Despite initially dealing with the Steve Corino pandemic rather well, adapting his Get These
Hands catchphrase to Wash These Hands, it seems the devil has quickly made work for
those very idle beef mittens, with the frustrations of self-isolation seemingly getting to current
WWE Intercontinental Champion Braun Strowman.
After already getting in a Twitter spat with new AEW star Lance Archer, when a fan tweeted
Strowman that Archer is what Braun should’ve been, looking like a true beast.
Strowman himself replied calling Archer: “Great value brand version of me!!!!!
Good joke.”
Which prompted Lance to tweet back: “Great Value you say?!
Hmmmm.
Great.
Yup!
Valuable.
Yup!
Experienced.
Yup!
Agile Yup!
Interesting.
Yup!
Personality Yup!
So.
Yea.
You can say I’m of DAMN GOOD VALUE!
So thanx KID.”
To which Braun replied: “Anytime old man!!!!”
Lance, for context, is 43 - seven years older than Strowman.
But Braun - in true Braun fashion - wasn’t done with you, then cutting promos on fans
who leapt to Archer’s defence, telling one: “Shut up dork.
You’ve tweeted almost 5,000 times and you don’t have a profile pic.
Back to your basement” Saying to another: “your a wannabe video
editor” And then replying to a third who pointed out
he used the wrong kind of ‘your’ there - YOU ARE, YOUR, YOU’RE - GRAMMAR SLAM:
“See here’s where you make yourself self look even dumber than your profile makes you
look.
I clearly spelled Your correctly unlike the way you butchered brother.
Just didnt happen to catch my phone automatically did that instead of you’re!!!!!
Big difference” What?
It’s the online equivalent of Braun doing his big run round the ring charge, just on
Twitter accounts instead of wrestlers.
Strowman then claimed the string of tweets was actually just because “I’m bored sitting
at home so I’m trying to see how many people I can trigger.”
Ah, the Seth Rollins babyface Twitter game.
But then, just like Rollins, he managed to turn full heel with a jab at a different AEW
star.
Last week, Dark Order member Evil Uno tweeted that wrestling fans should try to support
the indie wrestlers affected by the Steve Corino pandemic, who’ve seen all their upcoming
date cancelled: “In the wake of all these cancellations…
Support the independants.
Be it wrestling, music, etc.
Buy their merch, support them through Patreon, share their stuff.
The gig economy is going to a HUGE hit and many don't have the safety net necessary to
survive this.”
Not very evil for an Evil Uno, you might think.
Well this is Twitter, so someone managed to take offence to it.
And it was Braun over a week later.
The Instagram account BuryingSmarks - whose bio’s mission statement is to “easily
trigger AEW wrestlers and their fanbase” - posted a screenshot of Evil Uno’s tweet,
asking ‘Who’s gonna help out the fans when they run out of money?’
A liberatarian sentiment that Strowman seemingly connected with yesterday, where he commented
from his account: “Here we go with more of the somebody pay
for my bills stuff.
If you can't afford to pay your bills maybe you should change professions.
That's why I quit strongman I loved it but I couldn't afford to live so instead of making
a go fund me or a patreon…”
An always timely reminder to help support WrestleTalk on Patreon by clicking the link
below.
“and for anyone that goes that's easy for you to say you're a wwe superstar just and
FYI 7 years ago I moved to fl with everything I owned in a Kia Soul with 150$ to my name
when I started this!!!!!”
Strowman has since deleted those comments, but the images of them are circling around
the interwebz in condementation.
But to be outraged over Braun’s posts - which he does claim were well-intentioned, just
perhaps poorly worded - would be to miss the real story; as Strowman’s rant became increasingly
more honest about the situation with WWE and its wrestlers…
Braun defended himself as fans called him out on Twitter, explaining how he got through
struggles before he made it to WWE: “I’ve dug ditches shovled dog crap worked
on cars bailed hay I’ve done it all.
You act like I was born with a sliver spoon in my mouth we got by as a family when I was
a kid.
I would have done what i always did then.
Found a way to survive” And how he’s actively helping the Steve
Corino situation, donating $5,000 to research, working with charities, and helping deliver
groceries to people who can’t do it themselves.
Some fans even accused Strowman of bashing his fellow SmackDown star Ali, who had tweeted
in support of independent wrestling last week - which Braun denied.
But then it turned out Braun is in the same situation as those very wrestlers regarding
pay coming in, replying to a tweet asking whether WWE is paying him less during this
period: “I get paid when I work.
Private contractor.
So nothing is coming in at the moment” The fan asked whether that means Braun isn’t
even getting half his pay, to which Braun claimed: Nope.
What do you think about Braun Strowman’s online rant?
Let me know in the comments where I’ll be replying FROM OUTTA NOWHERE!
And it seems someone else definitely isn’t being paid by WWE.
CM Punk.
Because he doesn’t work for them.
Stick with me, this is news, I promise.
Punk joked on Twitter earlier this week about holding WrestleMania in front of no fans at
the WWE Performance Center: “Well that’s one way to make sure Roman finally gets not
booed and nobody chants for meeeeeeee.”
A fan then accused Punk of begging for an in-ring return, which Punk tantalisingly teased:
“I’m not the one texting begging for a match with me at mania.
Eyes EMOJI!”
This appears to have prompted a number of PWInsider’s readers to ask if Punk was ever
planned to wrestle Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 36, after the two’s feud when Punk first
debuted on WWE Backstage - and the answer is: “no, they were not.”
