using it. What were they getting? Nothing. Nothing. Like the actions like straight up action. Yeah. Cause they would really that's the one thing that I was just like a little oddball about was like they just cut right into, they cut the action. Now can you pay to not have ads? If you have net, yeah, but I, I have that here and I still got ads. I mean, I wasn't bothered. It's commercials. It's fine. It's just a minor break. John Cena comes out. Oh, yeah. So this happens and Cena comes out. Very long winded. Very long winded promo. He's like, I don't know. I have a, he goes, I haven't won a match in 2000 days. Yeah. I'm like, that can't be right. It was a singles match on TV. He has in one in 2000 days, a singles match on TV. Yeah. He's on house shows. He's on plenty of stuff. This is his last run. He declared himself for the Royal Rumble. Great. Are we going to get Cody and John Cena? Is that the match for his 17th time or 16, whatever the hell time? I wouldn't mind Cody's. I wouldn't mind anybody seen it. Did he tie flares? I can't remember. They're keeping him at 15. No, he's at least, yeah, he tied flares. I mean, listen, if there was ever a moment for John Cena to win the title, it would have to be there. Yeah. I'll give it up on Monday. No, I mean, you could defend it a little bit and he drops it to somebody. So is the retirement tour from now until WrestleMania? No, it's for a whole year. It's until December. Yeah, next December. Okay. So he could, you know what, I could see them put the belt on him again. But which belt? Do you get Cena... What? Cena versus Goontor? That would have been your title. Yeah. Yeah, put the big one. Okay. Why not? With the Cody title on. But the Cody title. I'm wrong. I really, I know that both have advocated for that and I spoke to people there and I know that they want that match to happen. That's a priority, man. I know that they want, listen, do we get thrice in a lifetime? I think you get thrice in a lifetime. You know, do we do that? There's so much that they could do here. I think, oh, look at this, if you get NordVPN and you can get NordVPN/fightful, do you need me to plug you in? Yes, please. Yeah, hold on. Watch me disappear. Hold on. Well, we're not, we're saving that for Friday. We have an illusion plan for Friday. Oh, yeah, we play the magic trick for you guys on Friday. It's gonna, you guys are gonna love it. If you get the VPN, you can get ad-free because it's ad-free international. Yeah. Nina comes out, he does his thing, he's now declared for the Royal Rumble. I'm sure he'll be an elimination chamber and they'll do a whole thing. Rhea Ripley comes out. Phenomenal. Liv Morgan, this went about nine minutes and this was the second match. Ripley wins the women's title. She looks fantastic. What? What an entrance for her. What a presence. And that was a moment. I looked at my wife. I'm like, check this out. Yeah. What a freaking star now. Oh, yeah. That entrance. If this is the first time I'm tuning in, which I got to put it on for my kids because they were dying to see it last night, first time I'm tuning in and I see this, I mean, I don't even know how I would describe Rhea Ripley. Right. Justice impressive. Force of nature? Force of nature. Yeah. With that big entrance, come out and do her whole thing. I was awed by it. Listen, I'm a production guy. I love that kind of shit and it just makes everything bigger than ever. Oh, yeah. She looked great. She wins the title. You hear the Kong? Here comes American badass undertaker for two seconds. She could have kicked. Why didn't you offer a ride? I thought she was going to get on the back. I thought she was going to get on the back also. I thought it was very interesting how you had taker just circle the ring and then leave and then be like, do the thing with me. Again, it's a spectacle. It's a spectacle. But you know what? That was cool. I honestly thought people were like going nuts because they were like, taker's going to do something. Like he was going to say, I got one more left in me. I love how taker didn't get booed. He's not a taker. I think there's a big difference because you don't really know the guy. Have you listened to this podcast? I know. I know. I know. But I don't go out. I see that. I don't go out by way to ruin my cat. You didn't see Trump on there? And they were talking about wrestling. Like it's real. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. We live in a whole new world. It is like the timeline has has kind of blended in. Everything has gotten wacky. Do you think Hogan was like, how come you didn't get booed, bro? Yeah, I'm sure he did. And then taker would have been like, I'm on a motorcycle. Can't boo guy on a motorcycle. Too. Legal. I'm in and out. It's illegal. Chad Gable would. So here's something that happened. Chad Gable would interrupt an interview with Adam Pierce saying he wants to take on the best lucha door in the world to prove he could. I guess they scrapped the penta debut. He was supposed to do realize that he was supposed to do a real Mysterio match that was supposed to happen. Interesting. And he was supposed to debut and they scrapped it. Very interesting. So that's next week. I mean, pentas of it. Is he the best lucha door in the world? Who is the best lucha door in the world? Oh, I don't know. I mean, that's tough. Viking guy? I think people like to go. You know, honestly, I'm going to go Phoenix. Ray Phoenix? Yeah. For my money, I would say, like, I'm a big Phoenix guy. But I like, um, I can't even remember his name. I don't. Vikingo. Okay. I'm trying to ELP. Okay. ELP. Vikingo. Who else? Ray Phoenix. I can't remember the guy's name. He just, they signed him to WWE last year. He, he, he opted not to go to AWW. MG, you know what I'm talking about, right? I'm just, Peach and Hetch and Sarah. Oh, dude, I would love to see Hetch and Sarah debut there. Hetch Sarah. He's fantastic. Dragonly. Okay. Dragonly. You know what? Dragonly would be up there. I had a brain fart. I could not remember the guy's name. Some gold dude in CMLO. There we go. So that's next week. All right. Cool. That's a great act. I, I'm hoping that act gets over and I think WWE will be able to market the crap out of those masks and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But is he going to be Penta? What are they going to call him? I mean, you could call him anything, right? Like that is in relation to that pentagon penta zero penta zero penta zero pentagon. He can not be pentagon. Oh, because of the. CMLO. Yeah. Triple A or CMLO. Okay. Hold it. You can not be pentagon. I think they'll do. I think they'll do him justice. I think they're not going to change his name to like, you know, Latin Fred or something like that. Latin Fred. Yeah. Fantastic. I would love Latin Fred. Like that, those days are over, you know, you know, it could be a Latin Fred. The Freddie Japan days are over. Andrade. Andrade could be a Latin Fred. