AEW DYNAMITE POST-SHOW (10/21): Keller & Halley discuss Dragunov debut, Davis & Doyle decimating Bucks, Shafir stepping up to Mercedes, more

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1:25 slash govip. Now, PW Torch and Spreaker bring you the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post Show.

1:41 It's time to talk this week's AEW Dynamite.

1:48 Art Taylor, we got blood and guts set up. We'll talk about that, but let's begin with the main event of tonight's Dynamite. Ilya Dragunov making his debut in the main event against Speedball Mike Bailey. AW presented it as a big signing. They presented Dragunov as a big deal. They had a nice match, went, I don't know, 17 minutes or something like that. What'd you think of the overall presentation of Dragunov and how they framed him?

2:13 Yeah, I mean, it presented him as a huge star. I mean, you knew what you were going to get from the match. I mean, I think it would be impossible for those two to probably put on a bad match together. But yeah, no, I mean, they presented him as a big deal and a big star. He comes off as it. He looks it. I guess my question is, though, whenever they kind of bring these guys in and they present them as a big deal, I mean, everyone there can wrestle. It's kind of like, what are you going to do over the next three to six months now to kind of separate yourself from everyone else who can wrestle.

2:44 I feel like sometimes with AEW, you know, everyone can wrestle. Sometimes these guys will come in and kind of get lost in the crowd. Sometimes they come in hot for a few months and then, you know, see him for a week and then they get a couple of matches on collision. Then they're in like a random TNT title match.

3:01 So it's kind of like, but I, you know, I, I, I have faith that he's, he's, he's one of the ones that can, you know, maybe get over that hump.

3:10 So, I thought you were going to say, but I'll add to it, Dragunov was, by definition, and this is not a dig, a mid-carder in WWE. He wasn't a pay-per-view main event guy. Mid-card in a broad term. Different people think mid-card is a more derisive term than I think it is, but he was defending and fighting for secondary titles. He wasn't a top guy feuding with top, top people in the main event realm. AEW brings him in, they put him in the main event, and they have him go toe-to-toe with A wrestler I like, I appreciate.

3:40 Speedball Mike Bailey. Takes 16, 17 minutes back and forth action to beat him. I get why they put him against him. And I understand wanting to give them a time to show off what they do. That is the AW brand. We talk about it all the time. That's what AW does. If you can wrestle, we're going to give you 15 minutes, give or take, to do it.

3:59 And I defend in kind of AW's way of presenting the product that. Even a wrestler who is destined to win a match against someone who's anywhere near him, it takes a while. Unless it's a jobber against Swerve, like tonight. And so, this has been a complaint, so to speak, going back to Cody Rhodes taking forever to beat QT Marshall or whatever. So, I'm not saying it's new, but... they're making a really big deal out of signing somebody from WWE, who was a mid-quarter. They put them in a main event, build them up a lot. It takes them a long time to beat Speedball, who is an AEW mid-quarter, but I think they aspire for him to be more than that.

4:42 So two things. One, it can hurt Dragunov. Yes, they give him plenty of time to show what he can do, and that's an absolute positive on one side of the ledger, but it took him a long time to beat somebody who isn't a main eventer, even though he's mixing it up with Will Ospreay a little bit on camera. So you have that working against you, but then you have from the AW brand standpoint, woohoo, we got a WWE mid Carter cast off again, and we're going to promote him as a big deal. And, and wow, we're so glad to have him. That's the most impressive debut since Tony Schiavone. So none of this is like a huge deal.

5:15 Cause obviously the AW fan base is going to love that. They signed him. They're smart and smart enough to understand what he brings. And I don't think they're going to be hung up on the fact that he wasn't a main eventer in WWE, but I still think there's, There's something to be said for looking at a different approach, which is bring a Dragunov in and kind of, and I'm not, I think there's a fair corner argument I can make it, but there's something to be said for considering the other approach, which would be Dragunov has to come in and prove himself. Like, don't celebrate him in the way that they did, which by the way, they gave him more attention than they gave him Will Ospreay since he won the world title, you know, in terms

5:57 of just promotional build and hype and excitement. Um, so I like, to me, there's something about, Hey, he's had success elsewhere, but he's got to prove himself and speedball is a good starting point. So I don't know. I mean like great match people who just want good wrestlers getting a chance to show what they do. I get, there's a reason to be excited. He signed the vignette.

6:17 They aired with him, you know, I'm in the right place. This is a place for me. I'm kind of a meta modern AW realm level. I get it. but there's still traits here that worry me a little bit about what it says about the brand and also a little bit about rushing him to the top, but having him take so long to beat Speedball. Your thoughts on that?

6:36 Yeah, no, I mean, I agree basically what most of what you're saying there in terms of like, you know, he is going to have to come in and prove himself a little bit, you know, kind of, like I said before, like everyone can wrestle, but do you have that little extra? Like, do you have that extra little that's going to make you Like how Swerve came in.

6:57 You know what I mean? Swerve came in, was kind of the same mid-cotter in WWE. Kind of came in and he kind of just had that little extra something, that little extra star power. You know what I mean? That kind of helped them. You know, they came in and they put him with, I forget who was he tagging with. I'm blanking.

7:18 Who was tagging with whom?

7:20 Who was Swerve tagging with when he came in?

7:23 Oh, initially?

7:23 Yeah. Yeah. he's in like a cult now or something. What was his name?

7:29 I'm blanking too.

7:30 I'm totally blanking.

7:32 Chad, help us out. I'm sure the chat will just, it'll come back to them.

7:35 Keith Lee. Thank you. Yes.

7:37 Oh my God. Yeah. I would not have gotten that. I completely forgot about that, but yeah.

7:42 Like they had, you know, they had him come in. He tagged with Keith Lee for a while, kind of built himself up. You know, we kind of got to build, you know, build his character up a little bit. It took a little bit of time. You know what I mean? To kind of turn swerve into swerve what he is now. So I think if, if I think that's kind of what you have to do with these guys who are coming in, it's not going to happen right away. It's going to take a little bit of time to, to, you know, have these guys get their footing and they're going to put on great matches. Like you can put them on Wednesday nights, every Wednesday, and he's going to put on a great match, but is it, you know, you're investing in these guys, you're bringing these guys in.

8:15 So what are you going to do with them now? I guess. Yeah.

8:19 Yeah. A couple of chat comments along these lines, Mark Paschetti. It says Dragunov is where he was meant to be. Derek Mitchell posted this even before we started the show while he was waiting. He goes, super chat from Derek. Thank you for your super chat. King of the super chats here on the show, Derek. Much, much appreciated. He goes, Ilya has a vignette talking about being an AW. When he's featured in the main event versus Speedball, he already feels more important than the champ. He adds in another super chat, Will feels like another guy on the roster instead of the central figure in the promotion. Now, mid-show...

8:53 I made a post during commercial break in the VIP forum about this and said that, you know, this is an example of what I'm talking about where people go, I don't understand. Will's a champion. He's getting to show what he does. He's in pay-per-view made events. What do you mean, Wade, when you say they're not featuring him enough?

9:10 And to me, they made Ilya feel like a bigger deal than Will Ospreay this week. Now, Will is, he's the chair in the corner you always had and you love it, but now we got this new couch. We're all excited about this or, you know, whatever. Like I understand shiny new toy syndrome, um, is part of it. And the novelty is part of it. But to me, and in the VIP post, I said, they need to watch what David Crockett did in the late eighties when dusty roads is going to be on NWA worldwide wrestling.

9:36 Oh my God, dusty roads are going to be here. Now he was a book. Dusty was a booker and he was a self promoter. And at that time, the, the hardcore fans despise dusty. Um, there's been a very good turnaround in terms of his reputation among, uh, ardent fans over the decades and, and well-earned, um, Or how Nitro promoted a Goldberg appearance. Or how Jim Ross talked about Stone Cold's going to be on the show tonight.

9:57 You don't get that. Will just happens to have the most important title. happens to main event, but he's such a guy in a tag match that's he happens to have the number one belt, but he's in a tag match where it's more about Adam Copeland than him, and it accomplished a goal, which, you know, Zach Barber will point out, hey, what more do you want? Wait, they set up a world title match with Kyle Fletcher, and yeah, they did a good job, but If Will Ospreay's on the show, don't call... I don't even like calling Dragunov and Speedball the main event. I would just say later on the show, Ilya's going to make his debut. It's later on the show. But first, we have a special treat for you fans. Will Ospreay, our world champion, is

10:36 in a match. And it's coming up in this hour. And he's teaming with a legendary, Adam Copeland, who just announced last week. He's down to the last year, roughly, of his career. And it's against two... strong members of the Don Callis family but Will Ospreay a world champion is going to be here send that signal to the fan base that it's a big deal I know Tony Khan thinks everybody who watches our show knows how good Will is I'm on social media all the time they love him we don't want to force our opinion on people we don't want to be pushy but if you want to grow you got to frame your world champion as a huge deal and if you think that like how are they going to do it well just do what they did for dragon off tonight and do it

11:17 for will every week, you know, for, for, and so, yeah, go ahead.

11:21 And I, you know, AWW doesn't do it either, but like starting the show at will, you know what I mean? Starting the show with your world champion, set the tone for the night. Like the, the, you know, I, I feel like they did that with MJF, like MJF would come out. That you knew that you knew that episode was going to revolve around MJF. It was going to bookend the show. You know, MJF was going to be at the beginning. He was bookending everything. He was going to have a promo. That was important. So I just don't feel like that. I agree with you. They're just not doing that with Will. And I mean, and I think, you know, Ospreay has the potential to be a mega star.

11:58 You know what I mean? He's got, he has everything that you need. I mean, he's a five tool guy. And yeah, they're just not, they're just not using them like they should. I mean, he's a, you know, he's Otani. He can pitch and hit, you know, you got to feature that guy. That's, you know, that's, it's, he's, he's, he's a rare, it's a rare breed.

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13:14 Either way works. Go to Patreon and start your seven day free trial. I, I, my, my preference would have been to save that main, to, to have Will Ospreay in the main event. Cause he's your world champion and you're building up a world title match with Kyle Fletcher. Copeland's coming off a huge announcement last week about his last year. Um, To me, that's the main event. And you headline with that and you lead with Dragunov or you advertise Dragunov and lead like the second hour with it.

13:45 You make a big deal out of it. But yeah, just it's like he's I'm super glad he's in A.W. and I loved his work and I'm a big fan of his work. This is this is not a dig on him at all. This is trying to preserve. What I believe should be or preserves the wrong word to promote, to advocate for. protecting your brand aw you got to earn main events here you don't get to be a mid carter from w who had some good matches that our fan base online loved and praised and we're so glad to have his his his talents here yeah but make it seem like he's kind of got to earn his place not that he's just instantly a main eventer so i know that i know tony khan just is online and the people are excited there tony's excited so

14:25 let's main event with it it's his first appearance They could have done worse. Like, it could have been on the other side. They just had him come out without fanfare, and I'd be way more critical of that. I do want to make clear, this isn't like a disaster, but it's illustrative of something that I advocate for, and I think this was a good chance to make that point.

