How dangerous is it to unwrap a burger at 40 miles per hour? More so than you'd think. In a little over two seconds, your car can travel slightly more than 117 feet, which is the same length as 20 bicycles. Anything that distracts you while driving is dangerous. That's why driving while texting can be deadly, too. So heads up, phones down, it's the law, and you can be fined. A message from the Colorado Department of Transportation. [MUSIC] Yo. [MUSIC] It's Crafts a D, what we'll fill in bread, trying to keep it real instead of what you usually get from these talking heads. It's Crafts a D, we're here to fill the void, three black fans, different perspective. Got to fill your voice, coming with the podcast. Talking majors, ND's in between, yet it's all that. We're down with Fightful Better, fall back, coming for respect. We connect like a fall back, no need to double check. These are all facts, you're listening to us talk raps. You're listening to us talk raps, we'll fill them rich. Yeah, we're Crafts a D, hear the talk raps. [MUSIC] Yeah, we're Crafts a D, hear the talk raps. [MUSIC] Morning, we are here, I've been up, watching wrestling. Hope that you have or you've enjoyed some wrestling. At some point, over the last week, this is Craft City, I feel empty. First one of them things, we recorded it the year. Of course, I'm here with Righteous Ridge, what's going on with you? In the building, it's your favorite rapper, your favorite writer, your favorite podcaster, it's Media Man, it's January 2025. I don't know what that means. January 4th, historically, Wrestle Kingdom Day. We're of course here to talk about some Wrestle Kingdom. But it feels good, Phil Lindsay, it's a new year, new me, new us. Shout out to you for your interview with the IWGP Heavyweight Champion. What a great way to start the year. Yeah, something light, you know. [LAUGH] Just talking to the top champion of the company that I've said, I've been, you know, big fan of for the past seven, eight years. You know, also guys that I very publicly said that I wanted to win the G1 and go on to Tokyo Dome and be champion. And he did just that. Yeah, what a great experience. Yeah, still kind of processing that. A lot of work went into getting that done. The week of Wrestle Kingdom, very glad that we got that in the books. I was also super excited, like I was telling you to see Lyric get an interview with Zach as well. I was like, nah, hey, Black Riders out here promoting New Japan, getting big opportunities. Love to see that. >> Yeah, what a time for Black Rider. Shout out to Cam too, dropping some heat yesterday. I feel like it's a good, great time to be in this space. I remember when I first got into this space, it was not like this. It was like, but like you and Drew were the only ones really cooking. And I was like, okay, these are my guys, I like these guys. But now there's like everybody's in the business doing something writing or podcasting or something, seeing all the black faces and voices. It's just so great after so many years of feeling like the only fool out here. And they're unique and they're different and they add a different perspective. It feels so great, man. Shout out to everybody out there on the grind, doing something. Shout out to Lyric for getting that dope interview. Shout out to Phil Lindsey. Shout out to Cam. Shout out to everybody out there grinding super hard. >> Yeah, what was a great way to start the 2025. I run in the new year with family. And then as I said, I remember that I had some work to do cuz it wasn't midi December for me. And yeah, probably hit the ground too hard to start the year. I'm gonna start right, we got it together, got some work done. How about you, how was your new year dude? My new year's eve was super chill. I just, I went to the bar for a little bit, kicked it, play some pool, saw some people, saw some faces, and then I just went home and chilled. It wasn't anything crazy. I've been thinking about my old pastures. I went to Vegas for like 10 years in a row for new years. And it was the craziest times of my life, honestly. I saw some things that people shouldn't see. I think at some point, I saw some dangerous things. I saw some crazy things. And like to go from that to like, I'm just chilling at home watching. I can curb your enthusiasm or something on new years. Felt like, yeah, I'm really a grandpa out here. So, shout out to all the grandpas, shout out to everybody who didn't do anything crazy and just live their life like that. Yeah. Yeah, I mostly spent with family, you know, had some, you know, libations, watched the bar drop and the rest of the stuff. Andy Cohen on CNN was one of the funniest things of like, man, that guy was hilarious, man. I saw a clip of him and Anderson Cooper. They were, they shot to John Mayer in Japan at a cat, a cat cafe and Anderson Cooper could not handle it. Yeah, no, there, there were so many bits from that that were funny when they talked to Diplo. And Andy asked them, hey, you know, what's the craziest place you've done? LSD. And he's just looking around like, like right now. And no time Anderson Cooper is like trying to hold in his lap. But he's died laughing because he's just admitting he's tripping on LSD on live TV. They also, they have like an interview with a little John and John's like talking about mindfulness and all this other stuff. And Andy Cohen, because he was drunk, talking louder and louder the whole time. And then he goes, yeah, you know, I'm a little drunk. And a little John did the black people face me like, don't say. Couldn't have noticed. Yeah, yeah, a lot of great moments from that CNN special. Roy Wood saying, yeah, I remember last time a black man was on this show drunk. They got fired. You're not going to get me. Keep your, you keep your liquor over there to yourself. That is a very real ordeal. We all saw it unfold in front of our eyes still so crazy that that's it. That's been a thing for so many years. People get together in New York, New York City, Times Square, watched this ball drop. Now it's become this bit with Andy and Anderson talking to these random celebrities. Having a good time. It's dope to see people excited and getting together, knowing what's looming over our heads in the next coming couple of weeks. It's an interesting place to exist in though. Yeah, we saw some craziness with that within the next 24 hours. The whole Cybertruck thing out in front of Trump International, which looked insane. I initially just saw it from the angle from inside the building, where you could see the Cybertruck outside on fire. And then when I saw it from the other anger, where it blew up, I was like, no, this looks crazy. Yeah, I didn't, at first of all, some of the homies sent it in one of the group chats. And I was like, this looks like fireworks. And they're like, I think it is. It's like, when you see it from different angles, it looks different from the inside. It's like blowing up. It's like, damn, explode. You hear this big explosion on the outside. It looks like there's fireworks coming out of the Cybertruck. I'm like, really confused as to what's going on here. And then the story on what happened is even weirder, you've got a divorce or something, ended up committing suicide. I think before doing the before the truck blew up or something, some crazy stories going around here. And it's a wild way to start the year. There was also a couple of mass shootings. Mass shootings are regular at this point, but the way that they don't encompass the news anymore, when happens, and it's just like, hey, that happened. Let's move forward. It's so crazy still. Yeah, of course, Dolan says to anybody affected by those mass shootings. Yeah, sucks to keep getting that kind of new stuff to start off the year with that kind of news. Yeah, one of the bowl games got canceled because of it. If I remember correctly, damn, some bullshit. Yeah, hate it. Yeah, so, Dolan, he was a line. I picked up a win Citrus Bowl. Quarterback was out there with the AEW World Championship. Oh, we showed her. I was like, I'll take it. Somebody from this city/state has to win something because a lot of other teams are not getting it done. And of course, that's Tony Khan's alma mater, so makes all the sense of the world for them to be rocking the AEW World Championship. Oh, when I saw that video, there were people being like, oh, I can't believe AEW finally got their title in a championship game, because usually WWE's right on top of those things. And now that you say that that's Tony Khan's alma mater, it's like, yeah, of course, he's going to get first dibs at sending his championship. Huge look to see the AEW World Championship in that position. At that point, people looking happy. Belt looks great in that thing out of a briefcase. Who would have thought? That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, who would have guessed? Yeah, also, in sporting news, today is officially Derrick Rose Day, January 4th, 2025. There will be celebration for the youngest MVP in NBA history tonight at the Bulls game. Bulls will be playing the Knicks, which is fitting because Derrick Rose played with the Knicks for a little bit. If you don't know the significance of the date, is all of his jersey numbers, of course. Number one, he wore number four the first time around. No, sorry, second time around with the New York Knicks. And of course, he wore 25 first time with the Knicks and with Simeon. Amazing, shout out to Derrick Rose. We gave praise to him many times on this pod. We're both huge fans, one of our favorite basketball players of all time. Anytime somebody gets a day, it's so dope. There was like two short day here in Oakland, and it was just like, that's just thinking about where these people came from, what they did, how they impacted the culture, and for them to get to a point of them having a full day, it's so dope. Yeah, apparently the report now is that they're going to retire his jersey sometime next season, which they got damn better. I don't, I don't want to hear none of this. He's one of the greatest Chicago basketball players of all time. Not just what he accomplished in the first few seasons here, what he means to the culture here, what he means to Chicago basketball. Like that is like one of us, and not just like somebody from the city, a kid from Englewood got drafted, number one to Chicago Bulls. Took the team all the way to the conference finals, won MVP. Nah, he got to give him his relatives. Literally, he got to give him his forward, bro. I was just laughing because I remember yesterday seeing a quote from D. Rose. They were asking him if he wanted a statue in his tribute, and he was, I've seen the statues that they've done recently. I'd be, I'd be good with them just bringing my jersey up and I laughed so hard. Now he saw that D. Rose statue and was like, you know what, a jersey might be enough, I think. I think just, just, you know, just a jersey is cool. I don't, you know, I don't need to be immortalized as a statue. That way statues still look crazy. But yeah, shout out to him. He's been doing a lot of cool stuff in the city, been doing a lot of philanthropic stuff, doing a lot of sightings. I thought he's had some cool ideas, like he had the flower shop downtown. He had like a Rose Garden event, where is that? Then he got the official plaque to commemorate Derek Rose Day. Man, shout out to him, that big Derek Rose fan. I wish certain things had gone better, but man, he is just so quick to see him in good spirits. He seems like he's taking a lot of this stuff and stride. And man, that's just so dope, man. So dope, because you could easily be like, man, he has some terrible luck. And it doesn't seem like he's letting that get him down at all. Yeah, still one of my least favorite, saddest videos to watch is him on camera, finding out that he's leaving the Chicago Bulls and just like the hurt in his eyes and his face and his whole being of like, not one part being inside of me wants to leave this, this organization wants to leave here and I'm finding out like this, like the way that sports, the way that athletes find out about these things and have to uproot their whole lives and what they thought they were going to dedicate the rest of their lives to is crazy. Yeah, still angers me every time I see it. I just, I hate how they did them on the way out, but yeah, it is what it is. It happened. We can go former Chicago Bulls and possibly being on his way out. Jimmy Butler. Fresh Conference this week made it very much known that he is not happy in Miami. And he is ready to move on that did not go over well following this press conference. If you if you have not seen it, it is wild. Jimmy is Jimmy. It was very much like matter of fact, like I need to go somewhere where I'm enjoying playing basketball anymore. And I'm not enjoying playing basketball here. And someone asked him, do you think you can get back to enjoying basketball here? And he just goes, no, probably not. And then with his hair to feel like the whole scene is just so it's such a Jimmy Butler as seen. It's like he's there. His face is look, he's going into this intently, but he's just so like, I'm just ready, you guys. Like there's no, there's not any bits, any extra here. Like I'm done playing basketball here. And so yeah, Miami, he released a little press release statement that says Jimmy Butler been walling. So he's out for seven games because he's been a detriment to our organization. Yeah, unfortunate, he's been suspended. I saw where they're saying the NBA, the union white might be getting ready to dispute it or something. Yeah, something like that, but it's still going to happen, they were saying. Yeah, but yeah, it seems like his days in Miami are numbered. They're definitely going to ship him out soon. He's definitely not a guy that is going to stay tight-lipped. If he's not happy about something, he is very clearly not happy. And you can see the signs of it when they did make the playoffs, and he was doing Jimmy's stuff, tweeting things and chirping. And that was that off season where Pat Riley said, hey, why don't you shut up? And I was like, oh, no, this isn't anyone. Definitely, she could see it then. It just did not look good. And it seemed like some of this is contractual stuff. Which, I mean, this is a guy that's taking you to two NBA Finals. Just paid him, and come on now. I don't understand. I'm like, why your star player, the guy that carried this team on your back, you guys should be rolling out the red carpet. I remember when the Pat Riley thing happened, I was like, Jimmy Butler's fucking going to hate that. And then it just kind of continued into this. And they're like, well, sometimes players are just like, fuck it. I'm going to play through it. I don't really care about what's going on with coaching staff. But again, when you're carrying the team on your back, and then the coaching staff is like, disrespectful to you, you don't want to play for this team. Why would you want to help out this organization that doesn't give a fuck about you? When again, remember that one playoffs where he like, they were saying that the heat was down and out, but then he got the team on his back and got them to where they needed to be. Almost won the championship. Yeah, that was the season they lost in the playing tournament. And then they proceeded to win their next game, make it into a playoffs and make it all the way to the finals. Yeah, what a season that was for him that Jimmy's one of my favorite players. I enjoy playing watching him play. I enjoy some of his shenanigans. I love Jimmy, man. Even watching him do this thing and it's such a Jimmy way to leave a team too. What's a great basketball player without antics full of Lindsey? Like, which one of your favorite basketball players of all time didn't have antics like that? None of them are just like fine online, I guess. Like, I was going to transition into some guy hit eight threes the other night. He doesn't have a lot of this drama surrounding him too often. No, he lets Draymond do that. Draymond definitely has enough. Yeah, he's getting enough shenanigans from Draymond, but yeah, that guy, man. All right, listen, every time I've had to listen to his conversation of, you know, hey, he's he's one of the greatest shoes of all time. This guy is one of the greatest points guard of all time. Some of them pass as he was throwing in that game. I mean, the shots, we've seen him hit shots like men. The fact that he hit eight threes in that game did not miss a single three. The times he was dishing in that game who six rebounds in that game as well, like, well, a great point guard of all time. There's a I watch a lot of basketball podcast clips and they talk about clutch moments. It'll be like Paul Pierce will be like Kobe said came in the locker room and said he's going to drop 50 on all of us or LeBron came in and said I'm mad at this and drop 60 or whatever, like the superstar players that can lock in and at any moment do something like this on a, you know, a league full of heavy hitters against the 76ers against like some people that are supposed to be really into this, but you could just turn on the switch and turn to a different guy hit eight threes. Take yourself out of the game. Like I, it's insane the things that Steph Curry does and they still try to act like he's not that guy. Yeah, hold on. Seems like I'm like my game like great. Trying to let it settle because it was just like bunch of noises. Like yeah, I can hear you. Is it still lagging on my side? Yes lagging. I am, matter of fact, I am going to try to leave and come right back and then get into some wrestling talk. Yes, yes, yes. It's just gonna be me guys. It's my Wayne and Garth moment when they shoot to me and then I don't know what to say. So shout out to y'all. Shout out to my background, like that cool sign and this place that I'm in. What a great life. I hope for Lindsay's Wi-Fi is working better. How's everybody doing out there? Did you guys have a fantastic New Year's? I never read comments. I don't know if you guys know this, but I don't read the comments when the podcast happening. I'm usually on the super chats and the issue is it's like I used to and there would be people in there talking crazy and then it would distract me from the podcast and then I just want to yell at this one guy who's in there. So I'm sure that there's been, I've done so many podcasts since I've stopped doing that where people are in the comments being like this guy's the worst, this guy's all hard. I can't believe him in a stupid takes, but I just never see him and it just makes me well so much better. So if you've been in the comments also on the other end, which is kind of part of the issue with not being on social media and not being as much the good comments, the good things, the people giving it up. I just don't see that either. So that's kind of an unfortunate thing, but the bad ones weigh so heavy on you that you just can't. Like I just have to eliminate all of it because I'll be in here yelling at fools all day because for some reason, I evoke these crazy emotions from people just because I was talking shit about wrestling. This week, people were very upset at me, I guess or something or yelling or whatever are caused to controversy. Talking about this little thing, I really want to get Philip Lindsey's thoughts on this new AEW Dynamite theme because I keep replaying the video and people have been posting it all week and I'm just like still super weird and people out there doing their own remix being like, look, you can put any kind of theme in this hilarious, great, amazing. I've seen some of the best things of all time. But yeah, I don't know what when I got to this point to where everything that I tweet or say gets people crazy, gets people off, gets people in my DMs, gets high people in the wrestling business in my DMs being like, hey, you can't say that. I just thought I was a fool that came on here, this show randomly on Saturday mornings and talk shit. But like, I can't, I can't tell jokes, I can't do bits anymore, I'll just stop doing bits. So what are bits anymore? I'm just like a regular, I don't do bits, I can't tweet it, I can't say it, it's just in my brain, that's it. Because everything I say or do is just a crazy thing. How did I get to this? I don't even know, it's just just talking, just talking. Okay, now I'm going to read the comments, I'll see what you guys are saying and things. Point is this just this wild? Y'all are hella funny. No, but honestly, the point of sisters are wild. I still am thinking about how this whole thing happened. I still want, have questions and I still want answers, you know. Okay, if that gets better, what? That looks much better. Yeah. I just started talking shit, it wasn't anything, anything real. Yeah, I see, I saw when I got back, yeah, Jose, Joey out on the streets, I've been over that conductor beat. We were talking about it and he sounded great. I thought that the freestyle would drop a fire. I didn't mind the shots, of course, I'm not from the west coast, I don't really care. But also, man, the whole time during his Kendrick thing and when GNX came out, people were like, "We want regional music back." So, yeah, New York will come back outside. It's fine. Listen, when Kendrick Lamar dropped that control verse and said he was the king of New York, the floodgates were open. Anytime a New York rapper comes out of Fender, I'm like, "You should be." This fool said he owns your place and that's not what's supposed to happen. I'm not mad at Joey bad. I said, "I'm west coast, this fuck. I'm a west coast rapper. I'm everything that he's saying, but this is what the game is about." Kendrick and Drake opened something. They brought back lyricism to the mainstream. They've done these things. Now, Joey Badass is like, "Well, I want to be in this, too. I'm a lyrical rapper. I do these type of things. I'm in this thing. You guys are overlooking me again. Let me talk. Let me say something out loud." Somebody was saying that this is Absol's battle to fight for some reason and I was like, "Huh, but Absol and Joey have worked together before and I feel like they have a pretty good relationship. I don't think that Absol would be the one to go back at Joey." I thought the record was great. I was like, "If you can ask for regional hip hop, New York is going to come with their guy. If anybody from New York feels like they have a say, it's Joey right now, in my opinion." That's a fact. A young guy that's still kind of the future of this young and that spits and represents New York, Joey's the guy. But yeah, I texted you. I was like, "I think this is the best I've ever heard Joey Badass rap honestly. He's going absolutely insane. Conductor, he's on Alchemists' ass. Alchemists is putting out he, but every time Conductor puts out something, I'm like, "Oh my God, this is crazy. Your homeboy dropped something over Conductor, too, pretty soon after that." It's been a great week for him. The Joey shit's crazy. Like you said, regional hip hop. I want more of it. I want more rappers to come out and say this. This is what the game is about. It used to be all that. It used to be like we're New York, we're West Coast, we're East Coast. Down South, Atlanta came and dominated for so long. It needs to get back to what that was. Yeah, I agree. I thought the Joey record was great. Again, Conductor is Conductor. He did lace Joey with a great beat. Laced the boy with the beat as well. That was the topic of the weekend at one point because he dropped the Conductor freestyle where he was taking some pointed shots. Seems like they were some shots at a certain basketball player and people that, you know, people that turned their back on him. Drake likes nothing more than a rap about people that were disloyal. This is kind of his bag. Over the Conductor getting his grievances off, this is his bag. I was like, no, this is fire. That's not Grievous's voice too. Grievous's voice. Grievous's bar voice. You know, he has that Grievous's voice when he's on that style. Yeah, no. I feel Kendrick when he was like, we like Drake with the melodies, but when he gets into this kind of bag, I like it. It's Drake over Conductor. I'm not going to be mad at that. Come on. Yeah, it's a winning combination of Conductor's putting out this, give the biggest rapper in the world that and Drake's doing what he's doing. Drake addressing the people being disappointed in what he thought they were and what they represented is always insanely funny because a lot of this, there's a couple of shots at Kendrick, but like a lot of it is like LeBron. I'm so disappointed and sad. I thought we were down. I was on the shop. Hey, man, when you tattoo a guy on you and you know, you go and you have great moments with him, he was there when he won his first championship in Miami. He thought they were brothers. He did a little, he did a little seem like he was not a little dry snitching in there. He's being a little messy, which of course we know Drake to be. Listen, he's down Phil. He gots to from here on out, he has to, you know, let it, who's my real people? Who's standing behind me for real? I could say things and do things because I'm at this point. I still think he should have chill. He's still shit chill. Like, I don't know if this is a show. Yeah, I don't know if this is an official release or what this was, but he could still get lower than he is. Well, I mean, it popped up on his YouTube channel and then it vanished, so. But of course it's everywhere. It's the internet. Once you drop something, it's everywhere now. You can't just. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you delete it, dogs. If it's been up for one minute, somebody got that. Yeah, but you know the deal, send us your super chat. That is the guaranteed way where you can get your chat read on the show. Also, you can send us your humper chats via humper chats.com slash Fightful. That's a fact. Of course, we appreciate everybody for always submitting and supporting us. And we appreciate you guys joining us for the first Graph City of the year still feels weird to say 2025. You got any 2025 goals before we move forward with some of these super chats, Phil, let's talk about it. Let's get into it. I don't know that big one, like getting to interview a champion. It's pretty good. So pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. I want some, I want some more big interviews like that. Definitely going to try and chase some more opportunities like that 2025. Yes, kind of same thing for me. I want to get into some more interviews. Hopefully, can knock out a couple of these bucket list Mercedes. What's up, homegirl? Like, where are you at? What you doing? Like, if I get Mercedes, I think I'll be good. Like, you can keep the rest of them. Phil and I interviewing Mercedes, I think, is probably at the top. Brian Dance, I don't know what the hell you're doing. You feel like you getting the itch feels like you're a little close to the situation. What's up? Let's talk. What you want? What you doing? And Dwayne, I just know, like, I don't think he's coming back for WrestleMania. So I'm going to push that one down further. Like, I'm like, the closer he is, the wrestling, the closer I can get to it, but the farther away he is, feels harder. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying on Twitter, that was definitely one of my favorite parts of the SAC Sabre interview, where Zach was getting into his hopes to wrestle Brian again. Very funny guy. At one point, he was saying, yeah, look, I didn't tap him out. So I still have some unfinished business here. I know that he graciously called me the best wrestler in the world, but I cannot accept that mantle until I tap him out. And I am an environmentalist. So I will not be using a single use plastic bag to aim for him, only submissions for me. I love it. I saw that he shot through some smoke at Nigel, too. I'm like, Oh, no, Zach, we're doing this trying to do us thing. Like, what's up? Well, I'm loving what's going on here. This is a great way for him to expand as a champion. Like if Brian is still another matches on the horizon, whatever Zach say, we're doing just cooking up. I'm liking it a lot. Yeah. I saw that he said he did want the Nigel match, said that I believe in the lyric interview, but he also said that he would be interested in the Samoa Joe match that never materialized in 2023. Aha. I was wondering what ever happened to that match. It felt like they were really building towards it on Ring of Honor television. Zach Sabre had came on and did some things. I was like, Oh, this is going to happen. And then it just didn't happen. Yeah, but he wants it. Of course, it doesn't look like it'll be for the World Television Championship, because neither of these guys are a television champion anymore. But, you know, they'll find some way to wrestle. He said the match for Island Supremacy seems like the one, maybe in London, England for Forbidden Door, there'll be opportunities for him. I don't know. Zach Sabre Jr. and Samoa Joe for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship sounds fucking crazy. I'm super into that long. I think Samoa Joe's pretty close to being back. So I think we're going to get into that soon. Yeah, we'll get into some Super and Humber chats, but wins is going to have to get into the Super chats because I'm not on log them to this. So I can't click on here. Let's see. Got a very generous one from Meet Normus. He says a happy New Year's partners, Tkesta Tkagi should have made an event. Russell Kingdom was banger after banger until the main event, in my opinion. Maybe it's maybe it's the B-day Wheat Leith or 7 AM my time, but that match wasn't for me. Yeah, I figured that was going to be a very divisive one. Of course, that seemed like it was going to be a divisive one, even coming into the show because a lot of people were wondering why give shoulder that big of a match at this point of his career, but we'll get into it. We'll get into Russell Kingdom in a few. The real question is, are you a Wheat Leith fan and will you drink it neatly, as they say? I have never drank a Wheat Leith vodka. Those commercials are burned into my brain now with any WW thing you watch, you see it dozens of times, but no, I've never drank Wheat Leith. Never drank it. I always think it's the homie Walton Goggins on there. I feel like they wanted him. I feel like they wanted him for that, but they were like, we can't because it sounds like his voice. In righteous Jim sounds, that's what he sounds like. I'm like, that's him, but it's not him. It's like a riff off of him. But a shout out to them for investing a lot of money into WWE. Yeah, apparently so, because we see those commercials constantly. Um, the enormous needs to let us know how Wheat Leith vodka is because I've never met it. Um, from Vance Wembley, uh, Happy New Year, you filthy marks. Russell Kingdom started good, but the main event was four out of ten. Okay, Phillip Lindsey, I didn't get to watch all of it because I fell asleep. But this seems pretty, uh, this main event. What happened here? Yeah, we'll get into it. There's a lot to get into with it. But, uh, like I said, I figured this was going to be the case. Um, yeah. Got another one from Van Plun blade. He says also mother nature is to bounce the backhand in Midwest from Kansas to Ohio. Stay warm. Y'all. Yes, the time of year is about to get cold, uh, about to get snow. We got a dusty bill, a little bit of snow, but nothing too serious. Nothing too extreme at the moment because it's been raining over here, but nothing, you know, West coast don't get to no snow or nothing wild. Yeah. Uh, from Steve, oh, he sent us a generous super chat as well. Says Happy New Year at work now. So I'll end up listening on the way home. Congrats to Tiffany. Is she a heel or baby face now? Also, I love Jimmy Butler, but get him off pause. My Miami heat, uh, get ready to learn Utah, buddy. Yeah. They sent Jimmy to Utah. They are the pettiest people in the world. You cannot send Jimmy to fucking Utah. That's crazy. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Tiffany Stratton did cash in. She is the new WWE women's champion. Uh, the cash in was pretty cool. What a monster pop for her when she came out, cast in and hoisted that belt over her head. Um, given the pop and given how she cast in, I think it's safe to say she's probably going to be a baby face. Yeah. I don't think you want to, like, how do you switch from that? Like, I mean, she could, you know, come out with the you people thought, but you didn't help me get here. I'm, I'm the champion now, but with the pop, like you said, and how many great ovations she's continuously got, it makes more sense for her to be baby face. Yeah. That's what I think. Um, Hey, what's over there? It says, uh, you and Phil starts on Joy's bad ass new song. Hey, we got into that one. Yeah. We both aspire. We both think it's heat now. Mm hmm. Uh, Corey David, uh, thoughts on the Angelo Fool song. I've only heard the snippets of it, but the snippets are hilarious. What is this? I saw this and I was like, huh? But like, also, it makes sense. Like what young basketball player time, all, all the, the, the reasons why I'm like, yeah, but like, I'm not listening to that shit. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. Leangelo, man. It's a great name though. From grapple geekery, he says, uh, you're one of my favorites rich, uh, and I value your takes. Thank you, grapple geekery. I appreciate that. I know a lot of people do value my things, my takes and, and, and what I say. It's still just weird that y'all do, but I really do appreciate it. From Hey, what's over there? Also saw an edit of the rulers back with the old boy instrumental and his fire. I saw that as well. It does hit over that old boy sample. I'm not to find that. The conductor shit is fucking hard. I don't know why you would want to remix that. It is. Yeah. Got a generous one from court Curtis Brooks. He says, Hi, guys, speaking of regional hip hop, Drake is a Toronto rapper, not a Canadian rapper. Americans won't know the difference, but Canadians do check out, uh, snidey nose res kids, uh, real deadly hip hop. I'm gonna take your word on that one, buddy. Yeah. Now we don't know that we're just like Canada. That's it. You're all, you're all of it. You're one thing from one place. But now I feel you though. From Linda Aaron III, he says, not going to say anything about Lawson Aubrey. Uh, he'd be suing folks and crying over beats. We're going to stop pulling psychotic shit out of people. Lisa Ricochet didn't burn down his spot like arson page. Uh, yeah, I thought the Ricochet stuff, both on the pay-per-view and on this week's episode of Dynamite was really, really good. Um, it feels like they got something here. Go figure again. Seems like somebody's upcoming feud that is going to be heat is what's working. That's great. Yeah. The way that he keeps bringing this extra something out of this people is amazing. Um, Ricochet's transformation the last couple of weeks is, uh, I could say it again, the best Ricochet character work I've ever seen him do on mainstream television. Like what he did this week, I'm like, that's probably the best thing I've ever seen Ricochet do on TV as a character. Just like that, the emotions, the facials, the reactions, the, uh, the, the psychotic laugh at the end. I'm like, this is amazing. Yeah. I really like it, which we'll get into some more of the Ricochet stuff when we talk about world 10. Um, from Tony P, he says, just got up. LOL. Uh, Russell came and was a good show. So who we think is getting Jimmy. Also, if Phil didn't let you know, Reggie, you are my petty of the week for your A. W. Rant. I saw that, uh, skeet earlier, the homey, Tony P. So, uh, yeah, I think that I, I mean, I don't know, I thought that it was pretty on the line. What I was saying about this, uh, theme song, but I did want to get your thoughts on how you feel about what were your emotions when dynamite started and I'm so excited blared over the sound system. So I wasn't at home. I was at my sister's house. And so I'm sitting in a kitchen and, uh, I had my laptop and everything, um, in front of me, because I was working on the interview. And, um, so I was, I was sitting there working and then I cut the TV on because I was like, oh, dynamite's about to start. So I cut the TV on in the kitchen. And I put dynamite on. So I'm looking down and then like the music started and I was like, huh. And I turned around. I was like, oh, I would just sit there like, shut up. I was like, wait, this is the real theme. Listen, it might work. It might grow on me, but off first, listen, I was like, I don't know that this fits their brand. It, um, like we talked about on Ask Rhapsody when the other company over there is doing contemporary stuff using modern music, using hip-hop. And then you come with pointer sisters. The other show got to brand new as Meg, the Stallion song is lit, it's fire. There's a lot of that kind of energy. And then like, here's a song from 1982. It felt a lot of people were saying that this week, me included, maybe it'll grow on me. We don't need songs that are going to grow on us, though. I think we need some heat off the bat. Again, point of sense is great. Amazing. One of, you know, legendary status, great music, but for dynamite, the flagship wrestling show that AEW is presenting, I don't really know if that's the way to get into it. Yeah, wouldn't have been my choice, but it wasn't terrible. And that's why I said it might grow on me. I might just get used to it, but yeah, it was definitely choice. Tony asked to, who's going to get Jimmy? I'm not sure. I mean, there's some places I think he would work well. I think if they could add him to a team with like a young nucleus, I think he would work there like maybe Brooklyn or, I don't know that Houston has anything to trade. Houston might be a decent fit for him, but something kind of like that. But I don't know that Miami is going to trade him to an advantageous situation for him. So that's the other part of it. I don't know, especially with the way that he's handling his whole thing. I don't know. Like one of them is about to earn your petty of the week, because I don't, yeah, I don't think Miami is going to be like, Hey, who's who wants him? Who's great? Who'd be better off if we send Jimmy over there? Now they're like, what is they might send his ass to Utah? You know I mean, like, who could we, how could we screw this guy? Because he's a detriment to our the verbiage on that damn press release. I was like, oh, they want this little out of here. Yeah, he's he's definitely done with Miami, which is a shame. Because I think, honestly, he's going to go down as one of the best Miami players when you consider the running hat there. It sucks that it's ending this way, but these things happen. And it's basketball. But they sparkly said it perfectly when he was talking about it. Like, you know, if they were talking about not paying Wade, Wade had to leave and get a big paycheck somewhere else. Yeah. They're not going to pay you if they weren't going to pay Wade, they're not going to pay you. They're not paying Wade. They're definitely not going to pay you. And then you already got that as, you know, something to to lean on to be like, look, you guys did this to Wade. I know what the right when the writing's on the wall, what it's going to be, we might as well make this split amicable. They haven't been Jimmy was very loud about everybody's been loud about it, but that's sometimes how it goes. Sometimes you got to be loud. You know how these, uh, it happens in wrestling to where a wrestler will tweet to try to get hey, fuck this company or some random shit to try to get fired or try to get released or we've seen some things. Well, that's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah, Ryan, Jimmy in Toronto might not be a bad idea. That's definitely a rebuilding situation. You could build around Jimmy. The problem is they don't have really any assets to trade for him. Jimmy can come play over here. They bet he Jimmy could be a wizard. Meet Norman says if if they petty Jimmy could be a wizard boy, that would be, uh, I hope not for Jimmy's sake. Not advantageous for him to say the least. Not Jimmy on Golden State would be fire. I was like, I'm like, yo, Jimmy over here will be kind of heat though. What's up with that? I don't see that. Yeah, probably not. For Margie loves to say hi guys. Happy New Year. I'm glad Tiffany finally cast in last night, but annoyed that Naomi keeps being used as a plot device rather than a centerpiece of the story, hoping more for her in 2025. Yeah, I agree. I I hate that they keep putting her in these kind of matches and it becomes abundantly clear that she's not going to win. I thought the match was good. I thought she wrestled a very good match. She pulled off that, uh, Simone dropped at one point during it. She was working. She did a lot to make it a believable match, but wasn't her night again. Unfortunately, do you move her to the US Women's Championship division and maybe get put her over over there? Cause you can't keep doing this to Naomi forever. And it feels like they're not going to make her the main champion. You know, yeah, I mean, they've got more options now that they are mid card championships. So maybe, maybe you put her in that division. I think she could do some cool things with the US title, but just give her a man. Like, I know she got the win with the US title. I mean, not the US title, but the tag titles, but give her a win. It feels like she still has cache with the fans. Like when she gets that big win, it's going to hit. The fans are kind of waiting for it still. Like, she's had big moments throughout her time, but like she's since she's made her return from T and A and what she did over there, I feel like she deserves like something big. Yes. And the third, he says, show the needs to go heal. I don't think this baby face thing is working. It reeks of try too hard, darken it up, beat Anakin to Max's Palpatine. Max's Palpatine, sorry. Yeah, they, they definitely hinted at some heal stuff during the match. So I have a feeling there's a good chance that can happen. I mean, that's what I felt like the story was a lot of the year for him and where the transition of his character getting a little bit more serious, adding something else was him going heal. So I feel like that's what they were going to be leading to in the match. And that's where they're leading to eventually with him. Yes. From the J. Paul, if it'll put this on the screen, come on, from a J. Paul R.O. he says, what are your reactions to the Jesse Showgirls movie? Are you talking about the infamous Showgirls movie? Because yeah, terrible, terrible movie. But also one of those movies that is so bad that there are bits of it that are very, very funny, like comically bad. Of course, there's, there's the legendary sex scene in that pool where she's just like rocking back and forth and like shaking like she's been pulsing and going like, I don't know what's happening in that scene. What a, in the age that I saw that movie, I definitely was looking like I probably shouldn't be seeing this, but definitely what a weird movie, man. It felt like, I mean, around that time we were being wild, watching a lot of like skin at the Skinamax, Cinemax type ones, and they would be like that. It was like, this isn't, this isn't really, I don't think this is how this works. But it's just like, they put it in there because it's a movie. The lore around that, when they had to, they had to rate it. That's a rated NC 17. And they were like, yo, this is crazy. This is the first time ever Jesse spent them out here while and y'all. Yeah, what a, what a very weird movie. It's so funny that it's become a co-classic. People do like the showing sort and everything. People will take it as like this big parody, but bad movie. They came out and ruined the homegirl's career, essentially. They were like, yeah, now you're out of here. This is awful. What are you doing? But we were like titties. Yeah. Yeah. That, that pool scene is like burned in my brain because I was like, that, that's how it's supposed to look. That's how it's supposed. I don't think, I don't think it's supposed to look that way. But they knew like 13, 12 year old kids are going to be watching this. They know we could get them. They're dumb. Yeah. From Hey, what's over there? He says, uh, for this 2025, give me a theme of versus Tekla, gay versus MJF, and Zach Sabre versus Nigel for Forbidden Door. Yeah, it seems like this, Athena match is happening with Tekla. There's a little freckers after their tag match. Tekla seemed like she challenged her for the ROH title. And of course, this is the thing that she politely said, no, no. I love that little backstage segment with Tekla's like, what's up with your attitude, Athena? You're acting real weird out there. And Athena's like, yeah, that's kind of my deal. Like, what do you want? Why are you talking to me like this? But yeah, if that match is happening, super duper into it. We talked to Tekla, you know, a few months ago in our interview and she expressed interest in more matches like that. So it's lit. Yeah. Hopefully she gets that. Also, congratulations to her on the gallery that she, where she tried some of the paintings and some of the gear that she designed during Russell came the weekend. I saw some of the pictures from that on IG looked fire. Yeah, super duper fire. She's out there killing it. Got a add from Denise. I'll say though, very generous add, I guess. Red Phil and me will be doing an AW Russell Dynasty. Watch along on my channel today. See you there. That's a five shout out to my home girl Denise. I'll say it out, California connection. Russell Dynasty, baby, Phil Lindale is like, yo, if we're doing Russell Dynasty and there's New Japan involved, we've got to get Phillip Lindsay on the deal. So Phil Lindale is going to join us. Yeah. Yeah. You have some friends somewhere that likes New Japan Pro Wrestling. That's a fact. See some of these humper jets. Got one for Van Twim, lady says, I have a proposal for Petty of the Week from a community completely alien to most people here. V-tubing. There's a company I will not name because their marks are the Petty of the Week. For the second time, these fans quote unquote have made the list of people who's unforgivable. Some V-tubers, huh? He says that they're unforgivable crimes. Sorry, there's more here. Unforgivable crime is saying negative things about the company quote unquote. It's over 200 pages long. It would be like Fed Mark's making itemized lists of received flights and spreading eight pages of a Google Doc on Dave or SRS top this Tony P. Russell Kingdom kick ass by the way. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. I'm like, what is that? I don't know what you're talking about, man. But I think the funniest bit of this is him calling Tony P to the fans on his own bit. It's like, I got a better Petty of the Week than you. You want to talk Petty of the Week? Here's a Petty of the Week. So the Van Twim played appreciate you on me. So good. Yeah, appreciate you. And we've got one from Orion bin 666. He says, morning slash afternoon, grabs city gents, first and for Reg, Joey Badass comes from K that wearing an MJF scar. I just noticed that he had like the scar, pretty joint. Cool. Drake's new track, Mr. Mark. He just didn't get the lesson. Now, fulfill what you rather have showed a cycle for her own moves outfit. Hello, well, Rombu is a character, bro. Romo is a character, bro. I immediately posted that clip of Rick Ross on a motorcycle riding into his driveway for a show this entrance. It's a cool entrance, man. Shout out to show. Yeah. Now, there is a I want to get into this van event because I'm super interested in hearing about it. But yeah, the joy in insane Drake, it depends on how you feel about Drake. I saw a lot of extremes. It's either people being like, this is that Drake shit that we love, or this is the worst thing of all time wise, this guy's still talking. So I don't know where where he's going to land moving forward. But it's interesting. If you're expecting him to take accountability or something like that, you know, if you're expecting him to blame everybody else and play victim, that's exactly what you're getting out of this, which I don't agree with, but in terms of the rap, he's rapping. Drake is so funny, though, because he's just like, why are y'all celebrating? Yeah. That is what he lives on there. Like, yeah, I guess it's all cool. Y'all over to celebrate. I've seen a lot of my brothers buying tickets. I don't know what they're just celebrating now. Y'all buying into gimmicks. It's so funny, dude. Y'all just celebrating. Yeah, they're celebrating, man. It's a good moment. It's a new year, dog. I'm sorry, man. Like he got super bold appearance coming up, man. It's a lot for him to celebrate. I'm in Champagne, dog. It's a big deal. Just put on an album. It was all kind of good moments to be celebrating. It's like, why are y'all celebrating, though? You're my downfall. How y'all celebrate my downfall? I honestly like it. Don't never take accountability. Fuck it. You're Drake. That's your deal. [Laughter] We got two more Harper Chats. Of course, like I said, this is your super chat. The Harper Chats via harperchats.com/flyful. Wonga says, "G'day, grabs these fellas. Shingle slash the kesta. Suji slash Finley." And she bought Sweet Boys. LP. And Miu slash is some of the matches for my fave. Poor Doki. That match was heating up as well. It's Dynasty today. Can't wait to see Kenny back. And they added nighto and haremo to the tag match. That's right. That's going to be a three-way match, a three-way match for the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. Very excited for this card tonight. There's a lot of heat on this card. Let me get this last one now. I was going to say, let's get into the card. But from Delo Dix, he says, "Happy New Year's to the Bros." and grabs family. But with that sad event with Nola, I am hoping now K-DOT will do something for the city. Sonic 3 will still bang, seen it a few times. Man, Russell Kingdom was a roller coaster ride. One love. Yeah, I hope to see some people in New Orleans helping out. I think you're right. I'd love to see K-DOT touch down in the city and do something. This is Wayne. New Orleans is just continuously having to deal with devastation like this. And they're a city that knows how to come together. So I think it's like perfect timing for a Super Bowl to be there, show them some love and kind of rally that place. And shout out to all the people in New Orleans. Nola, I want to get back there. Again, condolences. Yeah, I've never been in New Orleans, so I definitely want to go there eventually. But yeah, condolences to anybody that has been affected by senseless violence again, unfortunately. Let's get into some happier conversations. Russell Kingdom emanated from the Tokyo Dome. January 4th is always that day. Man, this is something special about Russell Kingdom. Every year I get the most excited about January, Russell Kingdom season, Royal Rumble season. Royal Rumble is probably my favorite WWE pay-per-view. And just the way that they promote Russell Kingdom to press conferences, I sat up and watched the most of the press conference the other day. Just nobody does that quite like New Japan does, especially for their big shows. All the guys coming in, Kenny Omega being Kenny Omega. Did you watch any of this press conference? I watched a little bit of the Kenny and Gabe shit because Gabe was getting his shit off. He's really good at that. I love that New Japan still presents it like it's like a sport. This is real. This is two guys going in. It's like MMA almost, you know what I mean? Like they have like the press conferences of like these two guys are going to fight tomorrow. And here's the reasons why. Here's kind of building to that. Yeah, Kenny being Kenny, he proceeded to run Gabe down after Gabe trashed him. I think one of the funniest bits of it was Gabe sitting down, turning his seat directly at Kenny and said, "Okay, let's do this. Man, man, no bullshit. None of that disrespect. Let's just talk." He goes, "Yeah, sure, Greg." They forget about Kenny, man. He came up in this like he knows how to build a match. He knows the Tokyo dumb. He knows New Japan. He knows this like the back of his hand. Yeah. Yeah, let's get into this card. Of course, have the Rambo to start on the pre-show. Pretty much what you'd expect out of Rambo. It was surreal to see some guys in this that were in bigger matches last year. When Sonata came walking down, I was like, "Yo, Sonata is not on the main card. He's in the Rambo." But of course, it's taken a bit more seriously because they've retired the King of Pearl Wrestling Championship. The winner gets a shot at the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, so there's actually some stakes here. I thought it was a fun scramble match for what it is. It's usually the same. I mean, it's just a fun way to kick off the night and then they'll hit us with that long interlude afterwards where we're just looking at that screen with the rock music playing. They're running down how you can watch the show for like 15 straight minutes. Even though we have New Japan World up, we're watching that show. But yeah, it instantly this match, because this match happens every year at Wrestle Kingdom, with the winner getting a shot at the championship, the World Heavyweight Championship, it added something extra to it. The match felt more important instantly like that. Even though they were still great Okan, they're still doing bits and stuff throughout it, but it felt like a little bit more important. Yes, Roki Godo picked up the win. Bright life's Godo again, showing up in the dome, picking up a big win. Ernie Kimself was shot at Zack Sabre Jr. or after tonight, maybe Ricochet. So man, excited for Godo. Of course, Godo did very well in the G1, but he didn't quite pick up the win. There were a lot of people, again, tournament Godo is a thing. People wanted to see him pick up the win, didn't get it, but now he's got a shot sometime next year. Is it a Money in the Bank style gimmick or is it you got to announce like, well, how does this contract work? Good question. I don't know. I don't think that they've really gone into detail, and if they have, I may have missed it. But we opened the main show with the ladder match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Championships, Ichiban Sweet Boys, Robbie Eagles, and Fujita took on the team. Kevin Knight, Kushida, TJP, Francesco Akira, and of course, the War Dogs, Clark Conner, Drilla Maloney. Clark and Drilla are coming out with their ladies. They had the furs on like they came out arm in arm with the ladies. I thought that that was hard. They had, they kicked off, I think, was one of my favorite interests is to start the night. They looked great. To no surprise for me, this was his debut at the dome like Wrestle Kingdom. And I thought he showed out Kevin Knight, man, he was phenomenal here. There were some spots to do. I was like, I don't think you need to do that. That looked like it hurt. It was a couple. I was like, that's pretty dangerous. That's super dangerous. At one point, there was a ladder on top of somebody, and he just does this standing frog splash right on top of it. I was like, that looked like it hurt, but it looked cool. That spot where he had Clark straddled across the ladder. That's gone from the ladder to the ropes. And then Robbie Eagles comes in with the springboard for 50. I'm like, oh, this is, they're going for it. Yeah. Very fun fast-paced match. Very fun. It's hard to show. Yes. Very fun to see the Japanese crowd react to this kind of match, because you don't see a lot of ladder matches on this card. And I thought all of the teams had their spots where they shined. But of course, TMDK, Ichiban Sweet Boys, picked up the win. They are the new IWGP junior heavyweight tag team champions. Yeah. It was super interesting to see the Japanese crowd react, because when they get to doing the American style slow motion to get to the top or punching each other at the top, I'm like, you don't usually see that this isn't like new Japan style match-ups, but it was good in this place, because like you said, like we said, you don't get to see these guys. So seeing them in a different element add kind of some plunder to it, I think it was a super fun match. Yeah. I thought it was a fun way to start the main show. I was into it, seems like the crowd was into it. And I think it was the right winners here. I think TMDK needed a win on this show, other than the win we'll get into later tonight. And I keep saying it, but man, regardless of what Kevin Knight does next, this guy has singles competitor written all over man. He just there's something about him. He has that with the kids say aura, like you could just fill his energy coming out. The gear with him in Kushida looked great the way that he stood out in this match with a bunch of standouts just by doing right like he just does a drop kick that super high and it closed like he doesn't do anything crazy. He does a lot of basic moves, but the way that he does him enhances it to crazy. Whatever's next. I'd like for it to be hurt syndicate, but whatever's next. I think there's a lot of places for the homie Kevin Knight to go. He's on his way. Yeah. Without Okada there, I think he effectively has the best drop kick in New Japan right now. Yeah. When he does when Kushida has the opponent on his shoulders and he does the standing front drop kick, I'm like, how do you how? He's jumping over the top rope, essentially. It's insane. Yeah. Crazy athletic. Hopefully 2025 is a big year for Kevin Knight. Yeah. It should be. If he's if he's still with the company, I would love to see him get a good run in the best of Super Juniors. Maybe get a run at the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship again. That'd be awesome. Next up, we had the IWGP Women's Championship match. This is one of matches I was looking the most forward to because my course had a very strong 2024. And assume he is one of my favorite women's wrestlers in the world right now. And this didn't disappoint. I wish that it was a bit longer. I was a bit worried coming into this one because it was the same thing last time that the women were on the show. They only gave him about five minutes. This was an upgrade from that. But I still think that they should give the women more time. This was a very, very good sprint, though. Very fast pace match. The crowd was very much invested in it as well. I think that's a great sign. But again, you just got to give the women more time. Yeah, I was nervous when they were sick when they came out second. I was like, oh, that's not a great sign of what time is going to be because Wrestle Kingdom historically is like the first couple matches are like, bam, bam, bam, their hitters, their hitters. So like being in that spot, you kind of expected that. But what's so great about these women and a lot of their matches, even when there are long form matches, even if their matches go 30 minutes, they're still so fast paced that any time, any amount of time is going to be some heat. So you give these women fucking nine minutes, 11 minutes, it's going to be fired. And that's exactly what this type of thing was. You could feel that it's still such a big special moment to have this championship exist, first of all, before to be defended on Wrestle Kingdom and the dome, you could just feel the emotion on both from both wrestlers from the entrance. And so for them to get that, turn it to this moment, have a fire ass match, but not a lot of time is always so great. That's the reason why they need more time because they fucking set it on fire with what they have. Yeah, they got a little bit over eight minutes, but I thought that they used every minute of that match wisely. They looked they looked great. This was one of my favorite matches from the show. Azumi is so good, man. She looked incredible at the beginning of it when she was doing a high speed stuff. She's so good. She gave my you everything she had, but of course, my you came up with the win. I thought, assume he was going to pick going to win this one. I don't know who was going to beat my you at this point. Maybe Momo. Momo was on commentary during this match. I don't know. I had this point. I don't know who's going to beat her through this title. Well, my you was walking in with some Tokyo dome energy, like, she has some bro. You know what I mean? Like, I've been defending this championship all year, and I've been a little bit overlooked and not put in the positions that I should have been. So I'm about to come out here and cook. And that's what it felt like. I'm not about to lose this match. I'm about to come out here and cook. She definitely came with the energy of I came with something to prove I belong on this card, and I didn't come here to lose. Yep. This is where this is as long as far as I've made it, I'm going to keep it real with y'all. It's about one o'clock, one a.m. and I was like, I'm going to let my guy fill Lindsey. I know he's going to stay awake for this. So I'm catching up too at this point. Yeah, but you picked a great match to tap out on. Because this was a very fun match. We got the World Television Championship match afterwards. Randa Rita is still doing this House of Torture stuff that I'm not a fan of. We took on Elle Fantasmo, Jeff Cobb, and newly returning Ryohei Boyoa. This was good for what it was. I just am not going to get into some of this Randa Rita stuff. There were some parts of it that I really enjoyed. Jeff Cobb continues to be very fun to watch. At one point, he picks up the pushup bar that Randa's been using to cheat to win his matches, and he just breaks it in half over his knee and proceeds to start beating fools up. Love that. But the feel good story of the night, coming back after a cancer diagnosis last year, back in great spirits, back wrestling again, LP picked up the win here. New Japan World Heavyweight Television Champion. Amazing. Very excited for him. Love the reaction he got. I thought the last few seconds of the match when he popped back in the ring out of nowhere and broke up the pin. And then he did that cool springboard that he did to come back in to get the win. Love the finish. Love this for him. Man, at one point, I was like, where are they going with LP, especially after he got kicked out of bullet club? Because when Jay left, I wanted LP to take over his leader. He was the guy from that group that I liked the most, but the more and more I see him as a babyface, the more I'm like, yeah, now this was the right route for him. Those fans really loved him. I think this was a good moment for him in the dome after everything he went through last year. Really, really happy for him. Yeah, it couldn't have happened to a better guy, I think, honestly, just kind of some money that's like, stayed the course in New Japan, played his role, but has consistently put out great matches and had great moments and for this to happen after this scary incident and him being out. But to come back to this is fucking amazing. Shout out to LP. So happy that he's back. Yes. Big win for him and help. Followed up that feel good moment with the match that I was looking forward to the lease. Unfortunately, Roshi Tanahashi, the ace of New Japan, took on evil and a lumberjack match. Of course, the stipulation was if Tanahashi lost, he would have to retire from in-ring competition. I don't think anybody really believed he was going to lose with the way that they've built up this match and the next year for Tanahashi. Evil's interest was pretty cool. He came out with the descent version of his theme song. I really like his theme song. It's one of the few things I still really like about Evil. But anyway, I mean, other than the house of torture stuff, I like Evil the rest. I should say that. Look, I like his finisher and a lot of stuff. It's just the house of torture stuff that's worn thin on me. It's just shenanigans. That's all it is. Sometimes the house of torture stuff, we're going to get into it a little bit about my other rant. That's what the Death Rider stuff feels like to me. It feels so separate from what the company is and what they're presenting. Like, "Well, why are you doing this when you got all this other great stuff happening around it?" Yeah, you have so many great wrestlers in that group and they're doing all of this shenanigans stuff. Evil came down, had her catacool entrance, had some great gear on. Then Tanahashi came down. Tanahashi is still that guy. Still gets great reactions. Still, it looks great. He looked a bit better than he did in his last match because you can tell those knees were really bothering him. But this was what you would expect from this match. I think that they did the best that they could with it. I think that it was enjoyable for what it was. It was a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be because I was like lumberjack match. I don't know. It didn't really feel like a lumberjack match. It was kind of like both guys had their unit in their corner. like Han entire was behind Tanahashi in his corner and then house of torture guys were all behind evil in his side. Every time they got a chance, house of torture did very house of torture things. But it kept it was kept to amenable and at least evil guys come up into here. Tanahashi picked up the win. It's not going to retire yet. But this was fun for what it was. I hope that they have something big set up for his next WrestleKing to match. But for me, the most exciting thing that happened out of this is right after the match. Casio Yoshisbada showed up in an AEW hoodie. I'll then shook Tanahashi's hand and challenged him to a match. He will be facing him on a Wrestle Dream card tonight. Very, very much excited about that. That feels more in line with what I thought we would be seeing from this guy. A long time right from Shabbatah. This is more of what I want to see for him in 2025. And that's more in line with the kind of match I want to see for his final WrestleKing to match. This is awesome too because coming into tonight in Wrestle Dynasty, a lot of people had questions about Shabbat and if he didn't be involved. And what better way for him to be involved that it crossed back over to New Japan and Wrestle Tanahashi? Like Phil saying, this felt like Tanahashi's retirement run, the type of matches we were expecting to see. Not like a lumberjack match with evil. I shot up to them, but it just didn't really fit the narrative and this fits the narrative. Yeah. And I mean, evil House of Torture plays their role here. Well, but yeah, this was much more exciting for me seeing Shabbatah. That was a great surprise. Tanahashi facing one of his fellow three Musketeers on a Wrestle Dream card. Very much excited for that one tonight. I don't know how well that that match is going to be at this point. Because it's just like they announced it as like an exhibition match or something, some kind of stipulation or something, right? Yes. Right after that we got Knowscade to Kesta taking on Shingo Takagi and a winner take all match. Bro, we talked about the year to Kesta had in 2024. Bro, he walked out on that stage like a guy that had a phenomenal year in 2024. Had all of the aura in the world. This guy looked like a big star, dying next to him. He looked fantastic. Shingo is still shingo, still incredibly fun to watch. This was a very fun match. I wish that it had gotten a little bit more time. It went around 12 minutes. I think you could have shaved some time off of this main event. For some reason, it went 43 minutes. I don't know why. We'll get into it in a very long match. But you could have shaved some time off of this main event and given that to either to the Kesta match or the Women's match. But this match was good for what it is. To Kesta kind of dominated for a good amount of this match. But Shingo fought back. He got some good spots in. One of my favorite moments of the night, really, is Shingo does that thing where he stares into the camera and he points. He does. He got ready to do it. And before he could do it, to Kesta jumped him from behind. Then he got his footing, turned right back around, jumped in the camera, waited for the crowd to get into it with him. Got his shit off. Not to be the third. But yeah, this match was incredible. I think when you know the pedigree of both of these guys, these guys have phenomenal matches with just about everybody there in a ring with this was really, really good. Like I said, my only real complaint about it is I wish it was a little bit longer, but very, very good match. If these guys cooked with only 12 minutes, I'm sure it was some fire. I would definitely wanted to see these guys go 18 to 20. But there are another so many talented wrestlers that they could do it with any amount of time. Yeah. And because because it I feel like it could have used maybe like five minutes or so more, it feels like it didn't really get into that gear that it could have. But like I said, it was still a very good match. Kesta picked up the win here. So he is now double champion. Now is a never open weight champion, as well as the AEW international championship. The Dower Note afterward, we got a Despy taking on Doki. Despy came out with this fire gear that was like split. He had a red on one side white on the other, and his not a Tron, but his entrance video reflected it had like the red on one side and a white. I thought that looked really cool. Doki had the entrance of the night. He had like well, kabuki characters come out, and he hyped up the crowd before Doki came out behind him. This match seemed like it was just starting to get going. What you know about these two guys is junior heavyweights. You know they put on great matches. Unfortunately, the match got stopped five minutes in because it looked like Doki broke his arm. It looked very very hard. So hopefully Doki is all right. Unfortunately, that is how Despy won the belt here via counting out. Sad to see this match stopped this way. Speedy recovery to Doki. Hopefully he's okay. Despy tried to get back in the ring afterwards and hype up the crowd and get them back into it. I thought that that was a good note, but yeah, really sad to see this match in that way. Damn, five minutes for what they've been building and for what they were about to do. That's so unfortunate. Yeah, I thought that was very very unfortunate. Meeting arm is saying any updates on Doki's arm. I haven't seen any yet, but it did look nasty to me. How did it happen? He's going for a springboard. It looked like he landed off raw. It just, it was a referee stoppage, unfortunately. I'm saying in the chat, people are saying that it looks like it may have been a dislocated elbow. So if that's the case, that it just it looked it looked bad. You had to see it. It didn't look good. Well, hopefully he's okay. If it's just a dislocation, yeah, well wishes to Doki. Hopefully he's okay. Right after this, we've got Yoda Suji for the Yoda Suji taking on David Finley for the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship. For me, this was probably match of the night for me. I really enjoyed this match. Finley continues to play his role very well at the heel. Yoda Suji came out with this shit on, he had on this red hat and this red overcoat with it, kind of looked like Carmen San Diego. He looked great. He also looked great at the press conference. He gave us two outfits at the press conference, man. Getting shut up. Suji was like, all right. We celebrate and I'm gonna celebrate. He said he almost looked like Carmen San Diego. Yeah, he looked great, came out with great energy. I love the story coming into this match that Yoda Suji had some pretty big moments in 2024, but he wasn't able to get the big win, won the New Japan Cup and challenged for the IWGP title, wasn't able to win it, wasn't able to pick up the win in the G1 as well. I think a lot of people coming into this year were hoping he would get the big win. He did just that here, picked up the win over David Finley. He is the new Global Heavyweight Champion. I'm really, really happy for him. I think that he needed this win. In a lot of ways, this Wrestle Kingdom needed to answer a lot of questions for people. The company's in a transitional phase and I think they did a great job in some ways in 2024 of building up new guys that you'd want to see come again to this year. And so coming into this show, they needed to hit the ground running and show you like this is a guy we're invested in. Suji is a guy that they've named us one of their three Musketeers, so they needed to get to it. He's had, like I said, he's had the moments. He's won the New Japan Cup, but he needed this kind of win on this stage. This is a momentum. I have no doubt that he's gonna be the face of this company and IWGP World Heavyweight Champion someday, but at this moment, he needed something like this. I kind of thought that Yuya Moore could come back and end up being Finley with stuff that Finley's been saying about him since he got injured in the G1, but I ended up liking this more because like I said, Suji deserved this big win, man. I just feel like Suji's gonna be in a main event on this show one day. So like, you got to start racking him up and giving him that resume. Like he's such a, he's such the feature of this company that it makes a lot of sense that they would put him in this position, you know. Yeah, but a lot of great action in this match. Like I said, this was my match tonight. This is my favorite match on the show. Finley wrestled very well. Suji countered him towards the end of this match, hitting him with this big knee. Power bomb got in the corner. Gene Blaster, that's how he picked up the W. Love the, love the sequence towards the end of it. Love the counter. A lot of great counter wrestling in this match. If I would, I would say if, for most people, this is like where the show kind of hit its peak. Because I think up to this point, most of the matches were very enjoyable to great. Like I think most of the matches up to this point were good. The last two matches were divisive to say the leaf. Naito versus Hiramu was always going to be one of those where, where Naito is in his career, I feel like this was going to be mostly story driven. And that's what we get. And I love the story they told here. Hiramu came out with this wild gear on. He looked like a Funko Pop design by Marcomi. But he looked great. It was a very Hiramu moment. I thought his interest was fantastic. Naito, of course, forever has that shit on. He looked great as always. But this, a lot of this was playing off of their history together, playing off of their win in the World Tag League. And what he means to Naito, what Naito has meant to Hiramu's career. And I think a lot of people expected this to be a passing of the torch moment because Naito at this point in his career is looking long in the tooth. He's had some standout performances last year. But he's not, he's not the Naito of Naito. But boy, when he walked out on that stage, a lot of his reaction to the night, he still gets a little how this reaction still that guy. He's, he's still very, very much over. The Japanese fans love this guy. And I mean, that's not going to change any time