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Big time. Imagine my father is Latin Fred. That'd be amazing. My Dominican girlfriend. And for the raising Travis Scott. He helped Jey Uso to the ring. Travis Scott is doing the theme for Monday and I Raw now. First time anybody smoked a joint on TV. On Raw? Yeah. You know, they've alluded to it a bunch. I don't think anybody smoked the joint on live WWE TV. This guy came out puffin and huffin. He came out puffin and huffin. I think Jey was trying to eat that smoke away from him. No, I think he was trying to eat the smoke too. He was trying to eat it to him. What an entrance though. Great entrance. What an entrance. Jay's entrance is that that's that's another thing that WWE has cornered the market on. The interactive entrance, you know, like people love that shape. People love doing this shit for Roman Reigns. Yeah. They like eating it's very it was it was fun. It was fun. Yeah. This match. Okay. Fine. Whatever. I was controlled mostly by Drew until the end. Roman Roman was seen backstage with Paul Heyman. And they introduced the WWE 2K 25 that was that was it looks like he's on the cover because they shut the door and there was a sign. Also Roman will be at the raw taping on January 27th. Hogan came out after this introducing the great American beer sponsorship. Man. How funny. He's booed heavily. Who'd heavily? So many make a t-shirt. So many make a t-shirt of words is a crowd. They did. They did. They did. Yeah. They did. I only saw because MJ was like, hey, do you guys have the captions on? And I was like, no, he's like, oh, you should put it on because like they they describe everything. Yeah. Crowd boost. So put it on. Here's the main event. I mean, I thought it was funny that punk and Seth came out after Hogan right now. Um, CM Punk, Seth Rollins, punk look good. I'm good, man. I gotta tell you, at the end, I was very concerned. I thought one of them got busted up. Yeah. Punk. He ate the the GTS and so did Seth. I mean, they they made it look insanely gnarly. It was the same finish as John Moxley and CM Punk. Really? They came up twice. He powered through. Yeah. Same exact finish. I really enjoyed the match. I thought both guys have great chemistry. I like how they went into the history of their relationship, the history of the shield, actually naming Ambrose by name because I feel like that's something called Ambrose or Moxley Ambrose. Yeah. But I feel like that's something that they never would have done in the past, you know, they would just like blur the last guy out of whatever doesn't work here. But I thought they both gave it their all. Do you think this is like a different version of K-Fabe where punk is like, I bet you people are thinking I'm going to get hurt. Let me make sure they think I'm hurt. I think they all think that, you know? I think they all just as another way to sell it, you know, but they were they they went hard. I really liked that match. Those are good match. Really? What do people think of it? I'm curious what, you know, the overall I didn't I dare I I read nothing online. I watch raw like silently. I didn't look at any interaction. I didn't want my my opinion to be skewed half and half. I feel like because like I'll pop on a Twitter and maybe make a dumb comment or something, but then I'd look at the feed and it would be our X are I look at the feed and then it would just be like this made of that effort sucks. Really? And then it would be like this made events effing awesome. So it's I feel like it's just down the line again. You don't know if it's a 10 year old or a 90 year old. You don't. Yeah. You know, behind that that avatar that's not them, you know? So I thought it was a lizard. Was there a lot of action? No. Did it need a lot of action? I don't think so. I I enjoyed the match. I thought it was a fine main event. They're telling the story obviously of Sam Puck going for that title. Yep. John Cena looking to go for that title Drew McIntyre still in the mix. You have Gunther in the mix. You have Cody in the mix. You have Roman Reigns in the mix is the rock thing covering over everybody. Kevin Owens. Goldberg's coming back. Kevin Owens is in the mix for the world title. So there's a lot of moving parts here. Yeah. A lot of moving parts. I feel like, you know, going for the title should be, I feel like for a while, they kind of stop pushing that story. Yeah. We're like guys who are like, no, I'm going for it. You know, I'm going. I feel like it creates that sense of urgency and that sense of competitive. Yes. That you want at a wrestling, not just like these belts or props, you know? Yeah. I always I also think it's always difficult when you go from Russell Kingdom and if that's what you consume, then that's what you watch. Yeah. And now you're watching this and you're going to be like, well, obviously it's not as good. No, obviously it's not as good and it's and it's and it's a different, you're in a different building for a different reason and you got to do different things. I thought it was fine. I thought it was a good match. I really enjoyed it. Listen, I love the movie Taxi Driver. It's a very hard hitting, climb, written New York movie, right? Yeah. But I also like white chicks. Great. You know? Like you can like both. You can like both. It's totally fine. punk was tired. Yes. He was sucking wind, but you know, he did a good match with south and he got that match out of the way, right? Great. I'm sure they'll they'll work again, but there's a couple of things they want. And I think they're realizing that time is limited, especially with injuries and things like that. And they really want to get through with it. Yes. I think this was one of the matches that they really wanted to get through and presented on TV. And I thought it was great. Listen, punk's going to get his main event. He's going to be in the main event for the world title. That's happening. Stay healthy, buddy. Okay. Just stay healthy. And you're going to get it. They get this guy to go with an apple, huh? Is not unbelievable. Who's headlining that first raw Netflix? See him punk. Isn't that unbelievable? Very unbelievable. What a coup. What a coup. They kept mentioning hell freezing over with his return. I always said, you know, like wrestling is obviously like story planning and booking and all that stuff is so important, but happenstance has been the story of professional wrestling. A hundred percent. 