14:41 I love Zach Barber going, hey, wow, I'm out here catching strays.

14:45 Yeah, yeah.

14:48 Taylor, before I go, let me throw up Zach's comment. I don't know if he made this before or after I made the comment, because I hadn't seen this, but he goes, Wade, it's a wrestling forward company. The undefeated 49ers barely beat the lowly commanders Monday night when they should have rolled them. Dragunov not squashing speedball isn't a big deal. So I don't know if he said that before or after I said, of course, he's going to run in and defend this, but he did. Okay, Taylor, over to you.

15:08 I was going to say too, and especially when you bring a guy in like that and you start him in the main event, you're setting the bar so high. Like he's not going to be, he's not a main event guy right now. You know what I mean? Like the way, even the way that you can, we can kind of see the way the stories are going right now.

15:22 They're not just going to drop Dragunov now in the middle of a world title game. you know, feud with, with Ospreay. So now you're, you're setting it up as this guy's a main eventer. Now, you know, if next week he's on collision and a third match on collision, it's like, okay, I thought this guy was a big deal.

15:38 Now he's not even on the show next week. Or, you know, if he's in the second match on, on dynamite next week, it's kind of like, okay, I, you know, I guess, I guess he's not a big deal as big of a deal as I thought.

15:51 I also think if you're going to put speed ball, is this his first, is this speed balls first singles main event? on dynamite proper i mean i don't know i don't i'm not sure i.

16:00 Would probably say i would probably say no i would i would imagine he's maybe had one at least one not that i can think of at the top of.

16:08 My head our live research team in the chat maybe can look this up for us i know i'm genuinely curious to me if you're gonna put speedball in a singles match main event speedball is has been well aspirated little buddy i mean it's just he's you know he's not like I don't want to make too much out of this. Again, it's illustrative of if you're going to do this, give us some promos. Give us a video package.

16:33 Explain why this is his first opponent. What does Speedball want to prove? Speedball sees himself as a gatekeeper to the main event. Tell that story. Speedball says, hey, Dragunov is coming in with big expectations. I have big expectations. I've made it clear. I want to go after the world champ. That's an aspiration I have. And I see no better way to test my credentials than this hot new signing who also aspired. Like there's a story to tell there, give more backstory, but I sort of felt it just defaulted on, it's going to be great work because these two guys are really good workers and our audience knows that. And I, from day one with Dynamite, I've advocated and aspired for them to do more than that.

17:15 Yeah, no, I agree totally. Okay.

17:19 A couple other chat comments here. DCW says, even though Will is the champion, he felt less important tonight. And Darrell says, Speedball and Dragunov shouldn't have been the main event, but it was a nice match.

17:32 100%.

17:32 It was definitely a nice match. That is the baseline, of course. I'm not taking that away from them. If it wasn't, we would have talked about that. Ducky D in the chat says, I always looked at Dragunov as a you-can't-kill-me guy, as opposed to the I'm-gonna-kill-you guy, at least from his NXT UK stuff. It's a good portal into another topic on him, Taylor, which is what should Dragunov's persona in AWB to avoid what you talked about earlier, which is big deal at the beginning, but then he just kind of merges into the speed of traffic and he's just another guy. We thought Ricochet would have that problem.

18:12 He distinguished himself with kind of a gutsy reinvention of his persona that I think has stuck and it's worked. He's upper mid card, but he mixes with the main eventers, and that's fine. But he's earned his keep as a character, not just a guy doing more spots. What would you do with Dragunov, taking into account what Ducky D brought up, which is he is kind of a you-can't-kill-me, not I'm-going-to-kill-you, and I think that's a good contrast.

18:38 Yeah, so with Dragunov, I don't watch WWE as consistently over the last few years as I used to. I saw some of his matches in WWE... I don't know much of his background before that. Obviously, I know the name.

18:53 You're a great person to talk about this then.

18:55 Yeah. So when I first saw the vignette, like when they started doing the vignettes, I got a little bit of like the really tailored suits and the tats and like the watches. I kind of got like a little bit of like a McGregor vibe from him. You know what I mean?

19:09 Yeah, I get it.

19:10 Totally get it. So I think if you kind of go towards that, like the cocky bravado vibe, Um, I even like the little symphony thing he does. You know what I mean? I think that's cool. Um, I think if you could, I kind of like the whole kind of McGregor tone of it. It was like cocky bravado. Um, like I'm the man, like, you know what I mean?

19:31 Just kind of like that.

19:33 Um, so this, and this is great because you don't have this, you didn't watch NXT UK. You weren't watching everything he did in WWE. So you, you're a great person to ask about this, not to say based on, watching everything he's done, here's what they should accentuate. You're coming at it from, I watch everything. AEW I've watched the build for him I have a you know general familiarity with him they haven't clearly defined him you're kind of giving being you are having to extrapolate an impression from what they've done but I don't sense that I think you are what a lot of AEW fans are which is heard good things know he's a good worker what why am i rooting for or against him what's his journey where what what about him i am i

20:19 going to identify with with a whole array of wrestlers to choose from i don't watch wrestling just to see stars stack up over 15 or 20 minutes um and star ratings stack up with a bunch of cool moves and drama That's a baseline for what makes AW stand out. But what really gets me to the TV set every Wednesday and Saturday night and invested in talking about, thinking about, podcasting about, writing about this product is the personality. What is it about him? Sometimes you show, not tell. I get that. And I think he showed aspects that you're talking about, Taylor. The little bit of Conor McGregor thing.

20:51 There's a symphony thing.

20:52 Yeah.

20:53 It's a beginning, but I don't want them to think they're 85% of the way there. I think they're 15 or 20% of the way there. I don't want them to keep putting thought into this. So the average viewer goes, OK, this is a guy I can get behind because X, Y, Z. I think he's cool. I like his personality. I like his drive. Or I root for people like him because I'm learning more about him. And again, it's just there's assumed knowledge with AW bringing people in sometimes, more often than not. And so, you know, you're an example of going, hey, I'm intrigued. But tell me more. Show me more of what makes him who he is.

21:31 Yeah. Cause I mean, definitely has the look like he's definitely someone you, you stop and.

21:35 Go, who is that?

21:36 You know what I mean? Like, um, yeah. So, I mean, it's definitely, like you said, it's definitely something there. It's just, are they going to invest the time to, is he just going to kind of fall to the wayside as just, Hey, you can wrestle, but what, what kind of, what else does he have? Yup.

21:52 Uh, by the way, um, Adam kid says, yes. Great comparison by Taylor. Uh, Derek Mitchell says, agreed. Conor McGregor was more sports entertainer than UFC fighter. I can see Conor, uh, Conor and Ilya comparison. If that's not what Tony Khan wants, you want to be cognizant of how he's coming across. Um, for sure. Uh, Pickens in the chat says, Tony Khan couldn't license some B-roll of Dragunov and Speedball from when they faced each other before. I feel that may have helped for fans less aware of Ilya. Um, so yeah. Um, And let's see. I think there's a comment from Zach. Oh, here it is. Derek Mitchell says, Speedball faced off against MGF in the main event of Dynamite on April 6th, earlier this year. So good memory, Taylor. He said he

22:46 thought he might have, yeah.

22:47 Yeah, I just figured he, because he was, they were really pushing him there for a little bit. And I figured he'd, if I was, you know, I bet. So I figured the odds were. Yeah, yeah.

22:58 The odds were on your side for sure. And Zach Barber says, hey, Wade, it's his first week. He doesn't even have an established feud yet. That works from the premise that you should have a feud before you have an established personality. And I think it should go the other way around. Controversial take, Taylor. I don't think you have to wait for a feud. But that said, I think there's plenty of room to show us and not tell us. I just don't want them to think, wow, we did it. We got Ilya established, and now just send him to the ring, ring the bell, and let him wrestle. I'm advocating for more than that. All right, let's pause, introduce ourselves, and talk about other things on this show. There's a lot to talk about.

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24:43 This is the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post Show for Wednesday, October 21st, 2026. I'm Wade Keller, host of the show. editor, publisher, and founder of the Pro Wrestling Torch weekly newsletter, the website PWTorch.com, and hosts a variety of podcasts, including the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast, which includes our Tuesday night flagship, dropped this week with Greg Parks. We spent over an hour and a half talking to AEW and WWE topics, so check that out. Search Wade Keller in your podcast app to subscribe. Search Wade Keller. You'll see the red logo and the blue logo pop up. Subscribe to both.

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26:30 My guest host tonight is Taylor Haley. He's a PWTorch contributor. He wrote an excellent article as a follow-up to WrestleDream that is up on PWTorch right now. I encourage you to go check it out in the opinion section or on the main listing. I featured it in the aforementioned PWTorch VIP forum, drew attention to it. I thought it was a really good piece. It's a new feature you're writing now that is scheduled for after AW pay-per-views, where you kind of look at, there's an evaluation of the pay-per-view in the structure, but it is also looking at what's next. What did this set up going forward? Talk about the format and maybe a couple of points you made in the column before we move on, Taylor.

27:08 Yeah, so like you said, it touches on a little bit of what happened in the pay-per-view, but kind of like one of my favorite things to do is just talk with my buddies and try to guess, all right, where are we going now? So just trying to guessing, you know, coming out of the pay-per-view, you know, where we're going from now. I actually had, after the Moxley-Davis match, one of my things was, I don't know where Moxley's going, but I know for sure that on Wednesday night, he will be in a match no matter what, defending the continental title. And then there he was Wednesday night, I wasn't defending it. It was an eliminator, but he was in it. I also talked about what was maybe next for Mercedes after the Tecla match, which I thought was

27:47 a little weird. I thought that match was a little weird. I thought the aftermath was a little weird too. Kind of came off like maybe they didn't like each other. I don't know. It just was weird. I talked about maybe Tecla teaming up to go after some tag titles, which I don't know. Tonight it looked like she's getting involved in kind of the tag title scene after that kind of beatdown in the back. So, yeah, check it out.

28:11 It's new. It's the first time I've wrote it this month. So I'm looking forward to keeping it going. Awesome.

28:16 All right. You can be part of the show in the live chat if you're watching us on our live YouTube stream. If you're not, just search or go to YouTube, search PWTorch, and you can find our shows. You can also find a link to our shows in my TV reports at PWTorch.com. So join the chat if you're watching us live. Otherwise, you can email us if you don't watch us live, but you watch Dynamite on our SmackDown.

28:36 WadeKellerPostShow at gmail.com is how you contribute your question or comments that we can read on the air. And finally, you can be a live caller if you want. The link changes with every show. And in my TV report tonight on Dynamite, there is a link. Click on it. It'll bring you to the waiting room. You can leave your camera on or turn it off and be audio only.