soon. Japanese fans don't care what anybody be talking about. They talk to show he had a bad matching, but they don't care about that. There's like, this is our guy. And we're with him to the end. Yeah, they love this guy. I enjoyed the match. I don't think the match was ever going to hit this mark of like, wasn't going to be the best match of the show, no matter what. It was all, you know, story and emotional beats. And the emotional beats, I think hit very hard. They played into a lot of stuff with their history with the company. Of course, Haramu had the match in 2018 at the Cal Palace. I was there against Dragon Lee, and he ended up injuring his neck that kept him out for a long time. If you know Naito, Naito loves nothing more than the targeted guy's neck. And so coming into this and thinking, is he going to do that to Haramu with what they mean to each other? Oh yeah, he targeted that neck, buddy. He at one point had him in a headlock. He's like dropping down elbows very much, focusing on his neck. And Haramu was not taking none of it. He was struggling off every single one, not he was like, nah, you're not going to beat me like that. It's emotional, man. It's certain things and emotional. At one point, Haramu hits Naito with a Destino, picks him up, and hits him with the time bomb too. I thought that was the end of the match. I was like, no way. And Naito kicks out, ends up getting ready to go up to the top row for the start as press. Of course, you know your history with Naito and the start as press, and him attempting to use that to win the match. The second he got close to the turnbuckle, Haramu grabbed him by the ankle, and he's like, no, no, you're not going to beat me like that. You're going to win this one, your way, you're going to win this one for you. No, not like that. So he perceived to pick him up, turns him over, hits him with the Destino, emphatically picks up the win. The finish was a bit abrupt, but like I said, all the emotional notes, man. Like these guys timed together what this means. Afterwards, you could see how frustrated Haramu was. They couldn't pick up the win because he had him. There were some nearfalls in this where I thought he was going to win. And Naito, he steps back and he puts up the L.I.J. salute. He's waiting for him to get up. And he's like, I said, frustrated, took him a minute to get up and stand on his feet. Bow to him. Gave the salute. I was like, oh, man. Come on. Watching him walk out together, very, very emotional. I was tearing up. I was like, this is beautiful. Great storytelling. Like I said, I liked it as a fan of L.I.J. and these two guys. But really, it's not like I said, if you wanted this like crazy work rate match, you wanted the Naito match that you would have saw five years ago, you were never going to get that. No, that's not what the story they've been telling. That's not what Naito has been doing the last couple of years. This was a moment. It felt like both these guys wanted to have at Wrestle Kingdom more than like this five star match. This felt like a moment. This feels like they have another match in them. I have no doubt that there's going to be another match. I saw some people there were upset that he didn't just put her rumble over. But like I said, I don't think that this is the end of this. I think there will be another big one on one match. And I do think eventually, he is going to pass the torch to your rumble. It just felt like this wasn't the time. And that was kind of one of the through lines of this entire show of like you could see the makings of guys. They've they've started to build up throughout this show. And you can see like like the glimmers of what they could be. But it's not yet. And it felt like that with her rumble like he's going to make this transition over to a heavyweight and he's going to do well. But it's just he's just not there yet. The thing that I love about New Japan so much is Naito was in the same situation some years ago. He come into these Wrestle Kingdoms and not win. And people be like, why don't you guys ever put over Naito? What's going on? He needs to be this. And now he's in the position to be that guy in the same things happening. New Japan is so great at telling those stories like that. Yes. Yeah, Leonard is right. Heroma very plainly said this is a one off. I still think there's going to be another one. Yeah. I think it's inevitable. I think there's going to be another match. I saw some people that thought he was going to turn on Naito. I personally would hate it that because so many people from not in that moment, right? No, and like what heroma means for them, they just they just want to tag Lee together. I didn't want to see your turn. They were just so used to breaking breaking up people, you know. Now, conversation at hand, I'm sure the part that most people wanted to see us talk about the most that again, very divisive. The main event of the night, Zack Sabre Jr. took on Shoda Umano. Shoda came into this with a lot to prove. He had a very inconsistent 2024. And the level that they're putting him on, they are hyping him up to be one of the next up-and-comers for this company. He's heralded as one of this generation's three musketeers that already put some heavy expectations on him. And then he added to it by saying, you know, he's going to be a top guy. You already see some of the similarities to Tana Hashi. There's some similarities there at the Naito as well. And so it kind of has that feel like always with wrestling fans. When you tell wrestling fans, this is going to be the guy and they want to reject them. They don't want that. They want to see, they want to feel like they are the ones that made the guy the guy. They want to be the guy that made the guy. They want to be along for the journey. And conversely with Zack Sabre Jr. The reason why he had this groundswell support with the G1 last year is because fans were there for his entire journey for eight years coming into the company, joining Suzuki Gun. And like, they were there for the big losses to Okada. They were there for his New Japan Cup wins, all of his failures and all of his triumphs. And so like getting up to this point, it feels like they were part of Johnny. He feels like one of them. He's a New Japan. He's a Japanese citizen. He's embraced Japanese culture in a big way. So it's just like this tailored tape of one guy that has been very much embraced by the Japanese fan base in this guy that is like, telling you I'm going to be the guy. Brian Danielson and Roman Reigns all over it. Like they're trying to feel like this is the guy we wanted to be. But we've been watching this other guy for years and years. We've seen them come up to from like the minor leagues. We've seen them come up from fucking pop Warner into the majors. And so we're going to be stuck behind that guy. And if you're telling us, no, the other guy is the guy we want. He's the one that's leading the way. It's going to be a lot harder to sell that. Yes. So yeah, and then on top of that, like I said earlier, the company is in a transitional phase. They're very much in a place where they're rebuilding their world title picture. You've lost some of the biggest stars in the company and Okada, Willos Bray, Jay White. Nido isn't Nido that we're used to. You can't rely on him as a guy that's going to main event for the foreseeable future. Tanahashi is getting ready to retire. There's a lot of uncertainty around their main event scene. And so this was a big test for both of these guys to see how Zack Sabre could perform on this stage in a main event. But also to see if Shoda could sink or swim in this moment. I thought that that was one of the more important things here. The entrance is for again. The entrance is Shoda rode his motorcycle from the inside area all the way around up to the platform. I thought that that was a cool moment for him. But again, it just feels like he does so many things that you would think would make him look cool, but some people are just not really accepted. Now, I will also say, the bill for this match was much better than I expected. When he first came out and challenged Zack Sabre doing it, I was like, "Oh, I don't know about this match." But the more the bill went on, I was like, "Oh, they got something in this because you can see in some of the cities that the crowd was behind Shoda." Some fans are behind him. He started carrying around those belts that people made for him because they want to see him as champion. I thought that that was a good note. It showed that there are people that are still invested in his growth and his development. But it still kind of feels rushed with the way that he was booked coming into this match. It doesn't feel like he was booked consistent enough to deserve this spot at the top of the car. Yeah, I think I was kind of the thing that they were going to run into with how they had Zack Sabre Jr. win the heavyweight championship for him not to wait until Wrestle Kingdom. They were going to have to put somebody in it, but it doesn't feel like a lot of fans don't feel like Shoda earned it like you're saying. New Japan is trying to tell us that he's that guy, so they're putting him in this position, but nobody feels like he should be in that position at this point. Yes, Zack Sabre came out with this usual British punk rap, and then it flipped into this other punk rock song afterwards, which I thought was hard. Yeah, the screens changed and the music changed. I thought that that was super dope. His ring jacket was dope. He looked like a big star as champion coming out there. The match itself, I think the match started really good. But you could see in openings of the match that this didn't feel so much like for Zack Sabre, like, hey, I'm going to go in there and do what I usually do as early on in my career, just kind of come in and tap somebody out, like, make this as painful as possible. It looked like he came in trying to teach this guy less and like, look, you want to be on this stage? You want to be here? Okay, let's see what you got. You know what it reminded me of? When somebody that doesn't play fighting games comes over, and you play a lot of fighting games, and they like pick up the sticks, and they like are trying to figure it out, and the whole time, like, you're watching what they're doing, like, okay, I'll let you have that. Let's see what kind of combos you can pull out. Then it's like, okay, enough of that. Like, let me show you. I know how to block that. I know how to counter that. Now I'm just going to beat you. And so early in this match, he was wrestling circles around this kid. I mean, just like picking him apart, like, he'd go for certain moves. He'd try and go for his elbow strikes, which showed you got to work on these elbows, like, they look very weak. You got to work on these elbows, man. Oh, when I saw him versus Mox earlier this year live, I was like, dude, showed us got to work on it. It's like, you got to play it in, brother lay it in, and he hasn't started laying it in yet. But the great thing about this match, because like I said, it felt very much like Zach was trying to teach this guy a lesson. When he was like trying to lay the elbows in, he would let him come and he was like, all right, all right. And then he would just come back and just hit him extremely hard. And he's like, yo, you're going to lay this in, lay it in because I am going to lay it into you. There were several points where you could see Zach was trying to pull it out of him. Like, yo, you want to be here, be here. This is what being here is about trying to get him to fire up. And I do think there were great moments where showed a fired up. The longer the match went on, the more you could see the strikes were getting harder. He was actually hurting Zach. And you could see the points where Zach kind of took him too lightly. Now, the match was too long. I think that is the biggest issue with the match. It did not need to be 43 minutes. And because of that, there are bits in the middle where it drags. There are bits in this match where I get the story that they were trying to tell. But it feels like there's too much standing around and trying to set up moments and set up bits that work. It just, it was just too long. Yeah. And they haven't built, like what you said, with the, with how people feel about showed a being in this match, they didn't build the emotions to get from the crowd with the 43 minute match. And the other part about this is this just goes to show you how New Japan is still trying to find their identity with their current crop of main eventers. You could do that kind of match with Okada. Okada excelled at those long matches, but you don't have Okada anymore. You got to figure out how to work your main events around guys and work to their strengths. I don't think that a 45 minute match worked these two guys' strengths. And that's not, I was just going to say, that's not to say I don't think that Zach can have a 40 minute match, but with this story that they were trying to tell in this opponent, I don't think it was the right amount of time. Yeah, totally. Zach Sabre could tell a fucking hour match with the right opponent, but with showed it in this moment, Wrestle Kingdom probably wasn't the right thing, but they're just so like Wrestle Kingdom main event. It's 50 minutes is sometimes an hour. They're just so used to that, that I, it will, like you said, it's a sink or some situation for show that they were like, can he do it? And I don't know if they should have like they could have shaped 10 out like 33 sounds way better than 43. Yeah, I think you could say shave the good 10 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes after this match. And I think it would have been just fine. Because all of the story beats to this, I thought really worked. Like I said, the overarching story of Zach trying to like pull this performance out of him and teach him as well as like put him through his paces. And he showed some real fire in this match of the baby face. Some of his hope spots, the crowd got into it. There were bits of it where when he was trying to lay it into Zach where the crowd was absolutely bullying him, he got booed several points because again, no, they have decided they're behind Zach. They don't, no, they don't want you in the way that you were, he was trying to fire up at the crowd. Sometimes they were responding with poos. There was a great spot at one point where Zach tried to roll towards the apron to get some rest and showed us, started immediately stomping on him from inside the ring. And Chris Carlton was who's been great on commentary pointed out that of course Red Shoes has showed us that and Red Shoes was giving him time sometimes. He gave him time when Zach had him in his submission. He gave him a little bit of time to roll out of it and catch his breath. And he kept giving him a little bit. He's like, yo, you can't do that. You can't keep giving your son passes. And so he was stopping on Zach outside the ring and finally Red Shoes tried to grab him and go stop this enough. And he pushed Red Shoes off of him and proceeded to continue to stop at him. And when that happened and some of the boos, I was like, oh, yeah, I could see him turning heel sometime this year. You could see the makings of it. I think that that's definitely one of my takeaways from this match is he needs to change of direction. He needs a change of look. He needs to revamp and the heel turn might be the way to go for him. Yeah, some of these young wrestlers, that's what they need. They just need to try both, I feel, because like they're trying him as the come from behind babyface next up. But it feels like even in those moments that I saw with him earlier this year live, the heel elements are where he really excels. Yeah, you can see bits. There were very much bits where he tried to use Moxley's teachings. And again, very smart storytelling. Real quick. Zach Saber Jr. excels as this catch wrestling ambassador to World of Sports Guy from Britain. Remember where show that did his excursion? The UK. And so he's trying. They're going shot for shot with the European uppercut. I thought that that was a nice note that it was like, no, you're trying to do this with me. No, I am British wrestling. You're not going to get in this ring and play with me. No. Also, my favorite story element is this whole thing. At one point, because again, Zach Saber Jr. his foray into Japan, the thing that introduced him to this audience in a big way in 2017 was joining Suzuki. No, nor Suzuki tried to win a lot of his matches with the God style pile driver. Of course, Suzuki was never a IWGP champion, unfortunately. At one point, Zach tries to get him up in the God style pie driving. I was like, no, no way. He's going to cost himself the way Suzuki does. Don't do that. And so he doesn't get it off. Instead show that hits him with a deaf writer, hits him with a few deaf writers. Zach kicks out, which plays into the build of this as well, because Zach told him in the build. You don't even know who you are. You keep trying to be other people. You keep trying to be mocks. You're trying to do, well, I sprays moves. You're trying to do this person. Who are you? Be you. And so he tries to hit him with two deaf writers. And again, he hits them twice with him. He kicks out. He tries to get up and do another one. And this sequence of submissions, he hits them with and just like completely picks them apart, brings them down to the mat. It was just like, yeah, he was sitting around waiting for it at that point, because it's like, no, you're playing with me. That that writer is not going to work. I told you, stop trying to be somebody else. I know it's coming. I prepared for that. Get out of here. I was like, there was a lot of story elements in this match. Just so just too long. Like, but the stuff like they were trying to get across about Shoda and him and this match were working. Yes, I really love the story piece. So again, he tries to be the multiple times with the deaf writer at one point, he hits him with a deaf writer from the top rope, but he couldn't roll over in time to hit him. The whole time, Zach, of course, is, you know, doing his transmissions, targeting his ankle. He's just planting the seeds, working that ankle more and more. You can see there are several points in the match where he tries to set up for a move, and he can't because that ankle is bothering him. And so he's getting ready to fire up one last time towards the end of the match, and he runs out of him, and then he stumbles because of the ankle. As soon as he stumbles, he gets hit with a drop kick, and he almost loses to Zach's driver. The way he went, one, I thought was brilliant, because again, the whole thing here is, is Shoda ready, right? The guy that really popularized him for some people was Mox. You can see a lot of Mox's teachings in some ways, and trying to use the the God style pile driver. The difference here is Shoda doesn't know who he is, yet he is beefing with Mox in some ways. He hasn't surpassed his master. He hasn't, he hasn't even started his journey yet. Zach Sabre Jr. is seven years in. He's the champion. He's had your number this entire match. He isn't with the gosh style pile driver, like his mentor would have, didn't have to do multiple of them like Shoda had to do. Just one, pick some up straight after that, hit some with the Zach driver, if you don't know, Zach Zach, Zach driver is a Michinoku driver, talk about Michinoku was his manager at one point, rolls him over, pins him, one, two, three, Zach is still IWGP world heavyweight champion. I love that bit of it that Zach eight years in, he surpassed his master. He doesn't have anything to figure out. He knows who he is. He knows his style, the wrestling, he knows what he's passionate about. His goal for this year are set. He's told you every step of the way. I am going to be the first foreigner to walk out of the dome with this belt on my shoulder. I'm going to walk into the dome the next day and be the first wrestler in the history of this company to win two consecutive matches at the dome. Shoda's still trying to figure it out. What a great story to tell of Shoda trying to put him away with the death riders, utilize the things that he learned from his mentor and at not working and then Zach using the things that he learned from his mentor because he's mastered them to win the match. That's such a great storytelling bit. When I picked up what they were doing, I loved that. I thought that that was a great way to finish the match. Like I said, there were some great bits here of storytelling. There was some great in-ring action, but this match was just way too long. It did not need to be 40 minutes. But yeah, I thought that this was a great way to end it. I'm glad that Zach is still champion. Very excited to see him. He just successfully defended in the dome. That's a resume piece right there. Yeah. What a few months for him. First British G1 Climax winner. It raised those two losses at Ria Goku, won the IWGP championship for the first time in his career and then successfully defended in the dome. Called a shot, did everything he said he would do. Loved it. Well deserved. What a guy. Incredible talent. And he's, like you said, about to go back to back tonight with Ricochet. Like seeing him say it and execute it and go from junior heavyweight to heavyweight and all the transitions. And there was other guy gens that were put over him and him just kind of staying the course. What a well earned victory and title reign that all of this is. Shout out to Zach Sabre Jr. Really dope. Yes. Ronan Mike is saying which taco was there. Of course, taco isn't another stable at this point. That's the beauty of this as well. So that came in as a member of Suzuki Goon and he's been in other stables. He's his own man. He's the leader of this stable. He's not following anybody anymore. He's the guy that the whole point of this at the end when he won and he's sitting sitting on apron with all his guys. That's his time. That's the whole point of this. Like the whole, the whole past four months has shown like his maturity of the wrestler, his maturity of the character. And like I said, you could just see that showed is not there yet. But I think the great thing about this match is this match showed that he will be there eventually. Yes, it's just not there yet. It's just not ready for the heavy expectations of being the face of this company or being the top champion. But he will be. I think that there were glimpses in this match where you can see that this guy is going to be he's going to be very good one day. It's just it's just not quite there yet. And like I said before, New Japan loves this type of shit. Like they they would be happy if he was ready 100% for the for the main event now. But for them to have a story of they're going to have this footage, this whole thing of him not being ready, being in the big moment main event, they're going to have these camera angles where he's sad behind Zack Sabre junior like for his story and where it's going to leave, it's probably going to work out better for showed honestly. That's exactly what I thought. Because again, this is a transitional moment for this company. This is a formative Wrestle Kingdom. I think overall it was a very good Wrestle Kingdom. The last two matches, of course, people are not going to be either either you're going to like them for what they are or you're going to be like, I was very disappointed with those. But man, when you consider where the company is and how they're building themselves back up, this is going to be one of those like tent pole moments for show the moving forward. This is good. This was the test to see if he can hang. He showed he can hang, but he's just not quite there yet. This is also like, think of who was in this main event, like run back the last like 10 Wrestle Kingdom main events. And it's like the same it's like Okada, Tana Hashi for most of those for this to be like two different guys in this main event for the IWGP heavyweight championship is crazy. It's important. It means a lot. And for show to be in that position, that's insane. Yeah, the stat, I believe, was this is the first Wrestle Kingdom main event since 2010 that did not have either Tana Hashi or Naito or Okada in it. So this was going to this this was going to have some great expectations on it, no matter what. And I thought that the match was good enough. I just think that New Japan has to rework what is the big Wrestle Kingdom match or was the big token of that. It doesn't need to be like this long match. If you have a match that justifies that, sure, but I didn't think that this was the right matchup to do the 40 minute match with. Right, but when you're trying to reestablish your company and what main events represent and the wrestling business in general, like there's not a lot of long 40 50 minute main events that consistently happen. So like fans are not conditioned to stick around for that long. wrestlers aren't conditioned to have match structures that last that long. So it's a it's a hefty task to try to accomplish. Yes. Yeah, but yeah, I thought this