1997. You know, Brad Hart signs that deal in '96, '97 comes, Vince can't afford him. He has to, he goes to WCW in a terrible way, in a story driven way, goes to WCW, Shawn Michaels breaks his back, Steve Austin is left with nobody. So what do they have to do? They have to elevate two people and Vince McMahon. One is the rock. One is Triple H. Wild. Right. So wild, it's, and look at it now, CM Punk has to go there to AW to be here today. And it has to end terribly. Right. Exactly. In a, in a, how does this happen type of moment? I mean, you really, it sometimes the universe guides you. Yeah. And it brings you to moments like this. I do, I do imagine in my, my dumb nerd head that, you know, everything's burning in AW and CM Punk is in the rubble. And then all of a sudden the ladder from a helicopter drops down and it's Triple H in the chopper. Oh my God. Come on up boy. All right. So a few notes. Oh, real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Steve Austin, Steve was supposed to be on it, but I don't know what happened. So few notes, the black canvas had several advertisers, including Netflix, great American beer, Riyadh season and cricket wireless, including Fortnite. The show was shot in 4K with different camera angles without any cuts. Okay. Cool. So I guess, I guess it was 4K, which fantastic. I don't, I don't know. I got it. I'll find out. I'll find that out. The rocks goosebumps that had muscles. The goosebumps did a muscle. He also announced that everybody was his cousin at the end of the show. You were all my cousin. That was the prize for being there. They made sure to show just about all of the roster at some point during the show, probably due to there being a new audience watching several celebrities in the crowd. Like we said, the rock did an IG lot, IG reel where he was shown celebrating in the back. And he will be on NXT tonight tonight, he's gonna come face to face with his daughter. Do you think he's gonna rock bottom or have he hysterical? So this is, I found this funny. I was giggling last night. The rock is backstage. He's drinking, whatever he's drinking, like a ball of white wine or tequila or whatever. And then they show him hopping a car and like leave and leave, yeah. Two things. One, they show this guy, he's drinking. He's inebriated. He's driving. Right. Number two, this guy ain't driving his ass anyway. Yeah. Why is he driving anyway? Like he's not getting stuck in LA traffic. This guy drove that car for 10 feet and went, alright, somebody picked me up. I like that the rock gravitated towards like Hollywood and being this big movie star and Steve Austin disappeared on his ranch with his cat. Yeah, why not? He's both living a happy life. Yeah. Pancho. Pancho the cat. They officially announced Royal Rumble to be in Saudi Arabia in 2026. Imagine if Hogan made that announcement yesterday, I got news for you. Oh, no, what did I do? That was okay, right? Mmm. At the beginning of the post show, CM Punk was interviewed as he was walking to the back and said age is nothing but a number and he signed that title this year. Great. Fantastic. Yeah. Oh, you also mentioned Chris Bay and Chad Gilbert. Very cool. Yeah. Tonight, the rock to attend fatal influence versus Shotzi, Paxtley and Gigi Dolan. Great. NXT Heritage Cup sudden death, Lexus King and Charlie Dempsey. Sorry, my eyes. NXT, there we go. NXT Women's North American Championship, number one, Contendership Match, Corey Jade, Stephanie Vicare, Lola Weiss, Kalini, Kalini, Kalani Jordan, NXT Women's Champion, Roxanne Perez versus Julia. Great. I'm looking forward to that. And you have an NXT Champion, Trik Williams, Obafemi and Eddie Thorpe. It's going to be great. You think Rock going to be in the audience? Yeah. Yeah, probably in the main event he'll play a part. It would be hysterical if he was in the audience the entire time and eaten popcorn. Let's talk about Wrestle Kingdom and Dynasty before we do our questions. Oh, brother. I liked Wrestle Dynasty way better than Wrestle Kingdom. Same here. I didn't hate Wrestle Kingdom, but it wasn't like, listen, if it was a one night event and they had these matches on this show, it would be a very different conversation I have. Listen, it was a great show. Both shows were great. I think there's a lot of highlights more so in the second show than the first show. But listen, I'm super happy that showed a main event with Zack Sabre Junior. I thought, I thought, did you like the match? I liked it. I liked it too long. It was a typical Zack Sabre Junior match. Listen, I really like Zack Sabre Junior, but 43 minutes with Umino, it was not the match. It went on too long. I didn't hate it. I really did like how Big Haroumou is now. Yes. Big Haroumou, ELP won the TV belt, Tanahashi beat evil. That match, I don't get the evil thing. What's the retirement tour for Tanahashi? This is last year too, right? This is last year. Him and Cena. Final match. I would love it if it was just like a weird one off where it's like, he's like, I'd never wrestled Tanahashi before and then they'd go at it. I want to see him do Japanese style. Me too. I want, I want John Cena to do an Inseguri. Just chops an Inseguri. I want to see John Cena do the running knee, the V trigger, I want to see him do the V trigger on everybody. Yeah. Listen, I also think he would make Tanahashi look like a child because he's so big. For some reason. You know, Tanahashi's big, but I feel like seeing is like, you know, huge. Isn't the rock wrestling in Japan right now? I, I, biggest person on the planet, you know, like, I always wonder, like, why not do one? Yeah. Listen, it might happen. Why not do one? It might happen. Right? Like, there's that. Or you don't have that, you don't have that urgent. You know, you don't feel like you should. Like, I always wanted to like, like, I would love. What would that do? You know, what would that do for you? What would that, would that be something you're into? Probably not. I don't know. I find that very interesting too. There is like a, like a bubble of a rumor where in Tanahashi's retirement tour, there could be that match with Shinsuke Nakamura. I would love that. Yeah, that'd be great. And listen, why not? They let Nakamura have one of Moody's last matches. They did. But in Noah. In Noah. Okay. And he was just there. He just, he was just in Noah. So, listen, that'd be cool. I feel like we've been talking about a new Japan WWE thing for like a couple of years now. Might be time to. They tried to make it happen a couple of years ago. They tried. Uh, so pretty much a story of this show was the long main event. I thought Yoda, Suji, and Dave Finley was a fantastic match for the Global Heavyweight Championship. Yes. Uh, something very special there with him. Uh, you got the. Tekashter, man. Huh? Tekashter. Oh, dude. Tekashter and Takagi was incredible also. Yeah. Great. Fantastic. But the big story was the second night. Wrestle Dynasty. Yep. You mama Watanabe won the International Women's Cup, meaning she could challenge for any title in any of the promotions. I believe it's New Japan, CMLL, AW. All right, cool. Sons of Texas defeated the House of Torture. This was Dustin's first time being in the Tokyo Dome since 1992, where he tagged with his father. Really? Yeah. Wow. 1992. He's wrestled in Japan quite a lot as gold Dustin. Did he do that? Yeah. He was gold Dustin, right? He was gold Dustin. Yeah. Uh, let's see. Gold dust in Japan. Had to have been when he got fired, right? Yes. Gold dust in Japan around 2007. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was a big boy there. I want to say he may have had a tag. I think he tagged with Hakushi against Muda and Tajiri. It's possible. It's very possible. I love those badges. Yeah. I think that's a realistic match that happened. Um, yeah. He was happy to be there. You know, he's at the end of his run too. And I think that was great. It's for the Ring of Honor tag titles. Yeah. Main card. You got Ishimori winning the eight man Lucha gauntlet for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. You got Shabbata and Tana Hashi in a five minute slap chop match. Great. Five minute draw. Great. And that man still cannot wrestle there. Yeah. They will not clear him to do anything. So it's possible to get this match in AEW somewhere down the line. Mercedes Monet defeated Mina for the Strong Women's Championship and the Undispeeter British Women's Championship. So she has four titles now. Honestly, I love this match. I thought this was really good. It was not as good as Knight One's Azumi and the Azumi match. I think this told a good story as far as Monet go. But great match. And my, you and Azumi. Yeah. And you got to see Mina Shirakao shine a little more. Yeah. I thought this was fine. It was a shorter match though. It was a much shorter match. I, I thought this was good. Uh, I, I liked it. I think he has to think about Mercedes, right? A lot of, she got a lot of criticism. Yeah. She's kind of found her flow again. I, I agree with that 100%. You know, she, she's enjoying this. I thought that was fine. Uh, Dave Finley defeated Brody King. This was a fun match. Yep. I like this too. It was nice to see Brody there. Showed at Umino defeated Claudio. Great. I don't know if Umino's going to play a part in this. Uh, listen, I feel like, they were cutting a promo on him where he was like, you weren't ready for this. You weren't ready for the main event. Yeah. I think, um, I think the jury's still out. I feel like him getting that main event spot after less than five years is kind of cool. Yeah. You know, because usually like, you know, we, we would go back every year, I think we say the same thing. We're like, Russell kingdom has been headlined by the same six people for a million years, but now that that roster's gutted. Oh, nighto. Yeah. Nighto. I don't know. Hotty. Okada. Omega. It was always the same guys, but now it's like, you know, like I think they're trying their best to, to, uh, osprey, you know, I think they're trying their best now to figure out some new stuff, which is great, you know, new people that won't leave. Yeah. You know, you got the young bucks winning the IWGP tag team championships, the vacated tag team champions. They beat a united empire and, uh, and, uh, nighto and Heron, L.I.J. Yoda Suji defeated Jack Perry. Awesome. Whatever. That was what it was. That's, listen, that's fine. But like, what, what an interesting card, huh? Very interesting. This is almost like an invasion. Yeah. Yeah. So here's where it gets interesting. Yeah. Kenny Omega, gate kid, Kenny looked like this, I mean, he's a machine. Yeah. There's, I, he was incredible the whole time. I mean, just absolutely incredible. Chris Charlton on commentary. Yeah. By the way, Chris Charlton suspended from New Japan for two months. Yeah. That was. A little strange. So weird, right? Okay. Listen, it's one thing. You're obviously he's playing the Kenny's not our guy. Yeah. He abandoned us and gate kid came out with the New Japan trunks. He had the landmark on the trunks and like, so this is our guy, this guy turned on us to go to another promotion to make more money when we needed him the most, right? If he had just said that along with everybody else and not only him, but others also. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. This guy called Tony Khan, a money mark. Yeah. He said that he's a money mark. He said that he essentially rated a W and has done nothing. Look at what it, what the hell is Ocada done? Yeah. Over the last year, what is, you know, all these people went to waste, Jay White and Ocada and well, they all got to waste. It was not approved. It very much, listen, I'm without saying too much, right? If he had said this and he was like, dude, I, I was playing, you know, the heel, baby face like, this is, I'm raw, raw, new Japan. I didn't mean anything, but there was a lot of truth in this for him. Right. Because this is how, and many people have, he's not the only one that feels that way. Right. And I think what he, he said out loud was how a lot of people have felt and they needed to, they needed to make sure that this is not a promotional stance. Right. And this, this guy went rogue here. Listen, you're, you're, it's a partner, regardless of what you're doing. Tony Khan is a partner for him and you want that kind of relationship. They're not on axis anymore, by the way. Right. They're not on axis. So they don't have, they don't have North American presence. There's also a heavy weight on business relationships in Japanese culture. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. For him to, I, again, you know, with wrestling, you don't really know a hundred percent what any true story is, but you know, listen, it could have been easy as like, he goes on the headset and goes, Hey, I'm about to say this. Is that okay? Yeah. He also apparently made a joke about ELP's cancer. What was it? I heard that. What was it? Yeah, it's poor Rocky, by the way, was trying to diffuse the whole thing on commentary. That's wild. He's sitting right there. Um, listen, this guy, he, he, he's a partner of yours and your largest partner. See, I watch why burn that bridge. I watch a new Japan, which Japanese comedy I do too, so I miss, I miss all of it. I, I, I watch the Japanese commentary, it just makes it better. Yeah. Just makes it better. Especially during, listen, can we talk about that? Can you make a game? Yeah. Uh, incredible. Oh my God. Yo, incredible. I was out for a year. Could you believe that? It was tight. He almost died. He had, uh, had a diabetic elitis. He had that reconstructive surgery, um, which is, did they do the surgery? Yeah. He said he got two feet of intestines taking it. The Brock Lesnar thing, huh? Yeah. So, but that's a testament to what an athlete Kenny is. Yeah. Um, and this guy looked like he did not miss a step. Not at all. He looked incredible. And also the fact that Gabe, the crowd was so behind Gabe Kidd and he brought such real emotion to the match. I, he brought a lot of realness where he was, he had tears in his eyes the entire match. You know? Yeah. He did. I, I mean, Kenny was a story here, but holy moly, he made Gabe Kidd here. And I think also he proved to the office that he's their guy. Gabe Kidd? Yeah. And the fact that he made the whole thing made Tanahashi crying, whoo, Tanahashi was crying wild. Why? I never thought I'd see Tanahashi crying. Oh, holy, Zach Sabre Jr. had to follow this with Ricochet terrible and ricochet looked incredible in this match and it was a great match. It just, you know, you don't put this on after Kenny Omega's return. Um, I really wanted to hear the Kenny Omega theme, the new Japan theme. I don't want to hear that final fantasy thing. Oh, I love it, dude. I love it. He had a noble, you met. So the original composer had a hand in it too, which is, listen, I'm a big fan of fanziness. So. Final Fantasy seven was the last one I played. Really? Yeah. You know what? If you're looking for a game to play, get the remake for PS5. Of seven? Yeah. You know what I'm playing on my phone? Capavera go. What is that? It's a, it's an RPG. Is it about a Capavera? It's a Capavera. That's fighting that's fighting in a, in like villages. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. What about the pickle? Like, dude, I don't know. I don't know how that pickle game ended up on my phone. My kids downloaded it and they constantly talking about playing the pickle game to everybody. When we were coming back from AEW, yeah, Hunter was like, you have the pickle game on your phone. I was like, no, I don't know what that is. And you were like, no, for the pickle game. Let's do questions. Guys, get your questions ready. Submit them. We'll bump it up. Hit the super chat button. I got to buy MG. MG, some bagels. Yeah. Oh, you know what? You know what? We're going to gold belly. Oh, yeah. We could send them bagels. We can send them actual bagels. You know what a bagel is, MG? Have you ever had a bagel? Hold on. I put you on there. Yeah. Have you ever had a bagel? Is it too? Is it too? Yes, I have had a bagel. It's a little too ethnic for him. Oh, brother. Oh, man. I would have, that, that joke would have continued on for another three and a half minutes if this was Matt. Oh, absolutely. We'll bring it back. Yeah. We'll come, we'll put it a little bookmark in there. Yeah. We'll go yesterday, by the way. Yeah, dude. We're, we're, yeah. You were awfully silent on that group chat. Okay. Yes. One more year for his big plan. He was backstage telling Hogan it's going to be okay. Yeah. He was the one telling him it's fine to go out there. I don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, Hogan. All right, let's do questions, everybody. Oh, AW card for tomorrow, for Wednesday, AW world title, world title number one contenders match. You got a casino gauntlet. Kenny Omega returns. Team JF to appear. Jeff Jarrett to appear. Fantastic. Oh, thoughts on Max. I enjoyed it. You too. I enjoyed it a lot. Look good. It looked good. You know what? I didn't have it. No issues with streaming raw yesterday. No issues with streaming AW last week. Right. We're in the future. Fantastic. Where's the future? I'm very excited about it. I'm finally going to cancel my YouTube TV subscription. Awesome. You've been talking about that for a hundred dollars a month. That's why. And you have cable too. I could get time Warner Cable. Yeah. We'll go back in time. I go back in time. Well, you have cable, right? I have YouTube TV. You have no cable. That is my cable. Okay. YouTube TV's cable. But there's no SNY. Okay. Yeah. Anyday. So I can't watch the Mets. You don't have New York one either. I don't have New York one. I'm such an old man at this point. You're watching New York one. I know you talk about New York one constantly. You're going on the air. I haven't seen. I haven't watched New York once since I had files because they were only on time Warner. Listen, I need my updates on congestion pricing. You need your updates. Dude, we've been getting that with Jonathan in the chat. He's melted down over the congestion pricing. I know. It's gotten to the point that our local representative, Vicki Paladino, is telling people to go purchase the green laser pointers and zap them. I read that. Isn't that wild? Isn't that wild? Guys, if you don't even know what's happening in New York, they charging us $10 below 60th? That's insane. That is crazy. Fuck that congestion pricing. I don't care. That's wild. I don't care. I'll fight you on that. I'll beat you up. I don't care. You want to get in my face over congestion pricing? I'll drown you. If you're driving in, you're also getting the $8 toll for the tunnel. You got the toll for the tunnel. Yeah. 59 Street Bridge. That was your free access to getting to Manhattan. Yeah. Now they got to charge you $9. Isn't that insane? I don't drive into Manhattan. I just want to let everybody know. I do if it's a weekend. Do you know what you cost me now to go to Manhattan every single day? Five bucks? No. It's like $20. A day. What do you do? Long Island Railroad. Yeah, get the city ticket. Oh, you take a peek. I take a peek. Both ways. Peek is seven. Peek is seven. Yeah. And another seven. 14. No, it's like 18 bucks. Okay. It's like $18. All right. What else do we have? Let's go to the questions. Submit your questions. Paul Anthony Moss. I'm not a pod. Paul Anthony Moss. Do you think AEW has anyone legit on Mercedes' level to book her, to book versus her for a really good feud, or they need to find someone from elsewhere to bring in? Tony Storm. Tony Storm. It's presentation. Yeah. Meena. Absolutely. I think Mariah May. Mariah May. Yeah. For sure. Thunder Rosa. Athena. Yeah. Athena. You do something with Athena? She has some people. Just elevating everybody else to kind of get to that level. Willow. Willow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, about right. He's a chat. You live in Queens if your peak is only seven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. City Peak is seven. Wait, which is weird because if you go on the app, you have the option of a peak ticket, which is like 11 or 12 bucks, and then a city peak ticket. I don't do it. It's a city peak. I just do the regular one. Do city. I don't know if that's an option. Yeah. That's how they get you. That's how they get you. See. Let's see. This is from Tenruza, only thing that popped me was across the nation. What is that? The song. Yeah. Thanks. Uh. Willow. Sure. We open up a can of worms to see my daughter in the free port. No, do it. Do it with the voice. To see my daughter in the free port both ways is $21. Yeah. It's insane. Guys, hit us with some questions, man. We haven't been doing this for six weeks, six months. We haven't been here for six months. Six months. A lot changed in the world. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Give us your questions. We'll be here on Friday for Matt, man. I'm excited to be back. How about you? Yeah. Yeah. That was not. I did. I did observer. Oh, that's right. On Sunday. And I was rusty. Yeah. I was rusty. Where I had to do an hour by myself. Oh, and it's still. Oh, yeah. And you had to go back to the format. And no, I didn't because the show did not go on the air. Really? On radio. They didn't have a producer. You were sick with COVID. That's still a thing. I make everybody go to work with COVID. It's coughing my face. Coughing my face. I don't care. I'm immune. I went to the doctor this morning. They took my blood. Look at this. Oh, yeah. I had that go. I got an old man joke. And sometimes it goes over. Most of the time it doesn't. Sure. I asked him when I could come pick it up. I'm like, hey, so when can I get it back? And I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, my blood. I want it back. You took it from me. You're borrowing it to test it. I need it. I want it back in me. Hey, what do they say? And sometimes they, because I do it so stone-faced, if I go, like my doctor's office, they found a funny today. But if I go to like to get like to like Northwell to get my blood drawn, yeah, they do not find the humor in that. No. That's a that's a new head park, right? Oh, there's one right here. Okay. Yeah. All right. Any questions or no? I think that's it. All right. You guys ruined it. Oh, here's one. Have you changed a creative plan to make Kenny the AW world champion, headed into Texas? Can I have like a needs to become world champion? Does it become a bigger story for him and Ocada to be for title for title? Well, he cut that promo after Wrestle Dynasty, which that was a great promo. Which is a great promo. He's all bloodied up the blood's drying and he was like, you know, the God of pro wrestling is back. There's nobody else who could take my place. It sounded like he was calling out Moxley. I think yeah, I mean, if for a title, but you I mean, the match in Texas is Ocada, Omega. It has to be. No, it 100% will be. Okay. Do you need the title there does well, does Ocada drop that belt to Kenny and then Kenny becomes the belt collector again, because I really enjoyed that angle and it fizzled out. I didn't enjoy it because of how it was presented because he was like weird. He was like weird. Miami Vice Kenny? Yeah. I did. I did not want Miami Vice Kenny. I wanted I wanted this Kenny and which we've never gotten on the UW. Yeah. New Japan Kenny. It's barely barely. We've gotten this. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think but it's tough because like, you know, you set up this whole angle with Mox, Oc, hangman and J white. What's happening outside and then I think there's a rave going on. Well, they've landed. No, I think it's upstairs. They've landed. Somebody's vacuuming. Someone's vacuuming. I think, you know, like they, they have this whole thing now where, you know, like your main event is Moxley. Yeah. Oc, J white and hangman, right? And then all of a sudden, Kenny Omega shows up like, what do you do with that? Do they storyline wise, say, Hey, you haven't been here for a year? You have to go back to the beginning. I don't know. You have to wait in line. Yeah. I would listen, you want to, you want to start shotgunning a little bit, like, when's the next pay per view? Yeah. When is the next pay per view? Yeah. What is the next pay per view? February and it's the Australia show. Okay. No, the Australia show, right? Oh, wow. What do you do there? I don't know. You obviously have to have J white and J white when it in Australia. I don't know what you do with him. I mean, I don't know, man, the Australia one is weird to me because they don't really have a great reach there and it's not a travel destination. No, not to Australia. I mean, I would love that's great that they get in the content, but I don't know. I don't know what the was it a bought show? Did they get paid to go there? I don't know. I'm curious about this. So we'll see that. But you got that one. You got revolution. You got. Yeah. You got paper is going to max, you know, so if this is your first pay per view on max, would you want? Can you omega to win the world title there? You know, there was a plan for Darby to eventually get the title. What do you do with that? He's not climbing, by the way, right? Darby's not going to climb. He's not doing it. It's very interesting. I mean, like, I think that happening or is that not happening? I think AEW is in a good spot, but you know, like it depends on how, how it's booked. Also, I don't know about you, but like, they've been around for five years, right? I cannot tell you what the paper you schedule. For them? Yeah, I don't know when. Well, they've had it. They've had it stuff now. Like, I don't know when anything is anymore is that I feel like all out or all in is in September. Yeah, but they moved everything now. Now everything is kind of spaced out a little bit. Double or nothing is traditionally in May, right? Grand Slam, Revolution, Double or nothing, all in, all out, full gear, world's end. What am I missing here? You said full gear, world's end. I'm missing something. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Like, I feel like I'm not the only one where it's like, you know, which WWE, it's a little easier because you have your big four. Yeah. And then everything else kind of fits into that puzzle, you know, like I was like, oh, it's a big one. I mean, it's obviously all in, all out and double or nothing. Those are the big ones, right? World's end. I feel like world's end's gotten bigger than the revolution is March. Dynasty. Oh, Dynasty. And the other one for Ben door and the other one. Double and nothing. Yeah. There you go. Okay. Thank you. All right. All right. Cool. We got some more here. Let's see. This is his portfolio contract. So we're ready for him to cash in and be done with him having it. We laid this out. I think the last time we know, actually, maybe we personally talked about this. What? Yeah. So I think, and this is, this is just a theory. I think Andrew agreed with me when I mentioned this. At some point, cope beats the mocks, right? Okay. Christian caches in on cope. Loses to Darby Christian caches it on cope loses to Darby. Yeah. I feel like that's the way to get the belt on the RV, they can, but I don't know. I think with Kenny now, it kind of changes everything. Yeah. I don't hate Christian having that cash in and hovering it, right? Yeah. And now we know that that that that cope hate that freaking name. Do you? Of the mindset. We just hate it. I, you know, I, I think it's fine. I think it's fine. I think what, if you call them Adam Copeland and then start calling them cope as like John Moxley mocks. That's fine. Yeah. I'm okay with that. You can kind of get it over with more people saying cope and it just becomes a nickname for him. Yeah. Christian Copeland will happen. I think Christian Copeland tag team will happen. Should he be the one that takes it off a mocks? Okay. But Christian tries to cash in, maybe doesn't get it or maybe does get it, then hang, then you got Kenny, Kenny and Edge. Mm hmm. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that too. And then that leads into something. There's a lot that it could do here. Also, Kenny and Christian, you know, they had a great match a couple of years ago. Yeah. But TNA title. I think, um, I think going forward again, it's just a matter of the, like, listen, it's AEW is not terrible. I think people think it's terrible. You know, people love, people love to poo poo on AEW now, you know, like it's cool or some shit. I listen, it's all pretty, oh, you want to try this? What is this? Oh, yeah. Very nice. My wife's, uh, sourdough chocolate bread. Can I not eat on air? No, I want you to eat it on there. All right. Can you take me? Okay. No, no, no, no. Just on you. I forgot to do it. I didn't, I didn't allow her to give you one. It looks really, it smells really good too. Um, yeah. I don't know. What do you think? What do you think? Where's, where's Christian going with his little portfolio? I don't know. Well, I will see what happens. I'm patient. This is from Zachary Venerro. When will, will we get max ratings to coincide with Nielsen? No, because they don't participate in Nielsen. Interesting. I think Max needs to, they need to start putting some numbers out. Sure. Uh, this is from FCN Toby. What was your highlight from the AW weekend at Hammerstone? Oh, dude. Uh, Sunday. Sunday. I brought my son. Going with Hunter. Yeah. We, and a secret, and a secret boy that we can't mention, honey, out with us. That's right. I love that secret boy. Secret boy. I cannot be mentioned. Um, that was a bad fun. Yeah. It was a blast. That was a really good time. He had a blast. He was just his orange Cassidy. Cause that's his favorite wrestler in AW. Cause he saw him on floor is lava. Yeah. Okay. Very adorable by the way. Very, he, he was great. He had a great time. We do. We saw, I mean, we saw so much great stuff. We got to see Ocada. We saw Will Osprey. Yeah, I got to see Ocada twice. You got to see Ocada twice. Pretty sweet. Yeah. Cause you went on Saturday. I went on Saturday and I was also like, I probably shouldn't have left my house that weekend. Like I was, I was like dealing with like a bad chest cold. I made it worse. 