In this WrestleTalk News, MJF and Tony Khan get into a heated argument, Ronda Rousey missed
Raw due to a WWE botch, Luke’s review of Raw and more.
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Whenever there’s an MJF story in the news, it’s always hard to tell what’s work and
what’s shoot and what’s work shoot and if we’re working ourselves into a shoot,
brother, because MJF never stops being in character, even in interviews and the like.
However, this time it seems pretty legit. Recently, MJF appeared in an interview with
Ariel Helwani, where he spoke about how great WWE is, what amazing work they’re doing
currently, what a heel. However, this interview appeared to cause
friction between MJF and Tony Khan, as according to Fightful Select, the two of them reportedly
had a “heated discussion” over the weekend, that “left both men frustrated”.
While MJF was reportedly upset regarding his contract status, as he keeps mentioning about
his free agency in the future in 2024, including in this interview with Ariel Helwani, Tony
Khan reportedly wasn’t frustrated about the content of the interview, but rather that
it was set up “without notifying AEW's PR team”.
For those not in the know of how wrestling PR usually works, we have had AEW stars on
the WrestleTalk Podcast channel in recent months, such as Eddie Kingston & Ricky Starks,
and both of those were indeed setup via AEW’s PR team. It’s standard protocol for interviews
for wrestlers from AEW and WWE. This would appear to be a potential wedge
in AEW’s plans, as fans have repeatedly seen and fantasy booked MJF as a future AEW
World Champion, however with tensions being high between MJF and the owner of the company,
those plans might change. In a more recent and more positive update
however, Dave Melzter of the Wrestling Observer reported that the issues between Khan and
MJF “are now said to be settled”, and he confirmed that while the initial story
was true, there was no fight or physical altercation between the two.
As Luke mentioned in yesterday’s news episode, WWE tried to stack last night’s episode
of WrestleMania Raw, with both Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar appearing, wowee, both champions
on one show? It must be Christmas, and announcing a huge tag match of Bianca Belair and Ronda
Rousey vs Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair. However, this announcement was quickly deleted
from social media, and of course the match didn’t happen. Ronda herself spoke on a
Facebook stream on the day the announcement was made saying “I’m not going to be at
Raw tomorrow, I think that’s a mistake”. On Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez
revealed that the reason for her missing the show was that WWE “didn’t send her a plane
ticket”. Great job, WWE.
Another announced match that never took place on WrestleMania Raw was Alpha Academy vs The
Street Profits ahead of their triple threat match against RK-Bro at WrestleMania. However,
Alpha Academy were pulled from the show for an unknown reason. According to Fightful Select,
as of 7pm EST yesterday, they were still on WWE’s running order, with their match due
to take place after the opening segment, but this didn’t happen.
However we did see some build to the Triple Threat as the main event was RK-Bro vs The
Usos with both teams of Shinsuke Nakamura & Rick Boogs and The Street Profits getting
involved in a post-match brawl, though Alpha Academy were still nowhere to be seen.
Fingers crossed everything is ok with them. The triple threat is still being promoted
for WrestleMania currently, so hopefully it does still go ahead.
And now hot tag to Luke. It’s the go-home edition of Monday Night
Raw. Or as it was renamed in an effort to boost ratings, WrestleMania Raw! Come on,
guys, RAWstleMania was right there. Or, WrestleManiRAW. Put some effort in.
But the show did feel like it did have some effort made. Sort of.
For the last few weeks on the WrestleTalk Podcast, I’ve bemoaned the lack of star
power on Monday Night Raw because both the WWE Champion and Universal Champion have been
exclusively on SmackDown. That’s not a slight against Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, Becky Lynch
or anyone else. It’s because WWE have been telling you, the viewer, that the most important
things in WWE right now are the WWE Champion and the Universal Champion. And, to a slightly
lesser extent, Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey. And with none of those four on Monday Nights,
Raw has been lacking direction and purpose. And while they did just rebadge this to WrestleMania
Raw, the real name should have been Monday Night SmackDown.
Which kicked off with Brock Lesnar cutting a promo on Roman Reigns saying there’s nowhere
left for him to run. Apart from later in the show where Roman also cut a promo and went
unchallenged by Brock. Did he go home after his promo or something? Hilariously Brock
buried Paul Heyman for stealing all of his mic time when he was his manager, then proceeded
to cut a rambling promo that seemingly lost its way. But Brock is so affable in this new
role of his that it didn’t really matter, and this was totally fine.
We did get a bit of usual Monday Night Raw stuff next, however, as The Miz took on Rey
Mysterio in a storyline where the heels stole Rey’s precious mask. So precious, that Rey
just had another mask on. And he got the one Miz stole last week back. So… what’s the
story here? Well, the story is that Logan Paul is the big star, and him getting hit
with the 619 is going to be the big spot of their Mania match, as he avoided it again
on this show. They hit it on Miz though, because he’s not a star.