was a very good show. But you know, I may be a little biased because I am a big New Japan fan, but I really enjoyed it. That set up a lot of things coming against tonight. Of course, Wrestle Dynasty will also be emanating from the Tokyo Dome. Like I said, we will be doing a live stream with the niece. I'll say though, with that, I'm going to pull up that card for you guys so we can wind down that for a few and then going to hit you with that brick. Yep. I've been seeing I saw a couple of the updated matches that they had. Like I said, the Shabbatah being added in Tanahashi, the tag title match being improved upon this card is long. And there's some very amazing stuff on it. It's going to be a good night. Yeah, I think in some ways, uh, Wrestle Dynasty being the thing may have harmed some of the build to Wrestle Kingdom, if it makes sense, because you got the big Kenny Omega match example, for example, on this card, instead of on that card, I think that that would have enhanced Wrestle Kingdom having Kenny Omega. There are other things like you can make an argument that some of these other matches, it probably would have been more exciting if it was on the Wrestle Kingdom card, but it can't be tonight to wrestling, man. Like, no. This is this is the strategy now for New Japan and Wrestle Kingdom. And like for the second night to be a crossover show is amazing, you know? Yes. I'm very excited that this cross promotional partnership is leading to this kind of event in Japan. That was the logical next step for this partnership. So glad to this. It's come to fruition. And this is basically the future of pay per views. We're going to see more and more to night pay per views. Yep. But yeah, let's get into this card. On the pre-show, we've got the International Women's Cup finals four-way match. We'll see Willow Nightingale taking on Persephone, and Athena, and Momo Watanabe from Stardom. This is a bunch of my favorite women in a match, getting a great opportunity. They're starting the whole thing. Like, a lot of this is great. I hope that they get time, like, more than the women got on the Wrestle Kingdom show. I feel like this is Willow's thing to lose, right? Like she's been in so many different, so many of these promotions and connected to so many pieces of this feels like she has to come in here and win this fucking thing, right? Yeah, I kind of feel like Willow is the favorite to win this. But I wouldn't mind seeing Athena win it either. I think it's dope that there are so many black women on this show in the dome that feels historic. That's crazy. That's really awesome. Three incredible black women, too. They're not just like, "Oh, these are the best black women wrestlers in the world." Yeah, but yeah, I agree. I think that Willow's got to be a favorite. I wonder if Tekla's going to come into play with Athena after the stuff from the other night. That would be interesting. I wouldn't mind seeing Momo win it either, though, but I kind of feel like what this cup represents. I could see someone from AEW winning it. Yeah, Ronnie Mike, man, that O face the other night on tie, the way tie sold with it. Picture-perfect O face like just the angle they caught it at. That was fun. Athena's insane. Yeah, we've also got the Sons of Texas taking on House of Torture, Boy Dustin Rhodes, Sammy Guivar taking on a show and kind of Maru for the ROH World Tech Team Championships. Pretty sure that Sons of Texas are going to retain here. I would think so. It feels like this is just because this is one of the most interesting matches of the ROH Tech Team Champions. That's interesting, but Dustin kind of fizz ties and Sammy deserves to have a moment like this. This makes a lot of sense, but yeah, I feel like they're going to just retain. I don't know that they've announced this yet, but there's an eight-man Lucha Gauntlet match. There'll be four wrestlers from New Japan and four wrestlers from CMO. On the card I'm looking at, they have not announced the wrestlers for it, so maybe they're going to announce that later this day. Okay, yeah. Well, yeah, that should be fun. Can't go wrong with some Lucha matches. I mean, you know me, I'm ready for some spa food and eight guys that are a mystery and I'm sure they're going to bring the best of the best flippers in here. This is a way to get the crowd kicked off. Yeah, with the way that this is building it being set up as like this mystery thing, I wonder why this wasn't on the pre-show and the women's international cup wasn't the opening match. I feel like maybe they're going to have some some surprise maybe in there to enhance it or something. I don't know. Maybe, maybe the, yeah, you're probably right. Based on the developments from last night, got Hiroshi Tanahashi taking on Katya or Shabbatah and a grappling match. Very much looking forward to that with the history between these two guys. Very excited that Shabbatah made it on his card. Shabbatah in his Tokyo dome again. Come on, man. Can't go wrong with that. It's pretty fitting. Tanahashi's last run, Tokyo dome. Tokyo dome is going to enhance all these matches just for what that represents in the space. To see Shabbatah back there doing his thing is going to be special. Yes. Mercedes Manet will be taking on Mina Shirakawa and a winner take off match for the strong women's championship and the ref bro undisputed British women's championship. This can go either way, man. I've seen a lot of people say that this is just going to be a Mercedes picking up the win. Mercedes, of course, has said multiple times that she is going on expedition for some more gold and Mina has something she wants. But I think there's a really strong argument for Mina to win this match. Considering what Mina wants to do, what Mina has been saying, she wants to do for her last year. She wants to wrestle more in America and the exposure she's gotten with AW and these new Japan strong shows. She makes perfect sense as somebody to represent new Japan strong as a brand. She's talked about how much it was a dream for her to wrestle for new Japan and like getting this moment in Tokyo dome. This feels like this feels like the perfect time to make her champion and do more with her in 2025. Yeah, I was I'd have I seen a lot of people being like, Oh, Mercedes, just going to come in and but I'm like, I don't know. I feel like this is a good good spot for Mina. Considering how much fanfare she's gotten recently recently on AW TV, that fucking reaction she got when they faced off to announce the match. I'm like, no, I think Mina might could win this. I don't know if she will. I feel like Mercedes is definitely in this belt collector phase and like doing her thing beyond everything we're saying here, the match is going to be fucking fire. But I feel like Mina really does have a shot here. Like, if she wins, I wouldn't be surprised at all. Yeah, I yeah, I would not be surprised at all. It's me to win. Actually, Mina is my prediction to win. Same here, because I'm like Mercedes with the if it wasn't a winner take all because I'm like, I don't feel like Mercedes is going to have that rep pro championship. I'm sure the people at rep pro would love that be the greatest thing in the world for them. But I feel like this leaning more more towards me that carrying both those championships. Yeah, I agree. I think if the TBS title was on the line, I would be more like Mercedes is going to win. But the fact that it's just a strong women's championship and the ref row belt, I kind of think Mina's going to win. But I would be fine with either outcome, honestly. Same here. The match, of course, like I said, it's going to be fire though. Yeah, very excited for this match, very excited for the two of them and what this mean for them. The dome. Yeah, Mercedes has talked about how this is a dream for her. And I mean, even when we interviewed Mina and she talked about like, you know, the cerulean mat and how much that means in Japan and like what got her in the wrestling was watching new Japan. So that's dope for them. That's going to be a great match tonight. Can't wait. Yeah, David Finlay will be taking on Brody King, Brody King, man. They got to push this guy in 2025. I feel like we've been saying this over and over again. There's so much there for him as a singles competitor. He's getting better and better reactions. We can see that in the content of the classic. You can see just how over how some black is as a group as well. You got to do more with Brody here. And the fact that Finlay is not champion, that leads me to believe that there's a real chance that Brody could win. Historically, Japan has loved guys like Brody King. So I'm expecting him to come and I feel like he's going to fit in so well with how those crowd look at American wrestlers and he's big and he's mean. He does Japanese style. He has a Japanese style moveset. I feel like this is like a perfect combination for him to go in there against Finlay, who's been having a great run to and putting in work. Yeah, I feel like the same way as you do to Brody King after continental classic, what he's done, built fanfare, became one of the most overguys and his own group with some very popular people in it. I think it's time you got to push this guy to the moon. Yeah. Shadow Umano will be trying to rebound after his loss in the main event tonight against Claudio Castagnoli. Claudio was very funny as well in the press conference when they cut to him to answer to for his part of accident questions and he started speaking its wiz and everybody was like English please and he's like what? And then he's like I don't understand what's so funny and then he started talking to English because the translator did not know what to do. He was just looking at him like what? This was so good. But yeah, I think that Claudio is going to punish this man. He was of course sent here by Mox as emissary to punish Shoda for some stuff that he said about Mox. I'm very curious about the story elements of this because I think we're going to get some more teases of Shoda potentially turning heel in this match. Yeah, I feel like they're going to up especially with his connections to Mox and what they're going to, how they're going to play off what this is. I'm interested to see, like you said, you talked about in the main event how Zach was challenging Shoda, this strike card, are challenging to bring it out of him. I'm interested to see how Claudio moves forward with that. Can those gay to Kesta will be taking on comma hero ECE for his never open weight and AEW international championship. Very much looking forward to that. ECE is still one of those guys that pulls great performances out of people. And this is not a guy that you need to pull a performance out of. I assume that they're going to be suplexing each other very hard and striking each other very hard. Very much looking forward to this one. There's going to be some head buds for me. She the crowd is going to be super into this. I'm going to go immediately after this to watch that Shingo and to Kesta match because the energy that she said he's bringing just from the entrance. I'm like, I have to see to Kesta in that mode. And I feel like he's going to be like that again tonight, like Tokyo Dome, some that he's worked his entire career to get to like big moment. Yeah, very fun match. And I expect more from Kesta here. This is going to be another year to Kesta. I have no doubt about that. Probably even more honestly coming out of this. We've got the three way that we talked about earlier for the vacant IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. Great O'Con and Jeff Cobb will be taking on the Young Bucks and the team of Tetsu United and Hiromo Takashi. Interesting development from what it was. You know, Great O'Con, you're losing his partner now getting Jeff Cobb. The Young Bucks back in the Dome, we've watched them become the Young Bucks in the Dome have some of the best matches of all time in this moment. I'm excited to see how they present themselves. Is it going to be the same E.P. shit? Like what is this going to be and how are they going to move in this match? This is an exciting one. Yes. Yeah, I kind of feel like there's going to be, and that's why I'm wondering what the show to match. What is the story stuff coming out of this? Because I don't know if we're going to have a New Year Dash. A New Year Dash is usually where we get a lot of this stuff to build on coming out of Russell Kingdom. I feel like some of that stuff is going to happen here. And I think there's a very good chance that we could see some stuff in this match with between Nido and Hiromo. And I'm very curious to see what the Young Bucks bring because we haven't seen them. We have not seen them since they dropped the Bellston's private party. They haven't been on A.W. television. In my opinion, they had grown stale doing E.P. stuff. So I think they have to bring it here. I think they have something to prove going into the dome, which sounds crazy because it's the Young Bucks. But I just want to see them turn that table this year and do more. Okay, New Year Dash is still happening. New year Dash is on. Oh, is it? Okay. Yes. That makes sense. That changes a lot of things because I felt like this was going to be, they were going to start telling some of those stories they usually do. We've seen a lot of people get fired from the Bullet Club on this New Year's Dash Day type things. So what kind of story endless will come out of this? But the Young Bucks are such an interesting case because like we talked about the tail end of their title run, they started to cook like the title matches were good. They felt like the Young Bucks shit. Yeah. And reading that interview, reading some of the excerpts from the interview that they did this week where they talked about Nick was like, I didn't do a diet for eight months because I wanted to establish this thing and they were trying to change the perception of who the Young Bucks were and prove people wrong with say that they're washed. It's like, just give me the Young Bucks shit, dude. What do you mean you didn't do a diet for eight months? You're Nick Jackson, dude. That's why I keep saying man, it might be time to put the tassels back on dog. It's cool. Like, I get trying to do something different, but just give me the Young Bucks dog. It's cool. What do you mean? Like, why are you? I see what you're doing. Like, there's a lot of people you're fighting against fanfare, critics and all this. You want to prove people wrong, but just give us the shit. You guys are, it seems like you guys continuously tell us you're not going to be here for much longer. You want to hang out with your kids. You got money and all this. So give us the greatest hits on the way out, brothers. Yeah. You know what we want to see, man. Get to get to what got you to the dance. In the dome, especially. Yes. Jack Perry will be taking on the new IWGP global heavyweight champion, Yoda Suji, that has been officially changed to a title match now. I'm excited to see how Jack performs in the dome. I think he had a very solid run with New Japan last year, so I think that he could do well here as well. I don't think this Suji will lose now that he's champion. I think it was up in the air before coming again to this, but not as Suji's champion. I'll see Suji lose now. And the, we talked about our own ask Grapsey. We like Jack Perry a lot. I don't think the momentum's really on his side at this point for him to get a win here. You know what I mean? Like it would make a lot of sense for what he's doing and what his story is telling. But this is an interesting thing kind of like the young one. So I'm interested to see how's Jack going to move forward? Because I think it's time to abandon the scapegoat shit and move forward with something else, you know? Yeah, he showed some glimpses of that in the press conference where he talked about how last time he came here, he was in the most miserable time of his life and he was trying to figure it out. And now he doesn't feel like that at all. He's in a better part of his career. He had the best, you know, he had the best year of his career last year. It's not the same. So maybe, you know, he's evolving out of this character. I hope that that means that there'll be some development when he comes back to AEW proper. Right, same here. Very curious to see which one of these matches main event. The two biggest matches on this card, Kenny Omega, of course, will be taking on Gabe Kidd. Very excited for this. I think the build to this has been tremendous. I wish that they had taken more time on AEW programming to promote this, but saying, you know, you can't have it all in what you can get at this point. Like, I felt like this week on Dynamite, they were going to be like, Kenny Siri has this big match. Let's tell you why they were like, Oh, Kenny's going to be here next week, you guys. And I was like, okay, I guess that's a thing. Luckily, Gabe Kidd has not stopped talking about it since it's been announced. He's really been building it. Kenny Omega is making his return to fucking pro wrestling tonight, you guys. And you just think they would AEW would add a little bit more fanfare, but I understand what's going on here. Yeah, I'm interested to see if this one, because this Kenny in the dome feel like he had potentially what people call the greatest match of all time and fucking the dome. He's known for doing this. Him being in the main event is not crazy at all, you know? Yeah, I think there's a good chance he could be in the main event. But also, we don't know how Kenny's going to look. We haven't wrestled in months. We don't know if he's taken a step back in 2023 is the last time it worked. See, so we haven't seen this guy wrestle in over a year. We don't know like how he's going to look in this match. I'm sure that the picking Gabe Kidd makes a lot of sense, because you'll see the elements of a Kenny Omega match, but this is going to be a fight. This is going to be like a lot of brawling. And so it gives you a chance to disguise some of the ring rest. I would think with like the more flashy match, the more polished match will probably be the IWGP title match, which kind of makes me assume that might be the main event. But like I said, I'm curious to see which one goes on last. I just feel like if I have faith in any wrestler in the fucking world to come back and be who he always is, it's Kenny Omega. Like I felt like he's it's like riding a bike. And if you are expert level at this shit, it's going to be hard to not continue to be expert level. Like he could be a step off. But I'm thinking about like half of the most of that last year of his life of his wrestling career, he was fucked up like he had all these injuries. He was all jet like if you can do that like that, imagine what he does coming back in a different healthy mindset and a different thing. I'm pretty sure he's going to knock it out of the part, but you never know. But I'm just like, if I'm betting on somebody, I'm betting on fucking Kenny Omega. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty certain he's probably going to get what allowed us pops of the night. It's Kenny Omega. It's Japan, what he means to Japanese wrestling. No, he's going to get a massive pop. I'm just curious to see, you know, how they how this match is going to go, where it's going to land on the cart. Joseph Suarez is saying that he believes Japan, Japan said that Sax Haber is going to be an event. And that makes sense with everything that Zach has been saying leading into the match that he wants the main event two nights in a row. But also, Kenny has announced that he is he has been working on an entrance for the show, a new thing, new presentation. Very excited to see what that looks like in the dome, like the presentation that new Japan brings to wrestling second to nine. Major dude, that's going to be huge tonight. Another yeah, I mean, I'm always for world championship being the main event, so it makes sense for Zach to be it. But again, it's Kenny Omega, so I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, but I mean, you know, with the theme of this weekend for new Japan and them needing to, you know, re-establish themselves and then re-establish their world title scene, I think it would be kind of a mistake to go into this and lean on one of your older guys at the main event. Again, you got to give your champion your champion. Yeah, you got to give your champion a chance to sinkers one here. So I think the move is to go with Zach and Ricochet. And like, it makes sense for what Ricochet is and what he represents to this company and how the reaction he's going to get anyways, you know, especially off of what he's did recently. Absolutely. But yeah, excited for this. I think it's going to be a similar theme. And when you look at how the press conference went between Kenny and Gabe, he basically, you know, put him on notice like, bro, you want to be among the top guys and guys here that came here that this company's going to trust moving forward. Your bullet club guy and like what bullet club has done for so many foreigners coming in and elevated them up to that next level. If you think you're in that level with me and Jay White and Will I spray? Here's your chance. You guys show me because I don't believe you. Yeah, I like kind of the energy of Gabe kid too, being like upset that this might like you talked about this match isn't wasn't on Wrestle Kingdom. And he feels like y'all left me off of this card like, and I'm in this match with this guy that you guys say is one of the greatest. Why weren't we here? I feel like he's going to come in with something to prove. That's going to add another element to this match. And game has some his reasons for being frustrated or valid. He's been getting our great reactions at shows. He has looked like one of the most popular guys in bullet club at the moment. And you got this guy come. Yeah, you got this guy coming in when he hasn't been here and telling me, Hey, you might have to step up your game like, Who are you? You don't, we don't work in a war. This is, this is my business. Why are you in my business, bro? Like, how dare you disrespect me? You got no work in a year and you're telling me to step up, dog? You step up. Yeah. So he's got some valid reason to be frustrated. I can see why he would feel disrespected. Yeah, but yeah, very excited for Kenny Omega's first match and he's been here. And I'm never not going to be excited about Kenny wrestling in Japan, like just too many memories attached to it. Right. It's going to be amazing. It's Kenny back. But they do interesting new gear, I'm sure it's going to be great. Yes. But main event, sex favorite junior will be taking on Ricochet with I WGP World Heavyweight Championship. Man, how cool is it Ricochet already post WWE career main event and get the dome challenging for the top championship with the character development he's had on AEW and proving himself in a continental classic. That's so cool for him. And, you know, these two guys have, you know, lengthy history together. They've wrestled multiple places. They've crossed past so many times. They haven't wrestled one on one, I believe, since 2017. And so to get to this point in their career where these guys are not junior heavyweights anymore, they have progressed way past that and to headline the dome at this point in their career. What a cool moment. It's an insane moment. I was excited about it when Ricochet confronted him and they announced this match. But in the last three weeks, I'm over the moon about how great this is going to be. Ricochet making that character change, having this new kind of energy. But then like the stuff he was doing in the kind of the classic with the matches and just having that extra something, it's going to be perfect for what Zack Sabre Jr. has given up. What he gave up in this main event and Wrestle Kingdom, the energy he's bringing, wanting to successfully defend on two nights. Like he's going to be on a different level. He's probably hearing the shit y'all are talking about his 43 minute match too. So he has something else to prove. I feel like all the elements are there for this to be one of those ones. Yeah, that's what I've been thinking as well, because I have to assume that he knew what that main event would have to overcome with expectation. He has probably seen some of the reactions to it. I think that this match tonight is going to blow that one out of the water. I think he's going to come out with something to prove. I think this is going to be one of the better matches of the weekend. Yeah, I feel like he knew like when they going over the show the thing, he's like, well, I'm going to do the Ricochet thing tomorrow, which will be a thousand miles per hour. So it'll all work out. And this is the guy that I've wrestled multiple times. We have more chemistry together. This is going to be a completely different match. And Ricochet in the same way. I think he's still trying to show people what he can showcase as a referee outside of WWE. This is a massive stage for him to be on. I think he's going to bring his A game to it as well. This is awesome. This is a great way for them to main event. It's going to show that Zack Sabre, Jr. is the guy. Ricochet gets to prove why they still talk about him like this in Japan. Just an amazing made event. Like you said, from two skinny junior heavyweights to the World Heavyweight Champion and Ricochet looks like a fucking action figure. It's amazing. Yeah, it kind of feels similar to what I kept saying and how I wanted to see Swerve and I spray face each other after all that time and what it would mean for them at this point in their career. It kind of has that same kind of vibe. Speaking of, do you think we'll see Swerve Strickland tonight? I mean, I was very curious as to why he didn't have a match or why the Hurt Syndicate didn't have a match. I was kind of hoping that they would have a match on this card. So I hope they are represented in some way on this. And I hope that Swerve does show up and cost this guy his match. It'll be great. Great heat. Yes. Based on the stuff from Wednesday, I immediately thought about that. There's a chance we could see Swerve love to see Swerve in the dome. I don't know how we get there next year if we're having the same event at the dome. Swerve needs to be on the card. Thanks. I was thinking about the member of the match from Forbidden Door with him and Keith Lee. Who did they wrestle? Despy and somebody, but that shit was fire. Swerve with Japanese wrestlers and that energy I think just makes so much sense. Yeah, I remember the pre-show match you're talking about. I can't remember who else was in that match, but yeah, that was a very fun match. I'm like thinking of Swerve like that. I want to see more of that. So yeah, I kind of do expect to see him tonight. Yeah. That is the Wrestle Dynasty card. Speaking of Ricochet, we're going to get into his big performance at World's Inn. Some of the fire matches on that card. But before I do that, I'm going to hit you guys with a word from our sponsor. Mm-hmm. Uh, well, I can find my mouse because I'm now dealing with a different setup. So here it is. What? What? What? But yeah, I hate you guys with a word from our sponsor. Bedonline.ag is the official betting partner of Fightful. 