100%. Um, I got like the goop the next day. Oh, just like I'm dying. Um, I also like me taking like going all the way down and taking pictures by rings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You made your way down that a fun. Um, I've not. I've got it down to a science at this point. Yeah. I just do that. And that's it. And they go problem, but we did get rep. I got rep. I got reprimanded. I got reprimanded also at collision. Yeah. Justin Wang. I went to go see my buddy Justin Wang and I, and I got yelled at what are you doing there? I'm like, don't you know who I am? But great. What a great venue to see a show, fucking opera theater, dude. Great van to see wrestling. Everything was banging. Like the shows were nice and tight. They look great on TV. Look great on TV. Even better. I feel like for, I feel like for AEW, that's the perfect venue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The crowd was into it. Like it was cool. Uh, let's see what we got here from Cadillac Carson. Do you think we're getting Goldberg versus Gunther? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I think so. Sure. Is Goldberg taking that belt? No. I don't think so. I mean, what do you do? Where do you do this match? I feel like this is just an odd ball match. Is it a Saudi match? Sure. Yeah, why not? I want to see him have more than one match. Listen, I have no problem. Goldberg coming out there, sparing people every now and then and then and going home. You know, Sunberg's a big boy now. Yes. Sunberg's big, man. He's not that chubby little boy. He's not the Risler. The Risler was there. Also. No, he saw the Risler. Was he there? Was he there? No, no, no. Uh, the other ones were. AJ and, and, and boom dad were there, which is terrible. I had to like, my boy Tony was out at like a nice dinner and I FaceTimed him and he merely picked up and was blown away and he was just like, oh shit, the boom guys. Uh, let's see. What are your 20, 25 wrestling predictions? Ah, some kind of new Japan, WWE thing. You want, you want a really bad one? Maybe a one off. Sure. This is no scoop. No scoop. Vince will be mentioned on TV. Okay. Yeah. I'm raw. Smackdown. Raw WWE. Sure. He will be mentioned on television. Okay. That's a prediction I have. That's very vague. That's very Nostradamus like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm doing. You want me to ward? I want you to ward it. My eyes just rolled back. Uh, I, can you make, I mean, uh, can you make a wins a title? Okay. Uh, see, I'm punk wins a title. Okada wins a title. Okada wins a title. Uh, who wins the rumble? Ooh. John Cena. John Cena wins the rumble. I'm, I'm thinking they go punk or maybe punk. I'm thinking they go old school. They do double elimination punk and see if you're. Don't. Double elimination punk and see. I would love that. Right. I would love that. Then you have that. And a hunter comes out like this. And then he tears his quad. Hunter Russell this year. I, you know, that guy's had a, he has a pacemaker. Yeah. Isn't Flair have one too or not? Flair. I mean, is Flair having his last match this year? I don't think he's going to Russell. No. I don't think that's happening. He wants it to happen. I think he's toying with people. Um. I don't know. Okay. Give me another one. Cadillac Carson. Is that a drone outside your home? I heard there are large drones in New Jersey or somewhere. Yo, I saw one in Bayside. I saw the drone. Yeah. I have a theory on the drones. What's the theory? I have a theory. Yeah. I don't want to say. Alright. It gets a little too nutty. You know what I haven't seen in a while? A good blimp. I haven't seen a good blimp in a long time. I haven't seen a blimp in a while. There's always a treat where you're like, oh shit a blimp. I want a blimp. I want them to come back. The Zeppelins need to come back. Zeppelins. You know, in another world, right, we were talking about that split happenstance. Yeah. If that Zeppelin didn't crash in New Jersey, air travel would have been very different. I think something would have happened. I think it's filled with hydrogen, man. Listen, may, may not have. Alright. Very interesting. Can you imagine? Just air cruises? That we're all like steampunking. We're all steampunking around. Come here. Get in my Zeppelin. Do you punking and dancing with Scott? No, thanks. Armand. Hot take. Kenny should join the Death Riders. Oh, no. I want him to be. I don't want to be part of any group. Yeah. Just give me him a loan. You had a good year blimp at Raw last night. Nice. There you go. Nice. Nice. Simeon says Brisbane paid them, and ticket sales being poor meant they had to downgrade venue. I mean, I, I, I thought that was a big ask to do a stadium show there. Yeah. It's from Ed Toro. What if John Cena gets injured during this retirement tour? Do they restored it next year? I would, you would think so, right? Like God forbid this guy gets hurt. Yeah, they would have to. They would have to. I'll be back next year. Is that Ed Tarosian, the, the famous, uh, why detector expert? Yep. Yep. I knew it. Skytail wrestling. Any more word on Fox, Shockwave additional program. Nothing. I don't, it, I, there's nothing more to add other than whatever was said months ago. Okay. Uh, Paul Anthony Moss T and T and A looks like they're taking a big hit to the roster with lots of contracts expiring, but they have booked a bigger arenas than usual for some shows in 2025. What is their master plan? I don't know. I, I think they need to get better TV, um, yeah. I dealt a well in that UBS show. You want to go in July? Yeah. Absolutely. Uh, they're running UBS in July. I'm always a yes. I'm message Lance. I'm gonna message Lance. Sure. Can we hang out with you? Lance Archer. Lance Storm. All the lances. Do you mean another lance? Do you know any other lances? I don't. Not in my, I've never met a lance in my personal life. You've never met a lance in your personal life. Me either. Except for one. Who? Lance Storm. In person. No. He, he's an ECW guy that has not yelled at me in person. Okay. Only. Fair. Via text message every Sunday. Okay. Why are you saying show Mikey? Why are you saying show Mikey's? Uh, let's see. Oh, Armand was at the show. Was he? Yeah. Said I enjoyed Hammerstein, Osprey versus Brody was a banger. He didn't, he didn't even come up to us. No. Uh, let's see here. What's their master plan? What's TNA's master plan? I think they, they still need that, that WWE connection. Yeah. You know, cause I felt like there was something percolating. You think we're going to see a lot of TNA guys show up at the rumble this