28:52 Either way works. And we invite you to do so. All right. Let's turn back to more content on tonight's show. Actually, another comment on Dragunov before we move on. Mark Buschetti says, Dragunov was great with Sammy in the U.S. title stuff. He should be able to get his character, which is hopefully more than just being intense, over quickly. He has the storytelling ability. Absolutely. I just don't want anyone to think they're done. It's not mission accomplished yet. This is the beginning of establishing who he is. Show us. Don't tell us. That's fine if that's the approach. But when you put him in the main event and hype him as the main eventer, Soon I want it more than look at his ring entrance and look at how he

29:29 cares himself. Give us a little bit more than that. So we'll see. But I'm excited to have him here for match quality. And there's a ton of dream matches for him to have with a lot of like. wrestlers who are in their athletic prime, so that'll be good. Ducky D says, Excalibur gave us a lot, but I think they're leaning into the mystery blank slate purposely. Calus even said he was scouting. So interesting. We'll see. I think they want Dragunov to take on Will Ospreay at some point. Taylor before they define him down. I mean, that's just, it's, it's, it's on the list of what matches would be great. And I want them to turn it into what match will sell tickets, sell pay-per-views, draw ratings, make Osprey seem like a bigger star, define what AW

30:13 stands for besides great matches, tell a really good story here. And I, again, not saying that they don't have those plans. I'm just saying, I hope they do.

30:23 Yeah.

30:24 That's all. not, not being a negative on it in that sense. All right. So we had a intriguing, let's just talk about the young box getting decimated by Mark Davis and Jake Doyle. Renee, the cat set this up beforehand with a ringside report saying that the box were medically cleared, kind of gave the impression it was barely and that they were not feeling good after what they went through on a Saturday. I didn't expect that. I kind of liked it. I think fans were like, wow, like, I mean, some were disappointed. I think you show up at an AEW Dynamite event, you want to watch the Young Bucks do their thing, but I thought it had impact, and I think it can help sell the match that they announced now for Full Gear. What did you think

31:08 of the elevation, I'll call it, of Davis and Doyle with their decimation of the Decimators, could be their tag team name, of the Young Bucks after tonight?

31:18 Yeah, I mean, I loved it. I liked that it wasn't kind of like a fluke win. They just went in there and just kick their ass about you know a few minutes into that match i was like they're really kicking their ass like this is like this is not a young this is not a young bucks match i kind of like you know so i kind of like sat up on my couch a little bit more like what's what's kind of going on yeah it's.

31:43 Like you think you're leaving the territory.

31:45 Yeah yeah right the old days yeah uh Yeah, no, I loved it. And then, you know, as the show went on, you kind of realized why they did that and set it up for, for blood and guts and everything. But yeah, no, I love stuff like that every once in a while, just something that shocks you that you don't see coming at all. And yeah, I thought it was great. You know, I feel like they do kind of need some more people in the tag team division, like actual tag teams, not just guys thrown together, like actual teams. So yeah, I thought anytime you can elevate a new tag team and, If you're going to do it, that's the hell of a way to do it.

32:22 Derek Mitchell in the chat says, I haven't seen a beatdown like that since Brock Lesnar took John Cena to Suplex City at SummerSlam a decade ago. Davis and Doyle feel like Hanson and Brody in all Japan. Yeah, I mean, if you can frame them that way. I'm a fan of Davis and Doyle and what they've done with them.

32:38 Davis has had bangers with John Moxley and others. I think they've established their brand. And I like AEW having a bruiser tag team like that.

32:47 Yeah.

32:47 In the mix. And I like the contrast style wise with the young bucks. So, yeah, I'm all for it. I mean, I think they're kind of what WWE wanted, like the Viking Raiders to be and just can't pull it off. And it just it it worked tonight. Ducky D says Mark Davis is the sixth man of the year equivalent for wrestling. Really love everything he's done in twenty twenty six. Yeah, I like that. I like that NBA analogy there. Zach Barber said, yeah, that was a legally authorized murder. Davis and Doyle looked great. And Adam Kidd says, loved it. Nice shocker to start the show.

33:23 I'm curious what kind of follow-up there will be. We saw Nick later. He was fine to set up blood and guts, but Matt wasn't, and he took the brunt of it. They have time. They've got a few weeks. I want the Bucks to, I want AW to treat that as the big deal that we are here in segment two. Like, what was that? we've never seen a beat like that. Excalibur did a good job. He's like, I've been watching the Bucks for nearly 20 years. Never seen that. Um, I want, and I'm, you know, I'm really glad it's sort of multiple purposes, but I'm really glad Don Callis later in the show stood with the Don Callis family and gloated about that and underlined it.

33:55 That's one thing AW could do a better job on is, is if you do something in the first hour, find a way to follow up and add something to it, but also amplify and emphasize what the point of what that big thing was in the first hour in the second hour, just, to reinforce memories. You know, and I, I know it's controversial because Netflix has instructed like their people who make their original movies and their TV shows.

34:20 It's been people written about this and talked about how they've been instructed to explain plot, have characters explain plot lines as the show progresses. Cause they know they're looking at their phones and not paying attention. And our attention spans have been ruined. I'm a victim of it. I'm trying, I'm, I'm trying to get better about it and kind of rehab my, my memory and my, need like, I mean, two seconds of nothing. And I'm like, oh, where's my phone?

34:41 Or let me do something. I'm really trying to hit the reset button deliberately because I do think technology has driven us to that. And part of it, part of that happens in terms of wrestling, where if you just have one thing after another, after another, and then people looking at their phones and it's just, oh, the next match, the next angle, you come away from the show going, I enjoyed the experience, but it's sort of like mindlessly eating snacks. You can like eat a whole bag of chips and be like, oh, wait, it's empty. I wasn't even paying attention. And you don't want with wrestling. It's not just about, hey, we got you to watch. It's we want you to care. We want you emotionally moved by what we did so that you'll tune in again

35:16 and pay money for a pay-per-view. So part of that is what they did late in the show. And I want to commend them for that, which is Don Callis gloating and reminding us it happened. So thumbs up for that. And I thought the announcers did a good job selling it at the moment to Taylor Taylor.

35:31 Yep. Yeah, no, I love that segment at the end too. I liked him talking about, you know, and we're going to, I love when wrestlers talk about the money that they're going to get to when they, and then, oh God. And then that, that line when, you know, what's more important than money. And then Okada pops out of the back and says, family was just like, so perfect. That's like, that's just perfect. But yeah. And to go back to Mark Davis too, I, I think it's awesome what they've been doing with them. I mean, he, they've really turned him into like, an old school, like terrifying heel, you know what I mean? Just like an absolute bruiser. It reminds me of like, you know, when I was a kid and they, they'd pair Hogan up with like just

36:11 a scary monster. And you're like, this might be it for Hulk. I don't know. He's just one of those, one of those, one of those guys, you know what I mean? Yeah. Especially coming out of the group with, with Fletcher and Osprey, you know what I mean? You could, it's so easy to just kind of be the third wheel and fall off. So, you know good for him happy to see that you know he's he's really getting a look here.

36:32 A couple years ago i was just a week after i'm like put the don callous family on tv on camera together i want to see them as a group i really wanted to understand that they hang out together it's not just some abstract notion that there's a family and i want them to be in the don callous business and they are and i know some people complain the faction's too big i don't mind i don't want too big i don't want two factions that big and the death riders pushes it sometimes but um I just think Don Callis has become a defining manager of this era for AEW and it takes persistence and repetition and presence on a weekly basis and a diverse group of wrestlers.

37:09 I just, I really like what they've done with them. I mean, and like that promo tonight with them standing around and, you know, Okada being Okada with his smirk. And I just like, you know, their personalities are different, but they're there for the money. They're there because they kind of help each other out in ways that are, you know, nefarious and shenanigan oriented. But it makes them heels and it works. But Davis and Doyle are a different brand of wrestler within that within that family, so to speak. And I like that. Adam Kidd says, and it was believable. They are monsters compared to the Bucks and jumped them at the bell and didn't let up.

37:44 Totally.

37:45 Mark Biscotti says, yeah, the Bludgeon brothers.

37:48 Yeah.

37:50 Um, Michigan sports guy says, I also like seeing a Haas tag team in the mix. And that's what I was saying. Like AW isn't known for that. You know, like the Haas, you know, Brody King, it's like, Oh yay. He's in a tournament and we're going to see kind of a, more of a Haas fight with him. Um, you know, Wardlow hasn't delivered in that realm. Lance Archer hasn't. Um, I'm trying to think who, who would be the best kind of Haas fighter in, uh, AW history. I mean, Eddie, um, I know Eddie Kingston was different than that. He was more kind of hardcore.

38:17 Um, Yeah. So I, he's more of a street fighter. He was more of like a street fighter guy. Yeah.

38:22 So I like this. You don't want everybody just to be collar Riley meets Adam Cole meets Roderick strong. You know, it's like, there's a lot of kind of, you know, similarities in body types and ring styles. Um, Derek Mitchell says it does have a David Goliath feel with the bucks against Davidson Doyle, similar to the rock and roll express.

38:39 And they battle teams like the Russians.

38:41 Yes.

38:41 Nikita Koloff, Ivan Koloff, pressure crew show for sure. I like the contrast of both teams. Um, Indeed.

38:48 Yep.

38:49 Totally agree. You know that last segment you're just listening to and the next one that you're waiting to listen to? Those can be one second apart with a VIP membership. You can unlock our commercial-free versions of our shows. PWTorch.com slash GoVIP tells you how to do it. That's PWTorch.com slash GoVIP. Options exist within the Apple Podcast app using your Apple account, through Patreon, which, by the way, you can sync up with Spotify, or just about any iOS or Android app with a full VIP membership. You can customize the feed for individual shows and clusters of shows and themes. Go to pwtorch.com slash govip for full details on all the options to listen commercial-free and with upper-tier options.

39:20 All right.

39:20 So moving on, let's talk about the Will Osprey, Adam Copeland, Fletcher, Kevin Knight match. Speaking of the brought up the Callis family and we brought up the Copeland and Osprey thing. What did you make of Fletcher and how he looked in this match and then what they did afterwards and where it's leading? There's a lot of moving parts here, a lot to talk about coming out of the pay-per-view.

40:05 Yeah, so this is the one match that I've really been, and it seems like we're getting to it. This is the one match I really was waiting to see with Ospreay, was the Ospreay-Fletcher match. just because I feel like they can really tell a story here. I mean, there's so much between these guys where I really hope they take the time to really, you know, make this special because it really can be. And to really make this like the defining rivalry of Ospreay's title reign. I'd like to see these guys really, you know, have a, have a swerve, you know, hangman kind of vibe to it with, you know, this is a, this is a rivalry that goes deep.

40:46 I'm going to see this for a long time. Um, you know, we're going to get, we're going to get the Copeland Osprey, uh, match. I would imagine. Um, you know, I, I wrote in my article that, uh, I don't, you know, I appreciate everything Copeland's done. Um, you know, I, I was, uh, I've always been a fan of his, I've, you know, uh, but I just don't think he needs the title. We've seen so many of these, you know, veteran at the end of his run going for the title. I, you know, we've kind of seen it, you know, I just don't think at this point for AEW, they need to put the title on Adam Copeland and give him kind of a run and a goodbye. Um, I, I just don't think they need to do it. I think they got a good thing going with Osprey and I don't think

41:29 that they should halt that to give Adam Copeland, you know, kind of his flowers at the end. Um, He also, he also like, he can get really long winded with these promos. I just, I worry about him and, and he always, I feel like whenever he is with these younger kids, he always kind of falls back into that. Like, Hey, listen, kid, I've been doing this for da, da, da, da, da.