Seth Rollins arrived 3 hours early for his meeting with Vince McMahon, the pay off of
which was, he had to wait 3 hours for his meeting and it didn’t bother him. Cool story,
bro. Speaking of cool stories, bro, Seth Rollins has spent the last few weeks going to extreme
lengths to get a WrestleMania match - to the point where it totally unravelled him last
week and he destroyed the Monday Night Raw set. So what did Vince do here? He just gave
him a Mania match. Cool story bro. The match will be against an opponent of Vince’s choosing,
and it will be hilarious if it isn’t Cody. Omos then beat The Viking Raiders by count
out when he hit one of them with a clothesline. I’m not kidding. Which set up Raw’s big
return angle. Last month it was reported that Bobby Lashley
- who was WWE Champion at the time - was going to be off the show for months due to a shoulder
injury. But like the freak athlete that he is, Bobby Lashley is back on Raw just a few
weeks later and will face Omos at WrestleMania. On paper - I mean it sounds horrible - but
on paper this sounds like a good idea. Omos cannot be beaten by a regular man, but Bobby
is no ordinary lad called Bob, he’s The Almighty. And WWE have been so protective
of Omos since he made his in-ring debut last Mania (as the Omos character, let’s not
forget his short stint as Big Ninja with Tozawa), to the point where Omos hasn’t even been
taken off his feet in over a year. Which is such an intriguing and tantalising premise
going into Mania… no wait, Bobby just took him off his feet on Raw. Like… what? That
was… the one thing. And you just did it with no fanfare. And worse still, it didn’t
even get a reaction from this very hot crowd. Failure, this was.
What isn’t a failure - and I cannot believe I’m saying this - is Reggie proposing to
Dana Brooke backstage which she accepted, saving her from Tamina, who then got proposed
to by Tozawa which she accepted, while R-Truth watched on with binoculars like some pervy
George McFly. No kidding, this might have been my favourite thing on the show. I proper
laughed at it. I don’t know what that says about me.
Roman Reigns cut that aforementioned promo, which is fun for a viewer watching it on replay,
as it means you can skip forward about 10 minutes and miss absolutely nothing but his
long entrance. This promo was great, really great, but it’s a promo I’ve heard before.
And it was so weird to have both Brock and Roman on this show, and do nothing with them
other than chat in separate segments. The Steiner Brothers have 33 ⅓ percents
chance of going into the Hall of Fame. And the good guy team of Sasha Banks, Naomia,
Rhea Ripley and Liv Morgan beat the baddie team of Queen Zelina, Carmella, Shayna Baszler
and Natalya. Kevin Owens cut a good promo on Steve Austin
after a superb video package for the Rattlesnake. Seriously, this promo was ace - even if it
was sountracked by Kid Rock. And then Raw’s Austin Theory took on SmackDown’s
Ricochet. One of these men is the Intercontinental Champion, and the other one isn’t. One of
these men has a massive storyline for WrestleMania and the other one doesn’t. One of these
men won this match with ease in 90 seconds, while the other one looked like a total chump.
Goddamit, WWE. Bianca Belair sold her devastating injury
angle from 2 weeks ago by doing her regular dancing entrance and smiling and cutting a
promo normally - even I made more of an effort to sell a neck injury angle and I’m a twat
on YouTube - and then stood tall over Becky Lynch who tried to sneak attack her, by hitting
2 KODs and then cutting off some of her hair. This angle was actually awesome, and Becky’s
manic look on her face sold me on their match this Sunday more than anything. It should
be the main event of night one. It won’t, because it will either be Flair and Rousey
or the Steve Austin podcast, but it should be Becky and Belair.
Drew McIntyre beat Madcap Moss and Happy Corbin in our second 2-1 handicap match of the night,
and then Corbin stood tall laying out Drew after the match while Jimmy Smits said - and
I’m not kidding here - “that’s how you stay undefeated”. HE LITERALLY JUST GOT
DEFEATED, JIMMY. Edge and AJ cut promos on each other in a
surprising lack of angle to hype their match this weekend.
And RKBro and The Usos had a decent match that was ruined by a lame DQ finish when the
Street Profits - like heels - jumped RKBro and then - like chumps - got laid out by RKBro.
What a weird finish to the show. It’s surprising that this review has gone
long as - despite there being a lot to say - not a whole lot of anything happened on
this go home edition of Raw before WrestleMania. Credit to WWE, every segment was designed
to hype up Mania, but I don’t think it was overly successful in doing so. This week’s
Raw is 2 out of 5. I’m not doing Oli’s Steiner Maths bollocks here.