100% of the time when you get the odds from Fightful, they are coming from Bedonline.ag. And it's not just wrestling. It's not just MMA unboxing. It's football, it's basketball, baseball, hockey. They have the earliest lines. You can bet big with the high limits and rebut functionality. They have the fastest payout for the winnings, paid in minutes and the industry's best bonuses on every qualifying deposit. They've been trusted for 25 plus years. It's not some fly-by-night company. Bedonline.ag has been there. They've done that. In addition, they're trusted by millions. They've got VIP rewards programs and a ton of popular games. Bedonline.ag. That's where I go to make my bets. That's where I suggest you go to my friends. Please just bet what you can and bet responsibly. Man, always, please bet responsibly, guys. Don't overshoot these things, man. But for all of your sports betting needs, including pro wrestling, Bedonline.ag is the place to go. Go get your bets in, homies. There's a lot of great stuff to bet on coming up here soon, so go to Bedonline. Support because they support us. But yes, please be careful, guys. Don't be one of those guys. Don't be one of those guys, man. All I see is parlay, Phil. Parlay, parlay, parlay. Do not parlay your life away, okay? Sometimes, as somebody that's done quite a bit of betting, sometimes it's just better to just go with straightforward bets. Pick something that is just straightforward. Sometimes people get so dazzled by these parlays, putting a bunch of them on there. Look at how much I can win. That payout looks great because the odds of you getting it are not in your favor, man. That's the thing with parlay. The odds are not in your favor, man. That's what I can win a million dollars, but a fucking lightning has to strike on the field. The guy has to do a break dance. It's too many of the odds are crazy. Yeah, you're talking about, look, if I just bet five bucks, but all of these things need to happen. Yeah, that's fun to do, though, sometimes, but if you really want to win a bet, sometimes the parlays ain't the way to go, especially the parlays I'll be seeing some of y'all put together and parlays look great. I'm like, this isn't going to happen. You got like six, seven legs on there. I'm like, dude, you need all of these things to happen. Hold on. Yeah, let's get into some of these super chats. Got one from T Daniel Barber. He says, how does the reaction to this main event change new Japan's excursion system? It's looking like not a lot of immediate upside on this set of graduates. I kind of disagree because I think going into this, you see the guy out of your three musketeers that's ready. Suji's ready. I mean, that's been apparent for a while, but you got a guy that's ready in him. Oya was showing you he's ready. Oleg didn't have a match on this show. He was one of the lumberjack, but he's another guy that I think that they can do some stuff with in 2025. They got a crop of guys that they can use. I wouldn't jump off the clip with this main event and say, oh, man, they're in peril. I just think that they've just got a big mountain to overcome because they lost all of their top stars. I mean, they lost their franchise guy. Anybody just going to take you a minute to reestablish yourself. And the system was so different when Okada and Tanahashi and Nakamura and these guys are coming up. The top guys were still there to help them on the way. Like these guys are, like you said, or like we're talking about, Shoda wrestles Zack Sabre Jr. in his big Wrestle Kingdom match. Exactly. You know what I mean? Like it's just a such a different landscape of New Japan and how the guys are going to be presented moving forward. Because you're with that main event, you're trying to establish, you're trying to establish that Zack can lead this company as a champion. But you're also trying to establish that Shoda has a future. You're trying to do this dual thing and you're trying to put some damn time. Exactly. You're putting Zack in this spot to see if he can carry the responsibility. And that's why I'm like, I wouldn't, you know, gaze the future of this company too much on, you know, the reaction to this main event. Like I said, this was always going to be, you know, a tough hill to get over for them. And as someone who wants the future to start being established, I think this is great. We have to do matches like that. We have to, you know, not use the same players that we continuously used for the last 15 years because we got to move forward for the next 15 years. And I was one of those guys that I was sitting around thinking, why are you giving Shoda this match too soon? It felt rushed, but you have to see what you have in him. And I think that there were bright spots in that match that I think they could come away from this feeling pretty good about it. The only guy so far in the three Musketeers that I'm just like, I don't know is Rendereed. I don't know what you're doing moving forward with him. And it's crazy because I like Rendereed a lot. I just, I don't know what you're doing with him going forward. But with the three Musketeers, like I said, you've got something in him, you've got something in oil. You've got a few guys that I think they're going to be fine. And right, I think, I think to Kesta is going to be sticking around. I think we're still going to see more of the Kesta in Japan moving forward. And again, Phil, it's still super early. These guys are still early as hell into their careers. We're going to be watching these guys for the next 10 years. So we still, you know, we're still going to be, we're watching their development before our eyes, I think, is the thing that we kind of tend to forget at this point of like, I mean, wrestling in general, like we see people's first matches on the internet. We see people's entire careers showcased. And so at points, it can feel like, well, damn, this guy or these people aren't progressing. But it's like, honestly, they are just maybe a little slower pace than we're used to. I mean, that's the whole, just the whole journey with Zach Sabre getting to this point, man. Like, his, his journey, if anything shows that you got to show patients with these people, we might think that they're ready for this responsibility at this point. He might have been ready to be champion a few years ago, but do you, I don't know if I believe he was ready for the responsibility they're putting him in right now? Right. And he's been with the company eight years. This is a 20 year veteran. So sometimes you just got to be patient with these things. It's just not going to be as quick as people think. Patients let it play out, as they say. Hey, what's over there? He says, the story beats of Zach Sabre doing a show that makes me even more interested in showed efforts to Claudio agree. Yeah, I feel like Claudio is going to bring something different out of showed and force him into the same kind of things Zach Sabre was. So this should be really fun. Okay. Claudio's such a great base for everybody and in this position that it's going to be perfect. Hey, he's not going to play with him. He's not going to give you chances to fire up. No, he's going to come out there and try to beat the shit out of you. It's back. From a homie eloquent, he says, there's a chance where shows up to screw Ricochet question mark. Yeah, we talked about that. I'm kind of leading towards no, but I would love to see him show up. Yeah, I feel like that would be great for us and for the story that they're telling. But I think it'll probably just be like a clean win for Zach Sabre Junior and they'll take it home, you know, more than likely. I read. Hey, W well done. Let's get into this because it did have a lot of wrestling to get into. And I thought that this was for the most part a phenomenal show. The wrestling itself on this show was very, very good. What did you think? I know you did a whole watch along. People were saying you're ranting about it. And you did a post show. So you've talked about this show quite a bit. Talked about it extensively. I've added extra layers to it and all moments and all social media. So yeah, I thought just like you're saying here up to the main event, I thought we're not this is fire. I'm like, this is the AEW. We know and love. This is fucking osprey, Okada, Ricochet, Mercedes, stat like this is like the future of this business like what this should be. And I thought that everybody that needed to do it did it. I mean, starting out with osprey and Kyle, I'm like what Kyle's been through, how he's been going. Osprey, they're playing the story element. Osprey's bloody, but they're still going 100 miles per hour, kind of incorporating both the incorporating the things from both their previous matches. I was like, oh, this is insane. Like this is this is what AEW is about. Yes. Quickly through the pre shell, we got Tony Storm versus Layla Gray towards Tony Stone pick Tony Storm picked up the win. All of her backstage segments and stuff from this were very funny. This is leading to Tony versus Deanna tonight on collision. Jeff, Jeff Jarrett took on QT Marcel. Of course, double J picked up the win. We got eight man tag team matches as well. And the winners of this, you know, they keep trying to tell you, we're not trying to play by your rules. They're doing the DX. You make the rules, we'll break them. Leo Russian actually, they already picked up the win here. They're going to be taking on a private party for the tag title. Very much looking forward to that. That should be a fun match. That's also an inclusion show tonight. A lot of wrestling. Sick world, you guys, give us a break. We need to take naps. Yes. But yeah, opening the show with both of the continental classic matches. Last last time we were here, we talked about the continental classic and how I compared it to last year. I'm fully on board of this year's content of the classic was better. The matches from this show pushed it over the bar for me. I was already there in terms of like the story elements. For the content of the classic this year. But man, the three matches we got at world 10 were so good. Yeah, unbelievable to think that you could have a better tournament than last year with them. But like, I spray being in this and I spray having some of the best matches of the year in this single tournament called Fletcher having to prove that he's trying to prove that he's better than this current guy is insane. I spray having two five star matches in the same show. Like who? What kind of a wrestler is this guy? Who is he? Where'd he come from? Yeah. Yeah, as you said, we opened with Osprey versus Kyle in semi finals. These guys had three matches last year, this match. I'm tempted to say this was the best one. I really liked this second match, but this match was extremely good. Great way to open the show. This was a fight Kyle busted this guy open. They did all of the crazy spots like they've been doing throughout this trilogy of matches. And well, I spray like it. I keep telling you, man, the reactions this guy gets in the crowd the way that the crowd ooze and eyes and gas through his matches. There's nothing like it on the rest of the card, man. I every time he just sets up for the styles clash and people just going saying it's like, okay, he's different, you guys, he's different than everybody else here. Yes. Kyle, of course, had a phenomenal run in the continental classic. I didn't think that like some people were saying, if he lost here, that this would be a failure because they did so much last year to build this guy up. I feel like he looks like a threat coming into this year. Very excited to see what they do with him moving forward. But yeah, I mean, we knew Osprey was going to win this, right? Yeah, we knew everybody was like, Oh, this is leading to Osprey and Okada in the finals. And was like, yeah, when they set this tournament up, I felt like that's what it was going to be. But there are a lot of people coming in here being like, it's Kyle or Buzz. And like, I understand, but that's not what this tournament was about. Yeah, exactly. Osprey picking up the win busted open backstage cutting the promo with blood trickling me down all over the face. Let's go. I was out of my seat. I was excited, man. Shout out to Lily, who like really took on everything coming out of this, you know what I mean? Like, he's like, I'm not the world champion, but I'm an act like you. Yes. Right after that, we got it. The second semi-finals match, Ricochet taking on Kazuchka, Okada. I feel like this is Ricochet's best AEW match so far. Yeah. I know if you feel the same way. What is Kazuchka, Okada? No big shock here. I thought the way they worked this match was a lot of fun. I continue to say the heel work that Ricochet is doing is very, very good. Okada, he hits that gear for the big matches. He is the definition of a big match wrestler. When you put him on these kind of stays, flights are bright. He's going to perform. This was probably the hardest I've seen Ricochet work in the AEW. Like he was, this guy was working so fucking hard hitting all these crazy bumps, all these crazy sales. His dives are 100 miles per hour. Like he was like, I'm in there with Okada, so I'm about to be there with Okada. And Okada's such a funny case because honestly, the continental classic system shouldn't work for him because we talked about with the Wrestle Kingdom early. This guy doesn't get started in his matches till 25 minutes in. And these are 20 minute matches. Like he has to be in a fight. And then he's like, oh yeah, it's time. And that's what this whole show felt like. It felt like he needed the Ricochet match, was like a warm up. And then when he got to Osprey, he's like, this is the Okada that we know and love. Yeah, he's a tournament wrestler. That's why early on when he lost the match to Kyle, I was saying, oh, that doesn't matter. We've seen him do this before. The further he gets in a tournament, he's going to turn into that guy. And that's exactly what happened. He beat Ricochet here. Ricochet looked incredible. He still does these insane spots that I don't care how many times I see him do that standing shooting star. The way it looks, I'm like, just amazing. The effortless, that's the problem. It's like, he's like, he's not even trying. He's like, oh yeah, then I'm going to do this. And then I'm like connected to another thing. And it's like, what? Yeah, I do think his biggest challenge coming into AEW for him was, how does he stand out? Because you're on this company with a bunch of other flippy guys. You're now a part of the indie scene/post outside WWE scene, where there are a lot of people that are going to do crazy spots. It's more like the spots for JIS, right? And so, how do you stand out doing that? Because of course, when you're at NXT, you can do things like running and flipping out a ring and landing on your feet. And nobody else on that brand can do anything like that. And that's not to say that anybody can do what Ricochet does, but it's tougher to stand out in the lane that he's in doing those kind of things. And so I think with the character stuff, he's on the right path. I think this is easily the most interesting he's been on mainstream television in a very, very long time, possibly ever. Yeah, you're right, because it's like, how do you, like you're saying, he was a big fish in a small pond in NXT. He could do all these crazy flips shooting star press, but now like commander and hologram could also do that shit. So like, how do you separate yourself from those guys? And this is the way to do it with how he's been, how he was on the tell end of the continental classic playing the Hill role, but then adding this extra character elements. That's how you separate yourself. We all know that Ricochet could flip seeing this guy do a double fucking backflip before like he's insane. But for him to add this, this is what's really going to take him over the edge. And another important thing that is why I think he has so much confidence. The company believes in him. The company is like, we're invested in you. Here's time. Here's here's space. Let you do your thing. And I think that's upping his confidence too. Yeah, making it all the way to the semifinals was big for him, making it to the semifinals and facing someone with Ocada's pedigree, massive matchup for him. I thought he performed well, pod finisher. Yes, that's why of Ocada running back and forth and then slapping them on the back of the head. One of the greatest moments of the night. But after the match, one of the greatest moments of the night for sure. Swerve comes out. Petty as hell. He told him, if you lose, I will be there. And he did show up, as he promised, proceeded to completely humiliate Ricochet, handed out toilet paper to the crowd and encouraged them to wish him a happy new year. That shot of him standing in a ring with like those dead eyes and all of the rolls of tissue flying in. Perfect, perfect shot. The lasting shot of Swerve laughing at him. And he's like not moving or flinching at all. He's just standing there covered in his toilet paper. Incredible. Loved it. Yeah, a great way to get to what they did on Wednesday for Ricochet to like put on that performance against Ocada where like I said, he's going a thousand miles per hour. He's hitting all this stuff. And then you see that guy get turned into a completely still character because he's embarrassed in this ring with toilet paper all over him. Amazing character work. And the way that Ricochet played it was so great is like, there's no reaction. He's just taking it all in being like, I can't believe this. Well, the fuck would do this to me. I'm going to get revenge. Yes. And the thing that I love about what Ricochet is doing right now is he keeps coming around like, no, I'm that guy, like super confident. And he keeps getting humbled. And every time you can see him getting matter and matter like, how dare you like I'm that guy. The stuff on Wednesday was very, very good. The heel turn is in full effect. Use the scissors on Swerve. Great stuff. Very much looking forward to where this feud goes moving forward. Yeah, the way that he those eyes that you talked about, he had there, he had them again on Wednesday of like, you've never seen Ricochet in this situation where he's showing these kind of different emotions. He's always been happy to be here. I'm going to come in and flip and do my thing. But him to have like a pointed feud that somebody's fucking with his well being and trying to act like he's not that guy. And him turning it into some psychopath weirdo type shit. Amazing. Yeah, I still wish this word would have had a match on this card, but they made the best use side of him here. I thought that this was a great way to build this feud moving forward. He still feels like a big deal. He got a massive response when he came out. Huge. Like we expect, he still feels like a big star. And working with him is going to help Ricochet a lot moving forward. So, yeah, and I and I don't think we're done with the hurt syndicate stuff. I'm assuming we're going to go back to that in some way. I mean, he's still rocking the suits and still looking clean. So I'm like, I think I don't think it's over with for what's going on here. Yes. Got Mariah Mae versus Thunder Rosa right after it. Thunder Rosa, as we said last week, is very good at these kind of matches. Was very excited to see her back on a pay-per-view card. Mariah Mae murdered this woman. I tended to this match. I just, she was dead. I think I was stared at by screen like that looks, that looks disgusting. It was just like, oh damn, yeah. Oh, Thunder Rosa's dead. She piled over a snap pile driver through off the apron through a table. I was like, oh, yeah, that's it for Thunder Rosa. But I love these, the reason I love these kind of plunder matches with women and a debuts because everything seems so structured for a lot of their matches. And these seem like unpredictable. Like, you never know what's going to happen. There's weapons. Thunder Rosa's dead with this cane. Thunder's running off the tables. Mariah Mae's working like she doesn't want to lose this match at all. I think in a show like this, this match fit, fit perfect. This is where I decided that the crowd wasn't that great though, because like these women are working, these women are working hard, feel super hard. And the crowd were sitting on their hands for most of it. Yeah, they did work very hard. I very much enjoyed this match. What I enjoyed is we always have this outcry to have more than one women's match on the card. And I thought both of the women's matches and including the one on a pre-show, this was vastly different matches. There was a variety of different styles of wrestling for the women here. And I thought that they showcased all four of these women on the main card. Well, Thunder Rosa came off looking good here. Mariah Mae still looks like an unhinged champion that would be anything to hold on to her about. And when you have that going on and Tony Storm is still somewhere like wandering around like, "Hey man, I'm happy to be here." And Mariah's like, "No, I'm the one. I killed women's wrestling." And she's just like, "Hey, women's wrestling is great. I'm happy to be here." "Hi, I'm Tony Storm. Nice to meet you." Just did just we were so ready. It's every time she does the rock on, but it's so funny. She's so good. But yeah, I think Mariah kind of being like, "I'm serious about this. I killed this business and I'll kill you." It's a great story element to play off of what Tony's doing. Yes, they are inevitably going to cross paths again. But in the meantime, Mariah Mae picking up these kind of wins where she does very dangerous things to other women. It's exciting to see. She's had a lot of variety in her title defenses, which is what I like about the Mariah reign. Yes, T-Rabb, I don't think I saw your super chat, but if you put it back in the chat, I'll read it. There's probably still in there. I might have missed it. MJF versus Adam Cole, "For the dynamite diamond ring." What happened to her, Philip Lindsey? This was going to be a tough one no matter what, because some people just don't care about the storyline anymore. Some people are not on board for where they're going with both of these guys, and they just want them to go their separate ways. But I wanted to like this match. I really did. I think the match itself was fine. There are lots of it that I enjoyed. I thought this finish was stupid. I thought this finish was stupid. I didn't understand the outcome. I think this does nothing for Adam Cole moving forward. I don't think that's the word buried or anything, but Adam Cole got fucked in this. This whole time, I was thinking, "Damn, this sucks for Adam Cole leading into the match." This sucks for Adam Cole. He's put in an awkward position. There was an orange thing. All these things that were going against Adam Cole. I'm like, "Well, the redeeming factor of this bill is that he's going to beat MJF at the show. That's