41:55 And I just, I don't, I don't want him to do that to Osprey. I don't need to, you know, Osprey is not a kid, you know, he is, but he's not. And I feel like sometimes, you know, he, he just falls back on that too much. I just, I hope it's just kind of a quick, I hope it's shorter than longer, I guess, if they're going.

42:11 To do it. They set up it to me, it seems like to Copeland and Okada just because Okada was kind of the primary person going after him after the match. So we may not be immediately in that room. Cause he's the one who held up the belt and cost him, you know, it got the belt shot to his head and cost him during the match. And then he attacked him after the match. And I know there are a lot of moving parts, as I said, cause this is setting up blood and guts too, but, I'm here for Copeland and Okada, especially... Do I want to say this?

42:41 Especially if Copeland wins to justify a world title shot against Ospreay. But if they're looking at Ospreay later, you could also have a story where Okada beats him and Copeland goes through a phase of actually trying to prove himself. I don't know. There's different stories they can tell with Copeland.

42:57 They have a long runway here to tell the story that they want to tell. I don't think we need to rush into... copeland osprey but maybe they're going to do it quickly and he has a setback and then he fights back to try to get a one more match after coming up short too which i think is in in the mix too as a possibility.

43:13 Yeah and i had in my notes too um i know that he copeland had a copeland had put out that kind of checklist of venues he wanted to go and tokyo dome was one of them so i wonder if maybe they're setting that up with him and okada um that would be.

43:26 Cool that would be really cool yeah yeah that definitely could be it yeah.

43:30 Yeah, I mean, that's kind of one of those things I had in my, you know, we'll probably talk about it later. It was like, it's one of those things I love about wrestling. Like imagine two years, you know, imagine four years ago, I would have told you that, you know, we could possibly have in Copeland, Okada at the Tokyo Dome. Or if, you know, imagine the flash here, I had told you, you know, New Day might be in a Texas death match with, you know, Hank Mann and Swerve. That's one of the best things about wrestling.

43:54 You just, literally anything can happen. It's just, it's the best. Yep. Yep.

44:01 Um so blood and guts talk just talk about the the setup for this how you feel about the uh the wrestlers involved and what they did to build it up tonight with steve borden making his return.

44:13 Yeah i mean i i love blood and guts but i feel like the past couple years they're just doing it because now it's something that's on the calendar so they're not really putting a lot of thought into it it's just kind of like two weeks before blood and guts you know let's get this faction of guys together and that faction of guys together, we'll have them team up with another faction. We'll have run-ins. And I mean, there was so many people in the ring tonight. It was like, it was insane. There's so many people that I was kind of like, all right, who's turning on who here who's with who like, um.

44:45 Well that, yeah, we'll get to that.

44:47 Yeah.

44:47 Yeah.

44:49 One segment in particular.

44:50 Yeah.

44:50 Yeah.

44:51 They kind of did that classic, uh, you know, when, when, when, uh, when Jay White turned, they did the classic kind of the guy in front of him turns his back. And then there's kind of like that one second of like, Oh my God, is he going to do it?

45:04 And then he does it.

45:07 So, yeah. I mean, it would be great match. It was nice to see Steve Boren back whenever he talks. It's always crazy to me how much he sounds like his dad. It's like so crazy. I mean, it's really better for worse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

45:19 I mean, there's sort of a, yeah.

45:21 Yeah. But you know, I just kind of feel like, you know, it's just kind of another rush job heading into a blood and guts. I like more when there's actually like, you know, these guys have been going at each other for the last six months and they've had a couple of matches. And the only way we can settle this is in a cage, blood and guts. You know what I mean? These kind of just thrown together ones don't really kind of, don't really kind of get, you know, get the juices going, I guess.

45:47 You know what I mean? Would you rather not have blood and guts fall on the same time each year? Um, but instead aim for it, it arrests are saying it because it feels like we've got, that's the, that's the only way to settle this or, or fight it out because we see with war games too. It's like, it sort of has the, Oh, how convenient.

46:08 Yeah. Yeah.

46:10 Yeah.

46:10 I don't, I don't like that. Oh, how convenient vibe of it. And I wouldn't even mind if they don't do it every year. You know what I mean? It's, you know, it's one of those things where it's, you know, it's one of those things it's cool, but like at this point, well, we've kind of seen everything, you know what I mean? You know, take a year off. Let us kind of forget some of the things that have happened inside the cage. You know what I mean? There's only so many things you can do in there with, with stuff, you know, there's always at least one inventive thing that they'll come up with. But, um, those matches sometimes to me, like, it's like, all right, okay, we've seen it. All right.

46:48 I don't think it should feel like something they have to, make happen each year with contrived booking but it should feel like i hope they do it because it's been a while and it feels like it's justified yeah and so like to me the the the clockwork match is fine to do annually especially and i've you know defended it with the caveat of it being tweaked um what as it was there were flaws and and there were things that just didn't in the lore of how aw wrestlers kick out of finishers it wasn't believable how there were so many pinfalls so quickly there wasn't enough to justify it had the announcer said these wrestlers are exhausted after qualifying and lasting in the first part of the match and and i made this case with chris lansdell

47:29 on saturday night on the post show if the announcer said said you know we're seeing a lot acknowledge it we're seeing a lot of pinfalls here with wrestlers who don't normally lose you know why because these wrestlers are used to one-on-one matches where they know their opponent is they don't have five other people coming at them from other directions and they haven't fought for 15 or 20 minutes before we got to this stage second of all wrestlers know that they can fight another day. They're not losing a point. The person pinning them is gaining a point.

47:53 It does lead, and it'd be great to have Taz on commentary here to go, it does lead to a different mindset. As a wrestler, if you know you can take a pin, you're less likely to worry about it because you just want to take the pin, get up, and fight more. You don't want to give... I don't know. Maybe that's overdoing it a bit, but there's a way to talk about how the context is different, therefore expect it to feel different. Certainly they did that.

48:17 I think it was Nigel who said, you know, talk about, Oh, Osprey or, um, uh, Moxley, uh, Osprey giving up was a self-preservation move because it wasn't going to hurt him other than it gives another opponent a chance to score a point, but you want to tap out to fight another day. And that's been, it's something that's been brought up in best of two out of three falls situations too, where it's no, it's okay in the second fall to tap out, to tie it, because if you don't, you might not have any energy left to fight a third fall. So, It makes sense to step out. So own that it's different and actually make that a feature, not a flop. Also, I think it shouldn't be with the champion in it.

48:54 I think it should be for a contendership. You know, I think it should just be you're in a title shot. I know there's a lot of gimmicky ways to earn a title shot, but I would do that or have it be for one of the secondary titles and have it be a signature match for a belt other than the world title. I think having the world champ enter it, I think, turns some people off.

49:12 Yeah, I felt the same way. I wrote in my article, I'll never hate on a promotion for trying something different. as long as it's not like you know viagra on a pole match you know what i mean it's like um you know um or judy bagwell yeah judy bagwell yeah on a forklift um yeah uh i i i enjoyed the match like i kind of had the same thoughts that you did like i think the bones are there for something cool something different um doing it with the world title on a pay-per-view probably, I think they got a little too excited with it. Like, Hey, this will be really cool. Let's do this. Um, especially when will came up first, I was like, Oh, well, of course you came up, um, you know, the, the ending was like, I wish they had done something a little

49:58 bit different with the ending to like the, what are the odds of a will being able to get the three count right with four seconds left. And I wish they'd kind of tweak that a little bit, but yeah, no, I enjoyed that match too. I, I, I think the, the structure on like the bones are there for something cool.

50:15 I like the thought of like for a number one contendership. Yeah. I felt the same way.

50:22 I think wrestling bookers and producers and wrestlers just run their ideas through the filter of, are people going to go, what are the odds or how convenient let's find a different way to do it. Cause there's so many ways to tell stories. Don't, settle for, Oh, what are the odds or how convenient it's like when two wrestlers are going to face each other are in a team. And then there's a miscommunication and it's easily explained, but a normally level headed, smart person who's reasonable acts unreasonable over the convenience that they bumped into each other. And now they're, they're hotheaded and mad. Like they're just tropes. And there's, there's so many ways to tell stories. Look for, just

51:00 put a little extra thought into it. We're not asking something that can't be done or that gets in the way of what you want to do. We're just saying, put a little extra effort into making these things feel less convenient. Oh, what are the odds? How convenient? You don't want that going through your head when you're watching wrestling.

51:16 You get a better experience when it seems like the people putting things together make it feel plausible that this could be naturally happening. Wrestlers work hard to learn how to do moves that look good and sell convincingly. So why does the booking and the tropes undercut that? So much effort is made to make things look real. If that wasn't important, wrestlers wouldn't work hard to make their punches look real, but they do. So let's make everything else around it feel more realistic, including the rapid-fire pinfalls. Also, I wrote about this in the VIP forum earlier today.

51:48 I don't like when something is done, not because it's a logical way the fight would play out, but because it'll add extra excitement to a match. Matches will be exciting if all the exciting stuff... It'll be more exciting if all the exciting stuff is in a context... that has some logic that feels consistent with the normal rules of engagement of how things kind of are in wrestling matches.

52:15 You can do a lot of different, you can have a lot of different ways that you present wrestling, but a promotion on a show should have a certain through line of consistency in how they present their product in their world. There's different rules for horror movies versus dramas versus, I mean, there's just a kind and there's different type with Halloween season. There's different kinds of horror movies. They're supernatural.

52:38 And then there's slasher movies. And then there's a sub genre of thrillers and whatever. So they all kind of have their own set of rules, but you, when you sit down to watch a movie, you want to see that set of rules for that genre applied consistently from opening to closing credits. Wrestling could do better. Wrestling could do better. It's not just AW. I mean, it's across the board. And I think we should ask, we should ask for that. It's not, It is not unreasonable for wrestling fans to ask for a higher IQ execution of these concepts.

53:05 I'm Chris Maitland.

53:06 I'm Justin McClelland.

53:07 We host Wrestling Coast to Coast, a podcast of independent wrestling.

53:11 Every week, Chris and I review a different show or talk about important topics from around the indie wrestling world.

53:16 Learn about the hot underground stars and the future main eventers before anyone else. You can reach us at TorchCoastToCoast at gmail.com and me on Blue Sky at Mind of Maitland. You can reach me at BlueSky at Justin McClelland. Find the show on your PWTorch Daily Cast podcast feed. Search PWTorch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

53:37 Also, stream the latest shows on PWTorch.com. Yeah. When I was watching the match, when Samoa Joe came in last, he came in 8th, I just loved the thought of someone in the back explaining the match to him and the rules and him just being like, yeah, that all sounds cool. I'll come in 8th. I'm not, I'm not doing all that BS before I'll come in a, when the match starts, I'll give you 15 minutes. Yup. Yup.