In fact, PWInsider claims there has been “zero communication between WWE management and CM
Punk regarding such a match or even Punk appearing at Wrestlemania in any form.
Nothing was offered.
Nothing was turned down.
The conversations never took place.”
While Rollins pushed for the match on Twitter, and Mike Johnson speculates Seth even reached
out to Punk privately about the idea, there has been no contact between Punk and WWE,
with no internal talk of using Punk in the promotion, even after his Backstage debut.
PWInsider reiterates that Punk’s deal is with Fox only, and doesn’t work for WWE.
Which means…
CM Punk to AEW confirmed.
But, understandably, Blood and Guts match not to AEW confirmed.
AEW have announced on Twitter that while they still intend to put on “live weekly shows
every Wednesday night on TNT”, they have decided to postpone their huge Blood and Guts
Don’t Call It War Games match between the Inner Circle and The Elite plus Matt Hardy
- which was originally scheduled for next week - as “the time and circumstances aren’t
right for the card we had planned.”
But they’ve got quite the replacement, announcing a one-on-one, face-to-face between Chris Jericho
and the newly debuted Matt Hardy!
As they didn’t say match, this will likely be either an in-ring segment, or, hopefully,
some Broken Universe craziness from the Hardy compound.
It seems after a week of adjustment, wrestling programmes are starting to figure out empty
arena shows, as last night’s SmackDown was also a big improvement…
Michael Cole opened the show announcing that huge WrestleMania news we’re all still recovering
from: it’ll be hosted by the Gronk.
Oh, and it’s going to be over two nights.
But Who is The Gronk?
What is The Gronk?
Why is The Gronk?
SmackDown answered these right away: He’s Mojo Rawley, but again.
Also Mojo is on Smackdown now, Brand split lol.
He came out to do the age-old “boy gosh howdy I’m so lucky to be here I’m such
a fun” routine, to be interrupted by King Corbin, who was interrupted by Elias, and
Mojo and Gronk pushed Corbin over like they’re eight years old.
Oh, I know they’re gimmick: they’re annoying!
Gronk then said he can’t make matches for WrestleMania, and then booked Elias vs Corbin
for WrestleMania.
AEW showed on Wednesday night you can have a good wrestling show in front of no fans.
SmackDown took that baton with a really good tag match between Drew Gulak and Daniel Bryan
vs Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura - four very good wrestlers doing very good wrestling.
Gulak and Bryan mesh perfectly together, with Bryan rolling up Cesaro for the win, and then
challenged Sami Zayn for an Intercontinental title match at Mania - which Sami accepted,
only if Gulak can beat Nakamura next week.
It seems WWE have dropped Zayn’s Braun Strowman feud, which is good because Braun’s too
busy giving Twitter these hands anyway.
PAIGE HERE - not now Paige, oh it’s via Skype, to do buzz words, women’s evolution,
buzz words, WrestleMania announcement of six-pack challenge for the SmackDown women’s title
between Bayley, Lacey Evans, Dana Brooke, Tamina, Naomi, and...
Sasha Banks.
Team BAD reunion for the win!
Bayley was upset, and Sasha slyly smiled as this could be a way for her to win the title.
It doesn’t really make sense why Tamina is there, but Bayley and Banks were very good
here.
Hey, remember that time when John Cena beat Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania XXX even though
we all know he shouldn’t have and it totally derailed Bray’s career for several years?
Well now we get to watch it again in its entirety!
Only this time we get to pretend WWE did it on purpose to create The Fiend and set up
a rematch for six years later!
We’ll be releasing our 4 hour plus review of WrestleMania 30 from our Patreon archives
into the free podcast feed to help that self-isolation boredom - so subscribe to the WrestleTalk
Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from to hear our in-depth thoughts on that match.
Alexa Bliss challenged Asuka to a match on next week’s Smackdown.
Brand split lol.
And Miz and Morrison did some comedy when they dressed up as their potential tag challengers
for WrestleMania, which led to a match with Heavy Machinery.
It was all decent stuff, but got amazing when Otis’ hot tag was interrupted by Dolph Ziggler
who showed pictures of him and Mandy Rose.
Otis’ selling of this was genuinely heartbreaking, and his freak out over Dolph, Morrison and
Miz - aka the WWE midcard of 2008 - was fantastic.
Tucker tried to calm him down, but Otis flipped and hit all the baddies with a chair for the
DQ.
I love this storyline, and although WrestleVotes reported earlier this week that their Mania
match might be cancelled, this would suggest those plans could still go ahead now it’s
over two nights.
And the main event was a contract signing between Roman Reigns and Goldberg.
Maybe it’s just the lack of crowd noise, but this feud feels like it has zero heat.
The two said some words, but they never had any real emotion.
They both made the match official and almost kissed.
I mean went nose-to-nose.
So that was this week’s Smackdown in about 4 minutes, vote in the poll above my head
to let me know what you thought of the show.
This was a lot better than Raw, because it felt like an actual wrestling show and not
just filler.
The opening tag was really good, Otis’ freakout was brilliant, and the Paige segment with
Bayley and Banks was really fun.
Matt Hardy shoots on WWE after leaving for AEW!
Click the video on the right to find out what he said!
And click the video below that for the 10 most shocking takeaways from Hardy’s Talk
Is Jericho interview.
I’ve been Oli Davis, and that was wrestling.