going to make all this worth it." Nope, not at all. It didn't do that. Why? I won't say that Adam is buried here, but I just did nothing for him. I just did nothing for the stipulation match. Why are we still even doing this dynamite diamond ring? If MJF is just going to win it every year, what is the point of it? I thought this was the worst part about it is he beats them. MJF beats this guy. They do blood in the match too, which I was like, "Oh, they already did blood in this match. The few didn't feel like it was at that bloody moment." Adam Cole kept trying to sell it. When I see you, I'm going to knock you out. He fucking loses the match, and then the kingdom all come and celebrate at the end after he just lost. I'm like, "Throw this all away." Nothing's going to happen here. Yeah, the finish felt very abrupt and anticlimactic. Him going with the low blow and then winning with the Heat Seeker. I was just like, "Wait, that's the end of the match." That's it. And then, of course, he brought out the chair. He's going to hurt Adam, and then the undisputed kingdom comes out. Kyle finally joins them. They run MJF, and then they high-five and stand on the top of the ring and celebrate. And I'm just looking around the whole time thinking, but he lost. He lost. This is stupid. This is stupid. This doesn't make him look good. You lost, dude. You just told a story for fucking a year, year plus, about what you're going to do to MJF. He beats you, and then you high-five your friends. Yeah, and again, you stand at the top of the ramp celebrating. This didn't make Adam look good. This didn't make undisputed kingdom look good as a group. I didn't like this. I didn't like this at all. And I wanted to be optimistic about this coming into it. I thought, "Oh, well, the match will be fine. We'll just wrap up the storyline and move on." Yeah, I didn't like it. It seemed like we wrapped up the storyline too, which we all wanted, but that wasn't... You didn't stick the landing for the story you've been telling and forcing down our throat for so long. Probably not the angle that I let it went with. And like you said, what's the point of this fucking ring? It's just a bit that they talk about once a year that doesn't really fucking mean anything. What is this? It's just a prop for Max to use to cheat and win his matches now. So what does it mean broadly to the rest of this company then? It just feels like it's just something for Max every year. And like cool, I guess, but like, no, I don't know. I didn't like this. I didn't like this at all. Yeah, but I'm happy if they are separating, if they're going their separate ways, that's great, because this is over. Yeah, hopefully they're done with this moving forward. I don't need to see any more of this. But picked up because we got Knowskate to Kesha versus Powerhouse Hobs right after this. This match was so, so good. I didn't know what to expect from this, but this ended up being one of the more underrated matches from this show. This was a lot of fun. The crowd was into it. Powerhouse is one of those guys right now is a baby face where the crowd really likes him. I think the company has something in him, and they got to see moving forward. They got to keep dipping their toes in the water with him and see how much mileage they have with this. You know, I stuck said a little bit earlier about the crowd. After Osprey, they kind of dropped off for a little bit after the opener. Like the crowd was like, okay, we're not we're not loving everything that's happening. This match brought him right back. Something that Powerhouse Hobs, some connection, like the first time I ever saw him in fucking 2019 at this point, or eight one of the 2018 or 19 that connection that he had with in that little gym in some suburb of San Francisco with that crowd, he still has that in these big arenas in these big places. Those crowds still connect to him just like they did fucking six years ago. And it was apparent right here like the crowd was sitting on their hands and then to Kesha and Hobs get out there, they start doing their thing. Like you said, to Kesha is the most fucking confident wrestler in the whole world at this point. But like nobody could beat him. Nobody's in his league. And Hobs is just like when he locks into a big match and it's just him and another guy fucking throwing shit. They're yelling meat. They're just fucking slamming each other. There's not a lot of people that do it like to become me. This made me so happy. There's one point where he countered into a spine buster and the crowd just went ham and I was like, yes, this is it. Yeah, that's fine buster man. Just the timing of it, the way the crowd reacted. Man, so cool to see him on his stage having that match with to Kesha. This was awesome. I loved it. It's beautiful. It's great. I mean, it played into the kind of thing you talked about with Wrestle Kingdom earlier and like Wrestle Dynasty and Wrestle Kingdom were looming. So we knew to Kesha wasn't going to lose, but it still was such a super fun match. Yeah, I come with a predictable, but I think we still got a really fun match out of it. Probably match it a night for me. It was the TBS Championship. Sadie's Monet and Statlander did it again. I was wondering how they were going to top that first match and man, they did it. This match was so, so good, bro. When they got to the fucking Mercedes hitting a tomb driver, the sit-out tombstone on the apron, I was like, we are out of here. We're gone. We talked about it on the show before Um, that's the last week. And I was like, these two women are such great rematch women. Like, when they learn their opponent and learn the spots that they're supposed to be in, that's when it's going to really get kicked off. And that's exactly what this match was like, them both kind of playing off what happened in the last match, but adding new things like that fucking sit-out tombstone on the apron, stats acting like she's the baddest woman in the world. But Mercedes is working like again, like she got something to prove. She works every match, like she got something to prove. And it just adds this little extra element. This match was fucking fired. Yeah, love this match. Statlander ragged all her around to start this match a lot. And that was really kind of the theme of the last match that she survived Statlander. It wasn't like, you know, she beat her decisively. And this match, she came in, you know, House of Fire trying to beat her down right away. Mercedes kept out working her suspects that that apron spot. I was like, I don't think she's going to get back up, which led to one of the greatest moments of the night. That camera angle of her laid against the ropes, thinking she's one, she's got her arms up, and then out of nowhere, Statlander jumps back in the ring at the last minute. Right next to her. Yeah. And the way she turned around her reactions to it, when people talk about how Mercedes is better at the heel, I think some people are like, whoa, but you know, it's the same kind of promos. The way she works matches at the heel, the facial expressions, the way that, you know, she works extra hard to make her opponent look better. The way she sells for her opponent at the heel, that's what people are talking about. That's the stuff from those Bailey matches that minted Bailey. That's what made those like some of the best matches of all time. And it's the same thing here. They have such great chemistry, and she did so much here to make Statlander look great. And I mean, Statlander is incredible. I keep saying her inevitable world title Ryan is going to hit, man. It's inevitable. She's going to get it someday because she's just too good. Yeah, the way that Mercedes bumps as a heel for people, the way that she like you said, makes them looks like, look like a million bucks. That's one of her greatest strengths, like she's great in a bunch of different areas. But when she wants to enhance her opponent and enhance herself, there's not a lot of people better. This match was so incredible, man. Just like the desperation, it felt like from Statlander. But the way that Mercedes was working like, there's no nothing you could do in the world to take this championship from me, like them elements together. And they had the longest match of the night, like all everything put together, just incredible work from both ladies. Yeah, as good as this match was, I was sitting there thinking they got another one. I think they got another one. Oh, yes. I got a other one. That's crazy. Like they didn't, they got to like the fourth gear. There's one more gear to go and they were going forward in that last match. But I feel like the third one is like when we're like, wow, I can't believe you ladies exist. Yeah, love this match. Man, I mean, we talked about it last time with Statlander, how I was saying this is this is the best Mercedes match with AW. This might have topped out when I think and I might have it did it topped out. It did. Yeah, this is probably the best Mercedes match of the year, honestly, like when I talk about Mercedes, my favorite women's roster of all time, this is the Mercedes like, they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, watch this. This is how this is how she does it. She's incredible. Yeah, she's really been on a run since all out. Like the TV matches, the pay-per-view matches, the match with Momo. That great video package that they did this week with her on Dynamite of her being like, here's my accomplishments and all her accomplishments being big fucking hits. It's amazing. Yeah, sorry, I said Momo to match with Suzuki at the end of the year. What a match, probably my favorite match of the night. I think so too, mine's too. But then this could have easily been match of the night for most people. And I would assume that was match of the night for most people watching this pay-per-view. Ocada versus Ospre. We've seen this match up multiple times. If you're a New Japan fan, we've seen this multiple times in a tournament. G1. This match was, I said when we did the podcast last week, this should have been the main event. At the end of it, I was like, this, you can't follow that. You can't follow that match, man. You cannot follow that match. In the moment afterwards, you can't follow any of that. What do you expect to, what do you expect us to react to after we just see this match, presumably, arguably, a lot of people say the best number one wrestler in the world will Ospre against the number one tournament wrestler in the world after this amazing tournament. We've seen some of the best matches of the year in this tournament. All the elements are there. They're in this main event. And then they do this. It's like, Ospre is fighting from desperation. He still has blood from his last match. He hasn't historically beaten Ocada very many times. His back's up against the wall. Ocada's the most confident fucking wrestler there is. There's nothing you could do to defeat him in this element, this championship, this tournament. And then for them to play off all the stuff that they've ever did, but still have that new element of Ospre's in this American company now, he's a top guy. He's way different than the last time you guys faced him. So he's going to be bringing something different. But then Ocada being like, I don't even fuck about none of that. I'm just going to drop kick you in the mouth at random spots. I'm a close on your fucking head off. I don't care about any of this. You're still my little bro. Yeah. Man, a lot of the greatest hits, some new, some new wrinkles to it. But I love the story coming into this that Ospre put everything into his semi-finals match, because he made it personal with Kyle Fletcher. But no, this was all still business with Ocada. When it comes to tournaments, it's time for me to turn it on. Hey, that's cool and all, but I'm about to beat this guy and I'm about to go to finals and I'm going to beat you too. He never looked like he was under the rest in this match. Ospre's fighting from behind, he's all bloody, and Ocada's just like, cool. I don't care. I'm about to win. He never looked like he was under the rest. Ospre is banged up. He's bandaged up and bleeding in the whole time. Ocada's like, "Duck, you know what this is? We've done this before. I have your number. You know what this is going to be. I'm going to win." Right. And I'm going to beat your ass while doing it. Like, it's not going to be an easy, like, "I'm going to do all the things I've done to you plus." Yeah. Yeah. Phenomenal match. How did they put another match after this, Phil? I just don't really. What? Phenomenal match on a card full of a lot of really good wrestling, and this was man. This was the peak of the show. Like I said, you could not follow this. And then afterwards, to get the presentation, Christopher Daniels comes out and reveals Kenny Omega is back to present Ocada with the belt that staredown. Shut the show down after the staredown. Would you mean we don't need no more? Shut the song, the show is over. I've said before, I've been watching A.W. from day one. And one of the things coming into this company from day one, no one Kenny Omega is going to be a main event in the States and everything he did over there in Japan. A big part of his mystique and a big part of the best belt machine and the reputation he built in Japan was around wrestling this guy. And so when this company started, I was saying the entire time, it's only a matter of time before these two guys wrestle for this company. It's going to happen. Tony has been chasing this match for years. There's no way it's not going to happen. Them standing under the all-in sign, Arlington, Texas, bro. I've ready to flip a table over. I was like, really, we are here, man. People really understand what this represents. Like arguably the greatest wrestling match of all time in history took place between these two guys. And this company is kind of built around the lore of that. And you got this guy, Kenny Omega, who came and did all this thing. And then you somehow got Okada, who Phil rightfully said was the franchise fucking player of the other company. Like they built their whole company around this guy. And you got him over here. And now at this gigantic show you're going to do in Texas, we could potentially see on American soil, these guys wrestle. What? We are officially on the road. I know this is January in this. This is the start. We're on the road to WrestleMania. We're on a road to Royal Rumble. No, no, no. We are on the road to Okada versus Omega five guys. We're fully entrenched now. It's happening. There's no way this match is not happening in Arlington, Texas. And fingers crossed, not going to wood unless something incredibly crazy happens. This is the match going forward. Again, with your core fan base and why they started watching this company, following the elite to this company, a lot of fans like myself that were new Japan fans that followed these guys to whatever they wanted to do next. There's no way you should not have ended this show with this. I'm sorry. You should have ended this show with this moment. This was the biggest moment of the night. Nothing was going to time this. No, we should not be seeing another moment like fade to black them standing under all the all-in signed fade to black. We're out of here. We did it. This is what this company was defined on. You can't tell me another story after this. Faith to black hit the hit the encore piano. Come on. It's over, bro. Like there's nothing else I want to see after that. Like this is it. Yeah, I didn't get after that match. Kenny returns. I'm like, this is the closing angle. I don't really understand what happened here, but it wasn't the closing angle. So it wasn't. This is this is big return to the company. After over a year, you're setting up this match that you've been chasing for five years. This was it. This was the close of the show, man. The classical classic classic gave us three incredible matches on this card. You end this show with the continental classic in my opinion. Yeah, especially like the TV has been based around this tournament. You told us when you announced this tournament that the finals are going to be on this show felt like that should have been the end. But again, I said it earlier, I do like the world championship being in the main event. Don't know if I would have did it here. You got to make an executive decision on this one, I think. Yeah. But main event got the fatal four way for the AW world championship. Yeah, we spoke last week about how neither of us were that excited because this felt predictable. It felt like Max was going to win this. There was no doubt in my mind about that. But then, like I said, after everything, I saw leading up to this. I was like, you sure? Sure. That's what you want to you want to end with? They were sure. I did it. I was questioning myself. I'm like, wait, okay, so you're telling me Kenny Omega this return. This is fucking phenomenal. And we're doing the briefcase in the or the title belt in the briefcase thing still after we just saw that. It's not adding up to me, though. Yeah, John Moxley defended the AW world championship against Orange Cassidy. Hangman at a page and Jay White. I don't think this match was bad. I'll start with that. No, we'll start. We'll start with love. I think the match itself was fine. This is now the second defense in a row where I can see very clearly the influences on what he's doing. There are clear Roman bloodline influences. This is bloodline shit for sure. The spot where he got hit with the shield power bomb, and it took him out for like the first maybe 10 minutes. I was like, oh, this is straight out of a Roman match. This is exactly how they would take him out of match for him to come back. Yeah, the way that Yuta interfered, it's all to the same kind of bits. You can see the influence here. But the match itself was good. I thought that Hangman looked great here. Jay White continues to look like a phenomenal big match. Hoenn out Jay White. He should have not been taking the goddamn pin here. The Blade Runner is quickly becoming the RKO for him, and just the timing of when he can hit it, his counters and stuff, spectacular stuff, Orange Cassidy. The thing that I kind of don't like about the match is that coming out of the last match, I felt like Orange Cassidy felt like a million bucks. He felt like a real believable threat. I feel like they've done a lot in the weeks leading up to this match, and this match to undo that. And I don't know if that was intentional, but a lot of what I liked about that last match, I didn't feel coming out of this match. I came out of this one thinking maybe not go back to Orange Cassidy again. I felt like the way that they treated him in this match and specifically how they had them pin Jay White, and I was like, it probably should have been Orange getting the pin since he just had lost last week. Yeah, I feel like the momentum he had, they were trying to enhance it in the way that they enhanced it took away from it. You know what I mean? Like, they were trying to do something and it didn't work. It changed it, you know? Yeah, it just didn't work. And again, I think the biggest issue with this match is that it felt predictable. Nobody believed that Max was going to win this match. So when he won the match and then he wanted in very similar fashion with the interference, I was like, uh, and again, you're, you're putting it on this car. Now we're in comparison to all of these straightforward matches without the interference. And these are very, very good matches. And then you close with this. It's, it's jarring. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It just matches. I thought we're going to have interference. Don't have interference. They're just straightforward. Like Mercedes, I was like Mercedes is probably, we talked about it like renegade twins are probably going to come in and help. Nope. Just a straightforward win victory. Same thing for the kind of the classic matches, just matches the great matches with the clear victor. And then you get all of that. And then the main event is a bunch of plunder and cluster and bullshit. And you're like, that's not how I want to end the show. Yes. Yeah, we didn't get to the worst part. And I, and I, not just not how I want to end the show. That's not where I want the world tighter to be at this point. You had so much, you had so much promise coming out of 2024 with the guys that you're building up from the dynasty era. And man, this is what you're doing. It's just, it's just disappointing. So match one. And of course, the surprise of the night FDR comes out and that's followed by you think you know him. Adam Copeland, should I say cope is back, cope the cope. Yeah. Big cope is back. And he is aiming at John Moxley. It seems like he will be the next challenger for the world title. Now, it's not that this is a bad match in theory. It's not a bad match on paper. But everything that I liked about this storyline, when you were building it with Brian and you did the send off with Brian, you closed that show and it's a coma dome. You had all of these young guys, you had all of these guys that are like quarter your fan base surrounding this thing. And you thought coming out of this, this storyline is going to be built around building those guys up and elevating them. And now we're just back to Mox versus Copeland with Christian Cage lingering around in the background with this contract. Why Mox said, I need everybody, all the young guys in this company to fucking step it up, act like you want to be here act like you want to be world champion. We need somebody to defend a W and Adam Copeland is the guy that that doesn't even make sense to the story you're telling. You're talking about defending the soul of this company now, which boy I could I could go without hearing a defending the soul of this company storyline for a good long time. I don't think we need to do that. After this storyline is over, we don't need to do that. We did it any time soon. Let's just let's just have a memorandum on that. Let's just wrap it up. But to get to that and this is where you're at. And again, the thing that bugs me with it is coming out of 2024, dynasty era, all of the guys that you got your fan base interested in. Swerve, Osprey, Okada, Kyle Fletcher, um, hangman, hangman, Darby, all of these guys that there are like six or seven guys that I am far more interested in seeing in the world title picture. And they're hot. Phil, everybody you name is great reaction. Everything is there. It's behind them. They're all getting these great reactions. Your fan base is behind them, especially hangman. Your fan base is firmly behind hangman. And you're going out of your way to do something else. I don't get it. What I described earlier with the atmosphere for these Osprey matches, bro. And you're doing something else that then building the road to Osprey being champion. That's what I don't understand about it. That's the craziest thing to me. Phil is like, imagine Osprey has done all these crazy amazing matches just off the strength. Imagine if the world title was attached to half of that shit on how even a more amazing half of those defenses or half of those matches would have been. He did that without a championship and he should have the championship to enhance it, you know? Yes. I just don't understand that, man. I and it's frustrating. Christian are the guys that are going to save us? I'm like, hold on. It's frustrating because everything that we said here and just talked about with New Japan and how they have to reestablish their world title picture. They got the guy. They got fucking seven of them. Eight of them. You don't have to. You don't have to find the guys you got them. You said, and you said, I'm looking for a you told us to get behind these people. That's the part of that I have. Like you told us to get behind Darby. You told us to get behind Osprey. You told us to get behind Sir, but they're not anywhere close to the main event at all. I don't get it, man. I don't get it. And man, I just have no interest in this moving forward. Like, most of my interest for this storyline is just waning the more and more it goes. At this point, I feel like they got a pivot. This is just not working. And adding Copeland to it. Okay, I just don't care. You're doing the FDR teams with big name, star, again, bit and cool. If they're going to go after the trio, they'll to do something fine. I mean, doing doing that and then like making it clear that the big matches cope mocks. No. And again, I've been giving up to like, I like mocks a lot, but he hasn't like, just the match itself. I'm like, I don't want to see that. And again, it's nothing wrong with this matchup. I think the issue here is your fan base is telling you they want to see something else when you hear the reactions to some of these other guys. And these other guys are baby faces. You can't give me a real plausible excuse as to why you're not moving forward with those guys instead. And you could easily say, all right, maybe this is just a one off match. And then you go back to that. But why you already