54:08 Um, yeah, no, totally. Um, Zach Barber in the chat, by the way, as far as the scheduling of letting guts goes, war games always took place at the same time every year, first wrestle war, and then fall brawl. Zach, you know this is violating one of the top rules of my podcast, which is just because something was done in the past doesn't mean it's justification to do it in the future. I mean, if you go back and read the back issues, I covered almost every single war games that there was. I don't know when the first year was, but I was complaining about that then, too.

54:38 How convenient that now we have these two sets of four or five wrestlers who want to face each other, and the only way to settle it is war games, and it happens annually at the same time. So, don't do that. Um, Zach, don't, don't use past. Past is not justification for, uh, what happens currently. If it was kind of dumb, then it's still dumb now. Um, all right. Uh, Derek Mitchell, um, says, let me get this up here. Uh, war games was invented to stop the four horsemen against Dusty Nikita and the road workers was a part of the great American bash tours in the mid eighties and WCW bastardized it after that. Yes, we got our I need to get another wrestling form back issue. The first newsletter I ever got in the mail pre-internet in the

55:25 1980s was a wrestling form newsletter. The editor, John Gallagher, gave us rights to put them up digitally. And that's when I was reading about those summer tours of WCW during the Great American Bash summer tours from their stadium shows at baseball stadiums. And then war games kind of came out of that. And it's so exciting to read in the newsletter what was happening even before I started the Pursing Torch newsletter. But it inspired me to want to do that. I love the idea of giving people coverage in the pre-internet days of wrestling shows outside of their territory. And those summer tours with war games especially was really fun. All right. Thank you, Derek, as always, for the history fact there. So, by the way, blotting

56:06 out for those who didn't see the show, you got Darby, you got the Young Bucks, Will Ospreay, Stephen Borden and Adam Copeland against the Don Callis families, Davis and Doyle, Kevin Knight, Kazuchika Okada, Kyle Fletcher, and Wardlow. So that is the five on five, and that's happening on November 4th.

56:23 So two weeks on Dynamite. I think I got that right, didn't I?

56:29 Yeah.

56:30 Everything right there?

56:30 Okay.

56:31 If I ever get anything wrong, tell me. I don't ever want to think that. Sometimes I'll just mindlessly interchange a name or say something, and I don't want a co-host to be scared or the chat to be scared to go, wait, you just said something that isn't right. All right. So what was I going to bring up?

56:47 next from this. We haven't covered everything.

56:51 Oh, I know.

56:53 You had alluded to it. Did we have like seven turns in one segment with the dogs? I mean, it's fine. It was chaotic, but a lot happened there. And I made note, Orange Cassidy and Jay White against Wheeler Yuta and Danny Garcia. We had Wheeler Yuta and Danny as heels, and the crowd's chanting, F you, Wheeler. And it's fun to chant that. I get that. And Cassidy and Jay White were the baby faces here. But it's strange given the journey John Moxley's been on with the fans lately that we're now just back to just treat Garcia and Yuta as like these heels we want to see get beat up. But by the end of the John Moxley Roderick Strong match that came later, things got really reshuffled.

57:40 And so you had multiple turns, new alliances, A lot going on. I don't know. Taylor, recap what you thought of this or tell us what you thought of it. And where do you think this goes and what's it setting up? And do you approve of it based on what we've seen so far?

57:58 So when it first started happening, I was like, are they going to have two blood and guts matches?

58:02 I know. I totally thought that too.

58:06 Because they normally do the men's and the women's, but I was like, I don't know if there's even a women's blood and guts that they could have. There's really nothing really kind of going on there.

58:15 Yeah.

58:16 So I was wondering if they're going to have two blood and guts, which I think would be a mistake. I don't need two, especially two that have just been thrown together two weeks, two weeks ahead.

58:28 A hundred percent.

58:29 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like seeing, I mean, I'm a big Jay White fan. I like seeing him in a meaningful kind of program. I've been begging at this point, I think it feels like for years now to get him away from this bang bang gang, which I don't think, it seems like it's going to happen. Yeah. But I, I, I love the little ending though, where it was him and Moxley kind of, you know, White was kind of going after Moxley there at the end. I don't know.

58:59 I was trying to think if they had ever faced each other one-on-one, I would imagine probably yes. But I I'd love to see those two. I would just like, I'm just happy that Jay White's back and he's in something meaningful and he's going to be on TV, you know, even if he's with the dogs and the bang, bang, bang.

59:19 What's left of the dogs. Yeah.

59:20 Yeah. I just, him in the mix with Moxley, I think is, is good.

59:25 Is Moxley, Marina Shafir standing up to Mercedes, which we'll get to, and then this angle with Gabe Kidd kind of officially joining the Death Riders, either officially aligned or an official member. I don't know if they'll establish that. Whatever. It's not essential, but it's just a detail. Are the Death Riders now babyfaces? Has this kind of shifted them to that spot? And are fans going to still chant, F you, you'd F you, you'd, uh, at him. Um, but you know, like angle sucks way, but that's affectionate and we, we love you, but we still say this.

1:00:04 Yeah. I, I don't think it is. I just don't think Willie Uter and Daniel Garcia are ever going to come on. I mean, they can try to, they can make, put them in the baby face spot. I just don't think they're ever going to be, you're never going to get the fans to get on their side, but especially, especially Uta. I mean, they've, You've already done that with Garcia so many times, you know, trying to make him the scrappy underdog and get the fans behind him. And it just hasn't worked. He's, he's better in the spot that he is now as kind of like, you know, the yappy dog in the back, just kind of barking with.

1:00:38 The big dog in front of him.

1:00:43 So, yeah, I, I don't know that those death drives, man, they just live in a kind of their own, And I know you hate it, but they kind of just live in their own little world of their own where they're just– which I'm not a fan of either. I feel like, you know, especially Leon. Moxley is basically just a babyface at this point. I mean, especially after WrestleDream where, you know, he's basically– I thought he was going to quit.

1:01:07 I mean, he had me. I thought he was getting ready to quit when he was on the outside of the ring. Yeah, I know. He totally had me. Yeah.

1:01:15 And when Connors and Finley attacked his opponent, Roderick Strong, after Moxley beat him, Mox slid into the ring and backed them away. I mean, that was the most clearly babyface thing he's done. Other things are like, I'm sympathizing with him. I feel for him. He's cool. I like what he's saying. But that was just straightforward, timeless 1962, 1974, 1987.

1:01:36 That is a babyface move wherever it happens. I guess heel if we want to say that or whatever whatever Moxley had he could have just walked away said not my business and he didn't he put himself at risk and he went in there did the right thing stood up for somebody who wasn't even his friend but he knew it was something that was wrong so to me I think the Death Riders are officially baby faces as of tonight chat you let us know what your interpretation is but yeah Ducky D says the Death Riders are the Death Riders nobody's confused about where they stand except wrestling analysts I don't think we're confused about where they stand.

1:02:17 We're just, I mean, but clearly tonight was a shift away from a mild ambiguity where you just kind of react how you want inconsistently to each member. And now they stand for something that is clearly set up in the booking now opposite of a heel group who acted in a consistent heel way and the Death Riders acted in a consistent baby face way. So before it was, there was never confusion. It was being sort of confounded uh by like what are they doing here we want to like them but they keep giving us interference with those emotions um so it's more of a criticism than confusion ducky d um standard deviation says i was pleased with the heat at the end of that segment i suspect they're heating up jay for will it's a fan

1:03:02 yeah i was gonna say as a fan of his are you excited about that yeah.

1:03:06 I i love that i mean i i i i just you know it's so it's been so like stop start with him every time he gets something going he gets hurt and it's just like ah man like i don't know he's just one of those guys i root for i i just you just have your guys you know he's just one of my he's just kind of one of my guys i i always root for i just really hope that now that like the dogs and the bang bang gang together please don't do bullet club stuff just please let it let it lie just don't i don't want to hear anything bullet club i know i just let it go please please let it go.

1:03:41 Yes So I like in the chat, I'm just noticing we had Derek Mitchell recap things like what happened for us. Oh, first of all, a quick note. Derek Mitchell did say Mox and Jay White faced off in the Continental Classic. That makes sense.

1:03:54 I remember that match. That was a great match. Yeah, I actually remember that.

1:03:58 Thanks, Derek. So then he says, I don't feel like Will is. Oh, no, I'm sorry. That's a different comment. The dogs attacked Mox and turned on Kid and merged with the Bang Bang Gang, who turned heel officially to make the Death Riders baby faces. Then, just to keep count, Derek says, it's the Dogs and the Bang Bang Gang, which is Jay White, David Finlay, Clark Connors, Juice Robinson, Ace Austin, and the Guns. So, you'll be quizzed later, everybody.

1:04:29 And Zach goes, are they going to revive the Bullet Club name now? Question mark?

1:04:33 Please.

1:04:34 Ducky D says, as far as Wheeler Yuta goes, it doesn't matter if Wheeler Yuta cures cancer. The crowd will still say F.U.

1:04:39 Yuta.

1:04:39 I'm not sure this is a good indication that he's framed as a heel anymore. I mean, it's like fans love chanting you suck at Kurt Angle. Like, I mean, like it could be a term of endearment, dare we say, with the A.W. fans to chant F.U. Yuta. And he pretends to act upset, but they actually kind of just like doing it. And I don't know. I mean, I think there's actually a way to pull that off. Only in pro wrestling.

1:05:05 Yeah. Yeah.

1:05:08 Ducky D says they've done this before against the Don Cal's family. They cheat. They don't fight for fans' cheers, but they have been getting them consistently for like 11 months. Nothing has changed in my opinion. Do you agree with that, Taylor? Ducky D's saying nothing's changed with the Death Riders, the way Moxley stood up for Roderick Strong tonight, and they all aligned against a heel group. I mean, Ducky D's right.

1:05:27 I mean, there was a time where he thought, well, for sure they're babyfaces, but then there's just been mixed signals everywhere. After that, including tonight with Garcia and Yuta being against babyfaces.

1:05:37 Yeah, I mean, I just think it's just been mixed signals with them for so long. I think the fans are just probably at this point like, we love Mox. We hate Yuta and Garcia. We like Claudio. This is who we're going to cheer for. We're going to boo them no matter what.

1:05:54 Yeah, I think it's... Dougie says, Mox has always respected an opponent who gave him a good fight. Saturday deviation says I viewed Moxley as a baby face since world's end. Well, the rest of the group remained heels. Well, yes, but you shouldn't have a top baby face hanging out with heels acting like heels. Uh, Mark Buschetti says, yeah, Mox seemed like he was going to break away from the death riders, but now it seems like he's solid in the group again. I do wonder if there's going to be something with POC that was going to happen and they had to recalibrate everything. Um, if he was going to break from them.

1:06:25 Yeah. Yeah. As I always thought, uh, when, when, when POC came back this last time, um, And he was putting on great matches and phenomenal promos. And he was really like kind of sinister. I thought that's when they were going to do it. And I think everybody thought that's when it was coming. And then it just never, it just never happened. They just never did it. Yeah.