year? Probably. We've got a couple. Ziegler. Yeah, why not? Ziegler. Does Cardona come back? Why not? All right. Uh, this is from Meet Normus. Have you all thanked our new overlord Netflix today? Yes. In 2025, I will watch less raw if we're doing four matches in three hours and having random celebs waving. Well, welcome to the new, uh, the new generation. Exactly. Uh, have you heard anything about Camille? No, nothing. But I've been out of it the last couple of weeks. Yeah. Uh, let me scoop in around starting next week. Scooping and drooping. All right. Let's, uh, and then let's wrap it up after this. Who are the big free agents this year? I, who is a free agent this year? I don't know. That's a really good question. That's a great question. I got a look. I have a spreadsheet actually. I can look at it. The mocks have on his deal. I think a couple more years. Another couple more years. Right? That children union is going to rock. Oh my God. Can you imagine? It's going to happen. It's going to happen. This is this. If that happens, what, what? Well, the chef, what long-term story down, you know, because they still as evident by last night's raw, they still maintain that shield stuff from 10 years ago. Yeah. It's very fast. Anything. Uh, do you? Oops. Do you? Oh, he said I did not want to intrude while you were there with your son. Uh, you should've. Yeah. No intrusion. Do you see any movement on collisions night of the week? I know it's nutty, but I think they should experiment with Monday nights, post NFL season. No resting on cable on Monday leaves an opening. I know there's a lot of people have that talk about that openly. I don't know what a reality it is for them to move it and what WBD wants. I have no idea. Yeah. I really don't know. Saturday's is a, it's a weird day. Yeah. There's a hundred and something thousand viewers on that, on, on collision a couple of weeks ago. So, you know, that, that's a great number to do. And collision is really good lately. It's, it's okay. It's a fun show. I, I think once they figure out the identity and like the balance of this, they'll be fine. You, you know, a lot changed in this company. This was a company that was doing four pay per views a year with the roster that they had. Yeah. With one show a week for two hours, then they added rampage, which had another hour that they had the program. Then they added collision, another two hours, CM Punk left, Cody left, they added more pay per view. So the entire booking philosophy has shifted totally, right? Very rapidly. Yes. They didn't have time to kind of settle in here. Yeah. Yeah. So I think this year, they're, they're going to, they're going to figure out something. They got it. You know, listen, companies go through ebbs and flows all the time. Are they in a down period attendance wise? Yeah. Viewer ship wise. Yeah. Financially no way. It's astronomical what they're doing or will be doing two years of bad booking or two years of a decline in perception, whatever you want to, however you want to see it, does not represent your company. There is time to turn it around. One hot angle changes everything. Oh, yeah. I saw that in WCW. We've seen that in WWE. And that's what they need. They need to figure out what that is that's going to get the eyeballs back. They need that little spark for like something major, you know, pro wrestling unlimited says Jordan Greece is free in a few weeks. See, now, I think she's a big get for WWE. I think so too. I think, listen, there was a question before of who's a viable opponent for Mercedes. I think if Jordan Greece flips it and signs with a W, that's who you face. That's who you put a, that's who you put in a feud with Mercedes. Okay. Right. Uh, after it was from FC and Toby, after all, last night is a good question. We can end it here. After raw last night, would you rather go to the Netflix debut or a raw in 98 with the less modern style arena? After raw last night, would you go to the Netflix Netflix debut or a raw from 98 with less modern style? Oh, what would I go to? That's tough. Well, I'll tell you, Monday Night Raw in 1998 was not that fun because of all the signs. I mean, listen, I went to a lot of Raw's and SmackDowns 98, 98, 99, 2000, 2001. I've experienced it. I would like to experience this Monday Night Raw. I'll agree with you last night's Monday Night Raw, I would love to experience. I agree with you also, like, you know, a raw in 98, like you're there for Austin. Listen, they're at the garden, they're at the garden in March. Yeah. Okay. You're there for Austin in 98. I watched the 98 rumble with my buddies the other day. So good. And it was really good. Obviously. But what the downside that we always forget about is, you know, you had like DOA running around and just like a bunch of guys who Austin just stuns all day, you know, it's a different time. I don't know. I love that era, but, you know, in hindsight, you look back and the wrestling was not that good. And wrestling has gotten so much better today that it's a much better enjoyable experience. But yeah, I would go to the Netflix debut. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Would Shane be that big angle for AW? Shane McMahon, I don't know. I don't, it depends on how people are going to view it, but I do want, I do want Shane there. Yeah, same here. Shane there. Because it adds a different level of perception. It adds a just very different. I think it's, I think it's a positive. People are going to think I'm nuts, but I think it's a positive for them to get Shane as a TV character to do something with. I agree with you. I agree with you. Listen, may well work, but you know what? I would attempt it. He's a guy you could trust. He's perfectly media trained and he's fantastic on the mic. Listen, I don't subscribe to like, oh no, this guy will not work. I don't subscribe to that because anybody can work if your creative is interesting. Absolutely. If you book it right and your creative is interesting and you are a great storyteller, you could make it work. Even if you're not a great storyteller, you could hit the nail on the head once or twice. You know, for all the crap that Vince Russo gets, people forget that he was the head writer for wrestling in its biggest boom period. So listen, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not advocating for, for Russo's booking, but for all the bad that he did, there was a lot of great stuff that he also probably came up with. Yeah. I think it's a very big possibility that Shane goes to AW and they do something tremendous or they do something terrible, but I still would like to see the attempt. Exactly. Exactly. You don't know the answer until you try something and that's all I'm asking. Try it. Right. Like, like NASA. I want his punches. Like NASA says, it's never a failure. It's an attempted success. It's an attempt at success. But that said, that's it for this week guys. You want more Andrew and Rich, tune in every Friday 1030 Eastern at the Matt Men YouTube channel, youtube.com/MattMenPockets. You can follow me on X @ AndrewZarian, BTC Rich on X and we'll see you all next time. 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