have the reaction. You already have them to the point where people want to see them get the win. And like seven guys like you're saying, it's not just like one or two full. There's like seven guys that could be world champion right now. The crowd would believe it every like it would work. It would hit like everything would be good about it legit. I can legit write it off six seven guys that I would rather see win a world title within the next few weeks over Christian or Copeland. Yes, exactly. And it's like the future of the company, like people that are going to be here for 15 years that need to be established. And that's not what they're doing. It's just confusing to me. Like there's been this contingent consistently for any company that's on the outside of WWE. TNA had the issue where they were like, you guys are just putting over XWW guys. You guys are just doing XWU shit. And I never thought that AEW would get caught in that. But I felt like when Adam Copeland was coming out on Sunday on Saturday night, I was like, this is not the vibes you want to give up for this revolutionary alternate company that's doing something different. Because this is not different. But I mean, I could just understand you doing that when your company is still coming out of the blocks. It was always understandable to go with Jericho from the beginning because you're trying to get eyes on your product. But you're here now, you're five years in, you've established guys, you don't need to go to that world every time now. But it makes sense to have these legends here. We'd be remiss to not mention staying in what they did for him. But Sting wasn't getting world title matches, you guys. Sting was with Darby. He's hanging out with the young people. He's doing something different. He's not trying to main event, the fucking big shows for the world title. That's where the shit's different, you know? Yeah, and I'm sure you can make an argument that, you know, I look like a hypocrite here because I was excited for Brian to win, or I was excited for Punk to win. But the difference here is the ground, the support behind those two guys is different than this. I don't see anybody going, hey, man, I want to see Copeland in the title picture. Like it, by the time Punk got into the title picture, that guy was popular guys of the company, Brian and Brian, what a beloved baby faces and wrestling. Yeah, it wasn't an unfortunate way to end the show. After what we got, Kenny Omega and Okada faced off, like, this is what we're going to get, but we're ending with this. I was like, this is a turn off, you guys. Then we get to Wednesday and it's double J saying he wants to be in a world title picture. What is going on, man? Like, first of all, why is double J getting after they gave Mariah 30 fucking seconds in a backstage segment and then they bring out Jeff Jarrett for an in-ring thing for 10 minutes. I'm like, why the fuck are we listening to Jeff Jarrett right now? Yo, and man, I love Jarrett. I think Jarrett had a great year that led to him having this baby first turn. But man, like, I just think the timing of him going, hey, and I want to be in the world title picture. When you look at the rest of the field, it's like, okay, did you not? You make this going to be Jeff Jarrett, Adam Copeland, Christian, like, no, hold on a minute, you guys. That don't sound right. That sounds crazy. Yeah, but overall, great pay per view. I still think AW does pay per views better than most. And most of their pay per views for 2024 delivered. This was no different. Made of that stuff. And ended up just not being for me. It's an AW pay per view. You get three or four matches that could be the best match of the year. And then some stuff that's not the best. I think they're still trying to like New Japan, like we talked about earlier, AW still trying to establish identity, even after five years, and even after making these moves and getting these deals. It was apparent with the how Max, the first episode of Max on Max played out. I'm like, oh, they're still trying to find out what their identity is and how they're going to move forward, you know? Yeah, yeah. Let's get into some of our last few super chats and helper chats and get out of here. Yes, because we're going to be back very soon. From Ron and Mike Clips, he says, happy grabs today. Happy New Year's everyone. Did you see Anthony Mackie give some more Joe flowers for his role in Twisted Metal? Glad he's getting more opportunities in TV and video games. I did see that. Anthony Mackie's a funny dude. That picture is funny. He's so funny. On a graphic, it was very funny for the awards. He's got those. He still makes those faces that people make the do bits on him for. And it's so funny every time. But yeah, Anthony Mackie's one of our one of our legends at this point. Come on, man. Pop a doc. Pop a doc. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Happy New Year. Oh, yeah. Happy New Year. Yeah. Let's see. From Bushen Ryuket. He says, after Kenny wins tonight, I hope Gabe sneak attacks him. So Eddie Kingston comes in for a save. Kid in Kingston on a W second. Charlotte Flair in the Royal Rumble 25. I don't think we're going to see Eddie anytime soon, guys. No, I said we got at least like five more months at minimum, you know? I feel like it's going to be like at least a year from when he broke his thing and he did it was like May. So there's some time. Yeah. Yeah. I miss Eddie Kingston, but I don't think we'll be seeing him tonight. We won't. And yeah, I would have to assume Charlotte will be in the Rumble. She should be. Yep. From Curtis Brooks, he says, Adam Cole and company, practically saying with Tyson Fury after the match. Yeah, that's pretty good. I forgot about that. That was wild. They had Drew look at crazy out here, but he recovered from that. You see what I mean? Like, I think there's a point like the as a whole, we need to have a full three hour podcast about Adam Cole and the Understood a kingdom and where they could move forward. But that was crazy. There's such an established group, though, that they can get back in the fan to want to cheer the mom. They just have to be put in better positions. Yes, from Alexander Fitzgerald says, uh, don't even know what a W's identity is anymore. The theme song for Dynamite Salaries. I'm so excited. I just can't hide it. Why does that song is crazy? You're excited for what? What are you excited for? Yeah, two hours of wrestling. Okay. That's the face I imagine that Denise made, um, when she sent me a text the other day and she goes, yeah, I haven't watched any new Japan wrestling all year. And I was like, well, years just started, man. You've got a long year. Oh, it's crazy outside. Okay. We've got some hopper chats here, um, from give me the raw nut. Uh, at this point, just stay on air for collision and then wrestle with you. Watch along. Y'all some sickos. Hey, I got a collision post show. Right? Yeah, I got. Yeah, I got, yeah, I got questions. I'm the channel. I think Iridium's still out of town. I think. Well, yeah, we're doing that show. So, uh, someone asked for, if I could be on the collision post show, but I can't cause I'm doing that show. Same. Y'all said, uh, from, uh, current Veronica isn't good. Uh, we know rage fucks with the challenge, but y'all should check out Beast games on Amazon. It was really good when it gets $5 million. And Mr. Beast offers big money to get you to quit the game. But if you quit, then 100 peeps also get eliminated. Yeah, I was saying, any signs like when I'm not full be scamming. He do scamming scam vibes. They let the, some white men can get away with anything. If you don't think I'm like, you could do that. And I'm like, Oh, he's a white guy. He could do that. Yeah. Anybody else would be dead. And you have the other person. And we've just seen a white guy scam his way into WWE has his prime stuff all over everything. He's trying to sell people fake lunchables. They had to take his lunchables off the market because they were moldy. They're like, no, this is nasty dog. Yeah. His brother keeps trying to convince us he's a real boxer, like big scam vibes. Works these days. You're a white guy. You can scam away in anything. I'm Lee Ron for he says, uh, AW doesn't do a good job of listening to what the audience is, is trying to tell them. Otherwise, the title scene across the company would be totally different. They're making it hard on themselves for no reason when they don't have to. And the, the funny thing about what you're saying is I think that's been a strength of the company sometimes is that they do listen to their fan base, especially the online fan base. So it's kind of strange to me now that they don't see that Hangman is the guy. Like they're just ignoring that side of the, they're like, no, we don't, we see all the fanfare that Hangman gets on blue sky and on social media and how people behind them. But like every time people are talking about Moxley, they're just like, no, let's ignore that. You guys want Christian? Hangman. Yeah, hangman. Hangman. We want hangman. No, we know who's hangman. We want, we got Adam Copeland and Christian. It's, it's like the episode of Simpsons when they're in Australia and Marge goes to the bar and she's saying coffee beer, coffee, B, B, E, C, O, B, E. Yes, that's exactly what it is. I mean, I'm, it's frustrating because I sometimes feel like wrestling companies rely too much on what the internet's thinking and sometimes like the book or should just book, but some cases listen up to what your fucking fans are saying, dude. Yeah, I think what, what, where the few went with a hangman and swerve, it did what it was supposed to do for both of those guys. All right. When you look at what the few with Fletcher and Osprey did, it did what it was supposed to do for those guys. Now you got to capitalize off of it. So like not none of those four guys are even in contention. I guess hangman's kind of in contention, but we never believed that he was going to win, you know? Correct. From Will Chisholm. I want to give the mock stuff a chance, but I can't handle a double J last run storyline. God help us. I do think that the double J stuff is a red herring, by the way. I just think the timing of it was funny that the guys in world title picture and here comes Jerry to throw his hat in the ring. It was just kind of funny. I don't have like an in ring promo for 10 minutes. I was like, what is happening here? Yeah. Slappy, Slappy New Year. That is all of our super chats. I appreciate you guys. That's all of our super chats. Well. Yeah, a lot going into this year wrestling is officially moved into the streaming first with everybody else. It's kind of might as live on HBO Max now, which isn't technically called HBO Max anymore. It's just Max. Life comes at you fast. Raw will be on Netflix next week, if you haven't heard them. That is the thing. Also, we're creeping towards Royal Rumble season. Still weird to think that Royal Rumble is not in January. It's in February. We're just having a hard time processing today, but right around the corner. New Women's Champion. They changed it. It's kind of exciting stuff happening, right? It's almost too much. A lot of wrestling happening. I still haven't gotten a chance to watch stardom's last pay per view of the year yet, because it's just been that many pay per views going on, that much wrestling going on. But I'll get to it eventually. Three hours of SmackDown, I did not sit through three hours of SmackDown last night, guys. I'm sorry. I just couldn't do it. Sick. That's sick, you guys. That's too much, WWE. Relax. I just couldn't do it. I watched some of it, but I had a bunch of other things going on, so I just didn't have the time to the photo of three hours. But I just imagine, man, three hours, and you got to review that show afterwards on a Friday. That's wild. I'm assuming Raw is going back to three hours soon. You're looking at six hours. Monday. You're looking at six hours of WWE programming in two shows alone. Just two shows. That's if you leave about NXT. Like, if you just do Raw and SmackDown reviews, that's six hours worth of stuff you have to watch. And that's a lot. Right. We're getting Julia versus Roxanne next week. Leave Oba Femi's, the big title match for Trick Willy. I had a big wrestling coming up. Two guys are fighting for the soul of WWE. They are. I didn't think that Punk would be one of the guys in battle for it, but here we are. They've had a few really good segments together. This segment this week was really good. Rollins has been in that bag that I get in when I know that I'm right about something. And I'm just looking around like, nah, yeah, you done talking about it? I'm not done talking about it. Come back in here. And so you can see with everything going on, when he showed up to the Netflix debut thing, the press conference they had, he was like, what you doing? Why are you standing over there? Why you don't come over here? Who's the bootlicker now? He's got this chip on his shoulder because he knows he's got this guy showing him. And he very much brought that energy to this promo of like, this guy, what's he going to do if he lose? He's going to go away again. He's going to take his ball and go home. He's going to go away from 10 years. He's going to go cry again. And Punk came out very rightfully so and said, Hey, where'd you get that? Take your ball and go home thing from? Which, if you don't remember when Punk went away, that's what the company was saying about Punk. That's what the authority people were coming out and saying, like Stephanie. And so it's it's twofold. You're making Rollins look like corporate guy again, but also, Hey, man, didn't you get enough aside with the authority guys had to work out for you? You're still, you know, sending and talking like they forced you to or like they wanted you to, you're still being that corporate stooge that Triple H wanted you to be? Yeah. But yeah, once we got into the meet as this, when they started throwing the heavy blows, I was like, Oh, we're here. I was wondering how Rollins was going to respond when he started listening to all the people that also took their ball and went home quote unquote. And he's like, did Austin take his ball and go home? Hey, I haven't seen a man around here in a long time. She take her ball and go home. And his response, man, I got to give Rollins a lot of credit, man. He was like this guy up in his promo, especially the the middle part of it when he came back at him and he goes all of them had a reason to go away. They had a reason to go away and they came back. My wife is away raising a child. But I know you wouldn't know nothing about that. Get him out. What do you what do you started going into that? Hey, man, what is this doesn't work out for you? What are you going to do? You ain't got nowhere else to go, man. You you tried to tear this place down. You're your buddy got on that podcast, tried to tear this place down. That didn't work. You went through shots and tried to take every aim you could to tear this place down. That didn't work. Then you went took some money, went work for that other company, a competition. How did it work? I was he was going to fry this guy, man. I was like, hold on. He's let him back, punk. But it's all true. It's all real. It's all things that people think. Yeah. At one point, I saw people in line saying, I just can't sigh with Rollins because he looks like a stooge here. And I was like, but see, the thing that punk is always going to have to fight back against. He still hadn't given us a satisfying reason why he went back. And he's never going to be able to give a satisfactory response to, hey, you went away for 10 years and all you did was talk shit about this place. You got on TV on the other place and said, being there made you physically sick. And then you just went back. And you went back and you turned into, hey, guys, I'm happy to be here. I'm so glad that you guys still supported me. I did this for you. Like, and from Rollins point of view, no, you look like a hypocrite. And then even more to his point in this promo, you did everything you could to make it harder for us. And we're in our hottest period since the attitude era, like, hottest period in a long time. And now you're back like, hey, man, look, I'm so glad to be a part of the team. No, no, we don't owe you nothing. You made it harder for us. And we still succeeded. And then you come back and you want to act like we're benefiting from you? No, we don't owe you nothing. Right. Get out of here. We don't need you. He's the one that's reaping the benefits. Yes, you're reaping the benefits of all of these things that me and Roman and all these other crop of guys did to make this place remain relevant. And then you want to just come back and go, Hey, guys, well, I'm so happy I can help us out and get us to a million dollar gate. And he's looking around like, the fuck does this guy think he is? And of course, in punk fashion, what a funny thing he does, he's just looking around like, what's the problem? And what's the problem? Why cannot be along for the ride? And they're like, God, you got to say something before you hop on the ride, though. Yeah. And I think the most damning thing after he made all those points and punk made this metaphor about when you're a pioneer, you take all these arrows to the back. And I was like, but this is exactly what people don't want to hear from you in response to that. It fills in genuine. Right. And he did have some bars after that. He has some very pointed parts about how, you know, he came back and Rollins has been trying to make himself a victim in a thing that the problem that he created. And he's right. You run around like, Hey, Roman is an issue. He's doing all this stuff because of you. Really good segment. I thought, man, the Jabs, they threw at each other. The big body blows. They threw each other. Funk had a few very pointed bars at him, but I thought Rollins won this exchange guys. I think it was Rollins. He needed this one because every time he airs his grievances and then punks just like, who cares? It don't even be thinking about you that, but that weighs on him. But for him to write before their big match, get one in on him, I think it was important. Yes. Yeah. Then when he came in at the end, it was like, man, I haven't got a chance to say this to you yet, but you are a cancer. And, you know, you don't just deal with cancer. You don't just fight cancer. You cut it out and get rid of it. I am going to get rid of you. You don't belong here. My guy is in his bag. Bro, he's been in his bag since he showed up. Ever since he showed up as a fiber series, it was like, no, no, no, no, no, get this guy to fuck out of you. This is mine. This guy is trying to come and take mine, but this is mine. He's doing, uh, he's doing a poll at a temptation. This is mine. You can't take it. Yes. That is one of the most seen. It's not supposed to be funny, but every time I see it, it's funny to me now. I'm just trying to completely get it off playing piano. And they're like, nah, you've had enough. Yeah, I'll tell you what I had. I'll tell you what I have enough is a great bit. Yeah, we're going to great, what a great bill for raw this week. I did sit and think, um, at the end of it. All right. They have been making us believe that this was going to be the WrestleMania match. Right. And if they're doing all of this to build it up for a TV match, which I don't think it's just going to be a one off raw match. That makes me think that, um, this isn't the WrestleMania match. And so it's not going to be the WrestleMania match. I can't believe it is. That makes me think with where this is at. I have to assume that one of these guys is wrestling Roman at WrestleMania. Either it's going to just conquer out. Right. I think one of these guys is definitely his opponent. And I feel like the other one is in the world title match against Gunther, right? Yeah. That's what it feels like. That's definitely what it feels like. Yeah, Zeno, our punk did call him an industry plant in with his career. Very pointed jab at him. Like I said, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some hits in, but, uh, Rollins was, um, Rollins was cooking him up. Uh, we do not have any more Hopper chats, I believe. Um, we got a couple of Super chats. We got more, a few more Super chats. Um, boy, I don't know how I went with having to switch back and forth to that Hopper chats grade and I just have it in front of me so much either. Life's different. We got three more Super chats and then we're going to slide up out of here. One from Will Chisholm, he says, so I'm so sorry that Seth and punk was telling each other how they really feel hard for you. I was very entertaining to watch. It was very, very entertaining to watch. Sometimes Rollins is at his best when he is, uh, out there being sassy and he was out there being real sassy. Yeah, good, a good opponent to bounce off too, you know. Yeah. I think, I think at this point because Rollins didn't get a bunch of matches in 2024 because he had the injuries, he needed something to really, uh, submit his place on Raw as one of the top characters and the stuff with punk has helped him do that. Yeah. Uh, one more from Will Chisholm, he says, uh, I got to say every match Naya and Naomi had was a banger. Last night was the same and they got 20 minutes. Yeah, I really liked the match from last night. I thought Naomi looked really good and man, we got to give Naya her flowers for this title run. I thought she did a great job and she's been much improved this time around with the company. Yeah. Naya had an amazing run this time. Like she felt like a top star in the division and she felt like a real champion carrying that. Gotta send kudos out to her. Yep. This is our last super chat. Will Chisholm as well. Appreciate you for all the support, Will. It's a punk saying, I love this place. I just hated the guy that runs it and he loves you. He loves you. I was like, Oh God, uh, true until Vince fell in love with Roman Ella. Well, um, that is a great line. That's a little cap to it. It's a little cap to it. Definitely. This is a little cap to him acting like the only reason he left was Vince. No, that's not the only reason you left because he tried to say, I love this company. I didn't love the guy running it. You call it the guy that's currently running it, his doofus son-in-law. I was going to say the way he was talking about Triple H the whole time he was gone. It was not just fucking missing man. No way. No, it wasn't. There was a little cap today. Also, there's a bit of cap to saying that Vince absolutely loved Rollins. Vince liked Rollins, but also Cap. Vince is a Roman guy. There's a reason Roman was the type guy. I feel like Triple H likes Seth more than Vince did, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That was definitely some, uh, there was some caps in those raps, but you got to that one. Yeah, fun segment of all around. We say all the time, man, you're some of the best rappers lie and sometimes some of the best wrestlers lie as well. Huge facts. Yeah, this has been one episode of Grapsody. Check us out tonight on Denise El-Suedo's YouTube channel. Yeah. Doing a live stream of Wrestle Dynasty. Excited to watch that show with some friendos, but this has been Grapsody. Hopefully you guys had a good start to the new year. I'm sure you're throwing your resolutions out the door. You eating that. You're eating that dessert that you're not supposed to be eating or drinking soda. Like you said, you would stop going to do. But hang in there, man. It's always next year. Exactly. You can start all over. You can start all over next week. You have to wait for another. It doesn't work. But it's just time. This is Big Grapsody. I'm Phil Lindsey. Right just right. We are out of here. Some things you wouldn't mind being stuck with, like a huge inheritance, but a phone that has to be plugged in just right so it charges is not one of those things. Switch to Verizon and we'll pay off your old phone up to $800.5 prepaid MasterCard for a new one on us. Just trade in any phone from our top brands with select unlimited plans. $829.99 purchase with new smartphone line on select unlimited plans, minimum $90 per month with auto pay plus taxes and fees for 36 months required. Less $830 trading/promo credit applied over 36 months. Trading terms apply. Pay off phone requires smartphone purchase important with new smartphone line on select plans. Must provide most recent bill showing payoff amount of eligible phone. Additional terms apply. At King Super's Pharmacy, care is what's most convenient for you. Care is being here when you need us. 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Phil Lindsey (@PhilDL616) and Righteous Reg (@RighteousReg). are back for another episode of Grapsody! This week, the guys will discuss numerous topics. They will review #NJPW #WrestleKingdom 19, preview #WrestleDynasty, and more.
- NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 19 Review
- #AEW x #NJPW x #CMLL x #Stardom Wrestle Dynasty Preview
- AEW Worlds End Review
and much more.
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