1:06:44 Zach Barber says, I love this segment. I wrote in my column that the death rider should split from the dogs and be baby faces. And we got both. Zach, are you booking? Are you booking AW? If so, nice. Uh, let's see. Oh, and, and Derek Mitchell did note with, with Pac, uh, passing, it has changed the sentiment of the fans have got behind them. Um, yeah, I mean, it's hard with what Moxley has shown emotionally. Um, it would have been, there'd have been such a headwind, um, to try to portray them as to try to portray Moxley as a villain in any way. People aren't going to boo that guy.

1:07:20 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

1:07:24 So Mercedes brought her up. She came out to celebrate her win, said who's next. And Marina Shafir came out and they had a stare down the highlight. One of the highlights of the show was a highlight. It was just John Moxley at ringside. Whoa. You know, like that was really fun.

1:07:41 So, yeah.

1:07:41 Well, what do you think of the Mercedes segment? As always, she dressed the part.

1:07:46 She.

1:07:46 It carries herself like a star, but did you like her, her, her mic work with Renee? And then after she shoot Renee out of the ring.

1:07:54 Yeah. I mean, this is the, this is the Mercedes that I like just kind of like the, the total asshole. This is what I, this is the Mercedes that I love.

1:08:04 No ambiguity.

1:08:05 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when Marina came out, for me, it was a little bit like, you know what I mean? I was kind of expecting, I was hoping for somebody, you know, different um i think we've kind of seen what marina i think she kind of plays kind of like the china role a little bit better i guess of like kind of the enforcer uh on the side more than actually getting in the ring and putting on you know a match um so yeah i was a little disappointed that it was uh marina.

1:08:40 Before pushing play on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post Shows, check out PWTorch.com and our TV review section and skim through a full rundown of the TV show. If you didn't see it, that's your way to get an overview of what happened before you dive into our in-depth analysis of the key happenings on the show. That's PWTorch.com, your home for live TV content. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with my TV reports. And also check out our NXT and Impact coverage on Tuesdays and Thursdays, our Collision reports on Saturday nights, and of course our live pay-per-view and PLE coverage on weekends. All waiting for you at PWTorch.com.

1:09:15 I was hoping that, this kind of goes back to my thought with Tekla, um, I was hoping maybe they're going to do one more run with, with Mercedes and Tecla. I was hoping that like Tecla is going to come out and attack her from behind maybe, and just kind of, you know, heat that up for a little bit more, but I don't know. Something weird's there with those two.

1:09:34 I feel like, so I don't know. We'll see, you know, kind of just like a placeholder. I feel like right now until they're getting to what they really want to get to with Mercedes. Part of me in the back of my brain was like, and I was like, it's Tony storm coming. Oh yeah. It's like, um, just the way they did it. And it was kind of the long pause. Like no one really knows what's going on with Tony. Um, everything was like, it's going to be till next year. I thought maybe, uh, you know, maybe it's how long has it been?

1:10:06 How long has it been now?

1:10:08 I feel like it's been, I don't know, nine months, eight, nine, eight months.

1:10:12 Um, I mean, I feel like if it's, yeah, I think it'll probably be about a year.

1:10:19 Yeah.

1:10:19 I mean, if it's, yeah, it's at least not, you know, whatever. I mean, it's, it's her, it's her personal situation and people aren't talking about it, but I, I, yeah, it could, it could, I don't know the exact timeline, but it could be any, any time, almost any time now. I am a fan of the Marina Shafir thing though. I, I mean, I like, I like her. I think she, there's some cachet there. I don't think you're what you said about her is true, but I also think it's fine.

1:10:45 Like I think her just stand up to Mercedes who's super cocky and, And Marina's a badass, and she's got the credibility of the Death Riders and Jon Moxley behind her. I just think people want to see Marina beat up Mercedes, even if ultimately she loses in the end. I think people are going to be there for it. I think it's fine. I mean, not every opponent has to be A-level.

1:11:03 I think they might win and have a long reign, like you felt with Toni Storm. I don't want them to cool off Willow entirely, either, though. You want to still have You don't want to seem like you're just cycling through and forgetting about. What do you think of the angle backstage, though, with Tackler with Line of Cross and the Sisters of Sin beating it on the Brawling Birds and Statlander and Cameron? And then Excalibur said, what does that mean for full gear? Because they had set up a match with the Birds against Harley and Statlander.

1:11:32 And now it seemed like Excalibur saying, is that going to happen or is it going to be different? Are we going to get a three-way tag or an eight-woman tag? Or what do you extrapolate? What comes out of that?

1:11:46 Yeah, I mean, I wonder if they're going to have Tecla kind of get involved with the women's tag titles now. That was kind of my thought. She's too good to keep her off TV. You know what I mean? I was worried that AEW might do that thing where someone loses and they go away. I was worried they were going to do that with Nick Wayne, too. I was really happy to see Nick Wayne on TV tonight. I got a little nervous that they were going to do the kind of thing they do where they have a moment and they go away for a bit. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'd like to see Tekla kind of get involved in that tag title kind of realm. I'd like to see her and Jamie Hayter and could put on some good promo battles there.

1:12:27 Yeah. Zach Barber, by the way, endorses Marina Shafir. I call this one. Marina versus Mercedes should be awesome. I say, Zach, you're booking. You're booking it. Yeah. Let's see. I was going to say something else about... Derek Mitchell noted her last Tony's last appearance date was in March of last year so we're at about the seven month mark I guess April May June July September October yeah so we're about seven months in it was at Revolution on March 18th so yeah we gotta wait we probably have a little ways to go depending on you know everything that that is happening all right um oh Chris Jericho Nick Wayne um We've got Nick Wayne showing up in a white limo. Jericho's on the trailer behind him outside the arena.

1:13:20 Struts out, hams it up. If you don't like him, that's not a reason to take him off the air. You're supposed to not like him.

1:13:28 He's playing as.

1:13:30 We've all known somebody like that. I mean, we've all known somebody like that. We're like, I can't wait for this guy to get shown up and have life slap him across the face that, you know, He's got life figured out. He's got a lot coming his way. I think he's playing that well. I thought this was his best performance because I think his prior work, his facial expressions were exaggerated in a way that felt like it wasn't intended, but it was just bad acting or a little try hard. This felt like a guy you want to pay to see get bumped all over the ring and beat up. What The downside is Jericho wasn't, I mean, the crowd sort of sang for him, but Copeland's kind of taken it over. I just imagine, I wrote this

1:14:13 in my report, I imagine Jericho just has to have something to bite on backstage when everyone's singing a Copeland song, or he's got chopsticks or pencils and he's just breaking them out of stress relief, like, he stole my gimmick, the fans are into him more than me. That's supposed to be me out there. But I will say, say what you will about Jericho, and there's a lot you can say. I think he played his role really well here, and I think he has in this feud. Um, he seems like he's trying to re earn lost goodwill.

1:14:41 Yeah.

1:14:42 And I think the bit of, I think he played off of Nick Wayne in a way that I have no critique. Jericho has been a masterful performer, reinvented himself. There's a lot of, uh, a smart ring psychology, high wrestling IQ, um, all of that. And I thought that was present here. The problem is the fans still aren't that into him. Um, you know, they didn't pop at certain times. I didn't think it was, he died out there, but it wasn't like, yeah, you get them Jericho. So it's still a work in progress. So Taylor, what, tell me what you thought of the segment pro and con.

1:15:16 Yeah, I loved it. Um, you know, I, I wrote in my article, Nick, Nick Wayne is slowly growing on me. Um, I, I, and one of my favorite things is wrestling when you can kind of see a young guy, it's starting to click and it's, you can really see it. And I felt tonight was his best performance as well. I felt like he was confident. I felt like he knew that he had the crowd. I loved when he kept cutting off Jericho, when Jericho would go to apologize. And even after the second or third time, you could kind of see a look on Jericho's face that he was really enjoying watching him do that. You know what I mean?

1:15:53 You could see he was like, all right, this kid, this is good. This kid is starting. This is really good stuff. Yeah, I love the pyro bit. It's just... I love the shirt he had, but like, it was like the WCW nitro font. It was just like, I really enjoy this. I think Jericho has done a really, really good job with them. I, I, I, but the thing is now like build off this, give them reps.

1:16:19 You know what I mean? You can kind of see something starting there. Keep them on TV, give them reps, keep putting a mic in his hand, you know, get them out there, get them in front of the crowd, make the crowd hate them. You know what I mean? Make them Dominic Mysterio. You know what I mean? You could like, you could, You know, so yeah, I'm really into this. This is one of my favorite segments of the night on the show.

1:16:41 Do you like the pyro thing? Is that sustainable? Or would that kind of wear out its welcome?

1:16:45 It's going to wear out its welcome. I think they get, you know, I wouldn't be, he can't do it with everybody. Like, I think this might be, I think tonight might be the night. You know, it worked with Jericho. It was funny. He can't, you know, he can't go now, you know, fight. I don't know. go get a win off Samoa Joe.

1:17:05 And now, you know, Nick went and beat Samoa Joe and he does the pyro. It just, it isn't going to, it worked with Jericho, you know, because, um, but I, I wouldn't beat it into the ground.

1:17:16 Yeah.

1:17:16 Yeah.

1:17:17 Uh, Zach Barber consistent. If nothing else goes, uh, please let this be the last time we see Jericho for a while, please. Um, what, what, what, how do you feel about Jericho in this and after this?

1:17:29 So I actually, I put him, I, when I talked about the, the match, uh, at the pay-per-view in my article, I said, and where do we go from here? I said, I'm, I'm good now with seeing Jer. I'm good now until like the first of the year with Jericho, like take the holidays off, see you in the first of the year.

1:17:46 See what, see what we can do there. Um, leave on a high note. You know what I mean? Uh, you know, do the old George Costanza, always leave him wanting more. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I, I, yeah, I don't, I don't think he should go into something right away. Um, but I think he earned a little bit of goodwill back after this one, you know, let, let people miss you.

1:18:06 You know what I mean? You know, that's kind of how I feel about it.

1:18:11 If he waits too long though, he just is getting older.

1:18:14 Yeah.

1:18:15 Yeah.

1:18:15 I mean, a month or two is all right. Okay.

1:18:18 Fair enough.

1:18:18 Yeah.

1:18:19 Yeah. Yeah.

1:18:20 Can't, you can't take like six years off and come back.

1:18:22 No, no. Oh God. I, geez.

1:18:26 I'm exaggerating, but yeah. So some comments on, on both Jericho and Nick Wayne in the chat. Um, Ducky D says, I'd honestly take Jericho reading a phone book in the ring before another Nick Wayne promo. I can't stand anything he's doing besides his ring work. He needs to go back to the lab. Um, and Sanitation says when Nick paused before speaking, it reminded me of Dom, but without the crowd response. Let's see if the crowd learns to boo.

1:18:49 If he keeps raising his hand. the mic to his mouth and weights, Zach Barber says, Nick Wayne is getting better each week. He's a great, he's great in ring and he's got the cocky punk thing down to a T separate him from Jericho. Now for the love of all that's good. And holy, uh, Derek Mitchell says, I don't want to make WWE comparisons, but I know I'd never think Nick Wayne is ahead of Dominic right now. Um, but I'll never say.

1:19:11 He's definitely not ahead of him. Not, not by a long shot, but that same vibe of like, when he comes out immediately booed, you know, just like get this guy.

1:19:22 Out of here.

1:19:23 Um, the one thing that he does though, that I, I hate he does when he, when he comes out, he does like the Zoolander face, like the pose, like with his mouth. I don't know something about he stopped. He got to stop that. That's like, that's like a cartoonish, uh, that, that makes me like, just want you to go away.

1:19:42 Cause I don't want to look at you. You know what I mean? Not like a hundred percent.

1:19:46 That's what he's got to make sure he doesn't do is, is get into the go away. He'd be the type of, you know, every heel, the, the goal is to get, you want to see him lose. You want to see him get beat up. You want to see him get, get, get what they have coming. He has a lot coming his way. Ducky D says, bring back mother Wayne. Interesting.

1:20:04 Ducky D says, I've never seen a Dominic promo, but it sounds like I'd hate him too. That's funny. There are definitely people are AW only and WWE only, um, out there, uh, for sure. And, and both companies need to keep that in mind when they bring people in, you know, who have a history in, in, um, in the other company. Um, a lot of people just suggesting the, the angle backstage with the women, by the way, is setting up a women's blood and guts match. So we'll see, um, how that goes. Any thoughts on Britt Baker on commentary tonight during the, uh, um, the, uh, Queen Aminata, my world match.

1:20:35 Yeah. I wasn't a fan of it. Uh, I wasn't a fan of it at all. Um, It was almost like she was disconnected from what was going on. I didn't think it was great.

1:20:47 Yeah.

1:20:48 Yeah, I'm with you. They announced there'll be the next Motorcycle Machine Guns FTR match on Collision and then a possible deciding third match if there's a sweep on next Wednesday. Any thoughts on what they did to kind of show highlights and set that up?

1:21:04 Yeah, I mean, I thought the match that they had on the pre-show was really great. I really enjoyed it. I like that they're kind of reestablishing the machine guns, making them feel important. I hope they win. I'd like to see them go against the Bucs. It's a little bit of like a dream match. We've seen Bucs FDR so many times at this point. I'd like to see something different. But yeah, no, I like that they're... Because they brought them in and then it was like, all right, well, what's kind of going on? And they're not really doing anything with them. Um, so I love this kind of best of five to get them on TV. Um, cause I mean, it's so much fun on the ring.

1:21:41 Um, what was I going to say about that? Can't recall. I'll go to an email. This is from a Milo in Los Angeles. He goes, um, I think a two minute swerve promo clearly defining what's going on with him. Why new level is gone. Why Prince Nana is no longer dancing. Why this loss of the pay-per-view is eating them up so much would have been way more effective than what they did tonight. Do you agree or disagree?

1:22:03 A two-minute fire swerve promo would have given the show some energy because otherwise it just seemed like a parade of endless matches. Do they need to explain? Part of me thinks they've shown us. Swerve and Hangman perpetually hate each other, get on each other's nerves. There's a truce in a way with what they've been through where they can share screen time and not just attack each other.

1:22:27 But they're always just right on the edge. And I think that was firmly. So your thoughts on what Mila said?

1:22:37 Yeah, I don't think that we needed a promo. I kind of like, I think we, I like the squash. I like the squash match that he was in tonight. When he took his coat off, I wish he had kept his coat on. I wish he had just gone in, kept the coat on, beat the hell out of that guy, walked out of the ring. I thought that would have been, I thought that would have been pretty cool if he didn't even like take the time to take the coat off.

1:22:58 He was just going to go in there and kick ass. But yeah, I mean, I think when it comes to Swerve and Hangman, you know kind of the history there.

1:23:07 But Swerve's a good promo. Ken Swerve, just come on. And I think they wanted us to wonder what happened to New Level and what's going on with them. Because fans are wondering after how Swerve has been acting. But I guess I'm okay with them not being on the show, not draw a ton of attention to it, have Swerve act out the way that he is, and now next week uh, Kofi and Austin just go, dude, what's going on?

1:23:31 You know, and he's like, you don't understand you weren't around for this and, and, and kind of justify his behavior and have that either lead attention or new level going. Oh yeah. I mean, I guess I understand. And, you know, but there's kind of that sense of, Ooh, are they really going to be on the same page much longer?

1:23:45 Yeah.

1:23:46 Yeah. Cause I, I, I do, I don't want swerve and new level to be together for too long. I do want this to kind of be a quick little thing. So if anything, you know, so if that's something that can kind of cause tension, It would be great if Swerve is still so obsessed with Hangman, it costs him his friendship with New Level. You know what I mean?

1:24:08 These two just take everything from each other, back and forth, everything. Friendships, belts, whatever we can take from each other, we take.

1:24:15 Yeah, absolutely.

1:24:18 Hey, everyone. Greg Parks here.

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1:25:20 All right. Email you can use for any of our post shows is Wade Keller post show at gmail.com. Milo just did that and you were invited to do so too. We have some super chats from Derek Mitchell from earlier that I want to get to hear about Will Ospreay circling back to that. Derek, thank you again. King of the super chats. Super appreciate it. Will booking as world champion has been disappointing. Instead of him discussing his victory at WrestleDream, he's wrestling in his eighth straight Dynamite match since winning the title at All Out. And he adds... Oh, that's a secondary, so I'll save that. It's a separate issue. So, yes, it does feel like they just kind of... They did follow up on WrestleDream, but they made such a big

1:26:10 deal out of the Clockwork match. It's almost like they're kind of running from it. Like, they didn't want to... I don't know. I think They talked about what the Bucs went through. I think they should have talked about what Will went through more, you know, have non-buyer's remorse and emphasize that a little bit more. But also, is there something just kind of a bigger picture? Some would say don't give Will Ospreay the mic every week. Sometimes it can do more harm than good. And maybe he shouldn't be wrestling every week, even if he's willing to. So, yeah, Taylor, talk about the points Derek brings up.

1:26:43 Yeah, no, I mean, one of my main concerns when Osprey won the title was I was hoping it wasn't going to be another Hangman situation where the chase turned into something that was better than the actual reign. And even with Hangman, sometimes he kind of went to the back of kind of storylines and the main focus of the show when he was the champ. I think when AEW is running the best is when their champion is out front and focused. And I think if you look at the MJF run from like January to March that they had last year, I think that's the strongest the company had been in a long time. And it was because everyone was focused on the world title. Your champion was the main guy. He was coming out, setting the tone.

1:27:31 And Ospreay is a guy who can do that. I understand what you say sometimes with his promos can get a little bit wonky. He can sometimes say things that are like, what the hell you're talking about guy uh but um you know he's such a charismatic guy like i i just feel like he he he should be the main focus of that show every week i think you're muted.

1:27:57 Wade thank you yeah you want him to be embrace being kind of quirky but you don't want that to be the main thing you think about like and and So it's sort of like, okay, normally you would kind of have a third of this or a third of that and a third of that. This third is what we want to be 80%. So let's find a way to make this third that is a superstar mega champion, mega star champion centerpiece act who's grown into this role.

1:28:24 That's there, but it gets kind of drowned out by a couple other personality traits that you have. Let's make a deliberate effort to minimize that, other two thirds down to just 10 or 20% of what you do. So it's still there. We're not asking you to, you know, just snuff it out and not, not show that, but the thing that's going to make you more of a draw and be a serious, you know, more serious champion, let's emphasize that. And that just takes some planning and, you know, a little bit of finesse. Darrell in the chat says, I would have loved to have heard from Will since he's in his new title run. They let Nick Wayne go out, out there and bomb on the mic tonight. Will could have talked a little. So some

1:29:02 disagreement with– in terms of the opinion on how that Nick Wayne thing went, which I understood. That's why I said if you're mad, you're supposed to be. But I think bombing is not accurate, Taylor.

1:29:14 No, I don't think he bombed at all. That's– no. I think Britt Baker bombed on commentary. You know what I mean?

1:29:21 Yeah.

1:29:21 You know what I mean? Yeah. But I will say, though, with Ospreay coming up, if we're going to get Ospreay-Fletcher, that's going to be a real focus of the show going forward. Maybe they were just kind of biding their time to get to that. But I think if we're going to get Fletcher, Ospreay, Ospreay-Copeland, those are going to be big-time feuds that are going to get a lot of focus on the show.

1:29:47 Derek in the chat says, it's like Will's title reign is avenging losses against the same opponents. I was hoping for so much more with Will, but AW leans on This is the best wrestle, and he needs a singular number one contender. In his super chat, he said, Will's booking his world champ has been disappointing. Instead of him discussing his victory, he's wrestling as a straight down. Okay, I covered that. Where's the other super chat that I wanted to bring up from Derek? Well, anyway, yeah, so kind of just step back to the big picture. How do you feel about what they've done with Will, and do you think tonight's show– set enough wheels in motion for things that it is breaking away from, um, some

1:30:26 concerns people had before the clockwork carnage match.

1:30:30 Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think you can see what's kind of coming on the horizon. We just have to get there, I guess. You know what I mean? Um, you know, not every show can be, uh, sometimes you have to have a show tonight. That's kind of setting things up. You know what I mean? Tonight was kind of like a setup show. I feel like, um, we're setting things up for the future. Um, I, you can kind of see coming out of that clockwork carnage match where they want to go with certain things. So if they're going to go that way, I, I, I'm not too worried. I, you know, my, my scale of one to 10, I worry probably at a four, you know? Yeah. Yep.

1:31:07 Yep. I, yeah, I, there's so much that will has so much going for him. You know, he's just, he can be the face of this brand and you only have so much time to, to, just have him be a guy, you know, and, and that's what Derek says, you know, will feels like another guy in the roster instead of a central figure in the promotion. And that just is an ongoing, I think legit concern to have about what they're doing is don't miss the window to make him seem special. Boris in the chat says, you know, he's been knocked out for, uh, for six with the tragedies.

1:31:42 It's okay that it's not perfect with Osprey.

1:31:44 Yeah.

1:31:44 I mean, it's, it's okay to say there might be justification or reason out of their control. Um, But it doesn't mean it's not worth bringing up. Let's make a real effort to make sure that things get on track in a better way. Here's the other super chat from Derek I wanted to bring up. Thank you, Derek, again. Wade, you discussed this on the WrestleDream post show. AW really needs to get away from their tagline. This is where the best wrestle. And they should emphasize having the best superstars in wrestling.

1:32:11 Yes.

1:32:13 I agree. I mean, I can say it in passing, but your tagline, when you define something that's self-evident, What you want to do is emphasize something that, if you emphasize it, it manifests into reality, which is just say, with a straight face, boldly, without seeming manipulative or pushy, this is where the biggest stars are. Are people going to go, no, none of your guys are bigger than Roman Reigns or now Olva Femi or Cody Rhodes or Randy Orton? Well, maybe, but I think there's an audience out there, Taylor, who are willing to embrace that, yes, Will Ospreay, I mean, Kenny Omega and Swerve Strickland and Hangman, these are the biggest stars in wrestling. Mercedes Monet and Adam Copeland are every bit the star that Becky Lynch

1:32:56 and Randy Orton are. Don't sell yourself short and don't think, oh, we have to just settle for having the best wrestlers, but not the biggest stars. People become big stars because the promoter frames them as big stars. And I do think they have enough with Kyle Fletcher, Don Callis, Okada. I mean, we could start anywhere on that roster and go, this is a roster with people where it's not a stretch to say we have the biggest stars on the planet who also happen to be having the best matches.

1:33:25 Yeah no i i totally agree with that i i think you could if you lined up you know the rosters of aw and wwe it's you know it it's close you know it's it's it's it's closer than it was you know what i mean over the last uh few years um and kind of just to go back to which which i you know i didn't really think about too like the the amount of kind of that AEW has dealt with over the last, you know, month or two since Will's reign, you know, with The Butcher and Pac, and then they had the Rebel episode. You know, I think if you kind of take that on the perspective too, which, you know, I didn't really think about myself, kind of hard to get momentum going for a guy when you're having these type of, you know, tribute matches

1:34:10 and tribute shows and special shows.

1:34:13 And a Tuesday night episode too.

1:34:14 Yeah. With a much smaller audience. That was, I forget, who just made that comment. That was a great comment that I didn't even really, you know, kind of think about when I was thinking about kind of the will run.

1:34:24 So a little pushback from a couple of people in chat about AW promoting Will Ospreay as a big star. I hope I'm framing your counter argument fairly. Standard Deviation says, I disagree. Then you're comparing yourself to WWE, but you're worse. So if he's talking about what we were just talking about, and I think he is, what makes it work? Let's flip everybody around. Let's say AW has WWE's roster and suddenly AEW Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland and Hangman Page and the Young Bucks and New Level and Adam Copeland and Mercedes and Marina Shafir and John freaking Moxley are in WWE and they promote them the way they promote Oba and Roman and Cody and Pump. You would just be saying the same thing. The reason that it is

1:35:11 it feels lopsided and a stretch is because AW isn't in the business of framing their best wrestlers with the most charisma and the most the the most familiarity to the larger mainstream audience, they don't frame them as big stars. Now, the disadvantage, and this is, it's kind of funny because the disadvantage is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. They run smaller buildings in front of smaller crowds in WWE. So why is that? Well, because you don't promote your wrestlers as stars and there's only, there's a certain limited audience that just wants to see the best wrestle. Most people want to go to see a star that they're invested in their journey and they think that they're watching the top, the top rock stars of this industry. WWE does a

1:35:49 better job with that. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You end up with bigger arenas with bigger crowds. So you kind of have to put, you have to promote them as the biggest stars, even before you have the biggest crowds in order to grow your crowds. So there has to be a little bit of a, of a fraudulent overstatement that I think people are, that their fan base would be willing to live with, with the excuse being WWE has a big head start. And they also, by the way, have Wembley, and other big crowds that they're going to, to show we are not small time. This is not, you know, we, we draw big crowds. We have, but they should emphasize more of their giant pay-per-view crowds and in their, you know, when they visually show their wrestlers,

1:36:30 they should be showing more Wembley footage and more of their pay-per-view crowds. Cause they still do draw big crowds that match these typical Ron Smackdown for their pay-per-views. iPhone users. If you're listening to us on the native podcast app on your iPhone app, You can unlock our commercial-free versions of our free shows by searching PWTorch in Apple Podcasts.

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1:37:33 Yeah, no, I totally, I mean, I, I, I totally agree. I mean, even if you look at WWE's roster, I mean, They started with WWE, but Punk and Cody are two of the biggest guys they had there, and they were at AEW for a long time. You know what I mean? So if you are promoting your guys the right way– I mean, Roman's Roman. Roman's in a different– you put him to the side. That's a different level of different stratosphere.

1:37:54 You know what I mean? But, yeah, I mean, like you said, if you flip the rosters, there's no reason why guys like The Bucks and Kenny Omega and Kyle Fletcher couldn't be as big as the guys they have now on WWE right now.

1:38:08 And I don't wave the white flag as far as Roman goes, because Will Ospreay and Jon Moxley did just pull two names out to the AW audience and people are sampling the product. I think people are lacking imagination. There were ECW fans in the original Paul Heyman ECW who thought that Raven was a bigger star than anyone in the WWE for WCW or that public enemy or the, like, I'm just like, so many names are coming through my head of these are the biggest stars. Sabu is better than anybody. He is the homicidal suicidal mania ECW fans.

1:38:43 Cause Paul Heyman was unabashed in saying, these are the biggest stars, but he framed them as they're the biggest stars because we define that in a different way than those other guys do. And AW can do that, but don't just go, well, star ratings, you know, they're going to win best match. They're higher in the PWI 500.

1:39:02 MJF is not going to take a backseat to Roman Reigns right now. If you promote MJF in the right way, I'm sorry. I just, WCW fans during the Jim Crockett promotion mid to late 80s, they saw Ric Flair as a bigger star than Hulk Hogan. With smaller crowds and no WrestleMania, that was their guy. He was the bigger star.

1:39:20 In Dallas, the Von Eriks were the biggest stars when Hulk Hogan was rising. Because world-class promoted him that way. They didn't have a defeatist attitude and going, well, we have to say that we have the most charismatic family or the best feuds. No, they were the biggest stars. Every territory did that. Jerry Lawler was the biggest star in Memphis. AW can do a better job with that.

1:39:47 So I don't know. Standard Aviation says, I can buy into the idea that Ospreay is better than Roman in the category of being the best wrestler, but I'd laugh if they tried to sell me that he's a bigger star than Roman.

1:39:58 It's not about saying bigger star. It's about saying we have guys that are also, I mean, I've said this on this show before, but like, At the beginning of AEW, they really missed the boat. And I'm sure this had a lot to do with Kenny too, but they really missed the boat on making Kenny their kind of Roman, their centerpiece. I mean, that entrance at All Out was...

1:40:26 I mean, when he walked out... I mean, the Ospreay entrance was incredible as well. But man, when Kenny walked out on that effing stage, I was like, this guy is a freaking... He's he's a video game character. I mean, it's just like, man, like the aura that he had during that entrance was just like you could put that against any wrestling entry. I mean, it's just that guy is just a star. He just looks like it has himself like it. And they really just missed the boat at the beginning there of really making him the centerpiece of that of that place.

1:40:59 You don't want to have, you know, stretch credulity. You don't want fans just be like, oh, you're you're con man. You're conning us. We know better. But I'm sorry, you put a parade of, and in no particular order, Kenny Omega, Adam Copeland, Hangman Page, Swerve Strickland, Jon Moxley, Will Ospreay, the Young Bucks, the New Level, Mercedes Monet, when Tony Storm is back, MJF. If you feature them in your opening of AEW, if you have the announcers, and this is what I wrote in the VIP forum during Dynamite because I felt so strongly about it, the announcers need to make it seem like not everybody's equal. they're at different times during different stretches of time. Some people are a bigger deal. And I see in the chat, people like, well,

1:41:41 it'd be crazy to say that. Um, it'd be, I'd laugh you out of the, out of the house. Standard deviation says, if you said that, that Will Ospreay is a bigger star than Roman. Well, Roman has more history being a big star, but AEW can make Will Ospreay to their audience and casual fans who are looking for something different than three facial expression, narcissistic prick roman reigns who's getting cheered based on inertia and past accomplishments and by the way i love i loved his match at money the bank i think he's amazingly charismatic i'm not dissing on what i'm saying is how how do you frame will osprey with the implication to fans being this guy is today's big star he's not living on past

1:42:24 laurels yeah he and there's nobody like wrestling promoters you say all the time, this could be a main event anywhere in the world when it was a territory. Every announcer in every territory goes, this could be a main event anywhere in the world. There's promoters all over the world who bid for this match and we got it.

1:42:38 Say that about Will Ospreay. Say there's no bigger star in wrestling than Will Ospreay. There's nobody he could not defeat in the ring. This guy's in his prime. Gush about him like Bill Watts gushed about Eric Watts. Just be a proud dad who can't shut up about him because you know what? He can back it up. I just...

1:42:59 Same thing with MJF. I mean, you can't pick eight guys, but you got to pick a few and one should be at the top and that should be your world champion. Moxie can be kind of your undertaker-esque, you know, the guy who's always there. He's not always a world champ in the main events, but he's there and he's a star.

1:43:16 AW can do a better job with it. Don't give up on that is my point. You're the number two company, but you have what AW has. Don't go, ah, we're going to wave the white flag on having superstars who are drawing power. Just come to see good matches, please. You're limiting yourself, and you don't need to do it.

1:43:34 Zach Barber says, for a wrestling forward company, the tagline makes sense.

1:43:37 No.

1:43:39 It is a wrestling forward company. That's self-evident. Everybody watching knows that. You don't need to talk about it. What you need to do is frame your guys who are having these matches as stars. All right. Anything else you want to bring up from your notes around this topic or any other topic, Taylor, before we sign off?

1:43:54 Um, I don't think so. I think we hit, I think we hit everything. Um, yeah, no, I hit everything.

1:44:02 All right. A couple of chat comments to close things out then. Uh, Derek says, Wade, you're absolutely preaching the gospel. Like you, I lived through the era when Ric Flair carried himself as the true world champion of wrestling, never adopting a defeatist attitude against the WWF. Standard deviation says, I still disagree. To maximize influencing the audience's perception of star power, you need to focus more on entrances, video packages, posing, and importantly, visual appearance. I don't know who you're disagreeing with, but that is what I'm advocating they do for Will Ospreay.

1:44:30 All of those things. And they're not. They do. I mean, actually, when I say they're not, they're not consistently enough. Don't lose sight of the fact that when he's on TV... Like, they should have a clip of David Crockett going, my God, everybody, Dusty Rhodes is going to be on the show later today.

1:44:44 Jim Ross, Stone Cold is going to be here tonight. We got Goldberg tonight. Willie Extended Street. There are time. Eric, just listen to Eric Bischoff go, this is where the big boys play. And it redefined Nitro. This is where the big boys play. The WBF had the lead. They were the bigger brand. And sometimes you got to say what you want to be before you, you know, it's sort of dress for the job you want. Like, tout your wrestlers ahead of their perception so that it seems like they They could be, uh, Ducky D just says, um, what makes the most money is not in my wheelhouse or my concern, but I think there is money in marketing.

1:45:18 AW is a purist alternative to the giant soulless number one company. Um, well, my, it's not a concern that AW make the most money, but I want AW fans to, who liked the product and the wrestlers who are sacrificing to put on these great matches, to have the biggest crowds possible and the most energy. I think that that serves things and, and, So it's not about Tony Khan making money. It's just about what's the best way to present the assets that AW has. And I think we can all share that as viewers of investing and watching this product. Just want the most people to see it and get the most out of what you have and the efforts being made. Awesome. PWTorch, VIPinfo.com. Go VIP. Taylor, thanks so much. Good to have you back. And we

1:46:00 look forward to your next call.

1:46:02 Yeah, happy to be back. Thanks to the chat. Nice to be back. And look out for my article. It'll be after every pay-per-view.

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