While WWE’s trips to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have often been perceived as morally dubious,
the most recent trip for Night of Champions on May 27 had a slightly more positive feel.
No more evident of this was Sami Zayn who is of Syrian descent
and had not appeared on a single Saudi PLE since the deal was struck in 2018.
While always a bit murky, the reasoning was believed to be due to political tensions
between Saudi Arabia and Syria, with the Saudi government demanding Zayn not appear.
However, as we all saw last Saturday that seems to have changed, with relations between Saudi Arabia
and Syria recently improving, Zayn seems to have now also been allowed to compete in the country.
Discussing the seminal appearance as well as his absence from previous shows,
Zayn spoke on WWE’s official podcast June 2nd episode of After The Bell with Corey Graves.
Shortly thereafter, Zayn’s comments were transcripted by Michael Schrute of
Wrestlingnews.co and published in a story. Here are the original comments Zayn made:
"First of all, the fact that I haven't been there in a few years, and that there's been
so much speculation as to why I'm not going and what's the political reasoning, this and that,"
"I won't get into all of it, but I'll tell you 99.9% of what you've read
online about this subject — completely fabricated, people assuming things and
then running with those assumptions and adding on to them. It's wild.
I think anytime they can't get a concrete answer, that's kind of what tends to happen.
I think that's like human nature, almost. It's been years since I've been back to the Middle
East. I think the last time I was there was (2016) in Dubai, possibly, so it's been a little while.
However, if you go to Spotify now and listen to the episode you may
notice something missing… only like everything Zayn just said.
In WWE’s re-upload of the episode everything from “I haven’t been there in a few years”
to the “I think the last time I was there” has been completely cut, wiping clean any
comment Zayn made surrounding the reasoning for his absence from the past-Saudi shows.
While Zayn’s comments seem fairly harmless on the surface,
WWE’s reaction tells us they clearly think otherwise, which is a bit crap to be honest.
Speaking of crap situations, now that Punk is nearing his now confirmed AEW
return on June 17, the reaction has been mixed most certainly
from fans both in attendance at this week’s Dynamite and online.
But what of the talent? Talent not named FTR. How do they feel?
According to Fightful Select, immediately following the All Out drama, there were
“numerous wrestlers'' who would have walked out if Punk returned to the
company. Now interestingly this is said to be due to his comments at the scrum
more than the backstage brawl part, and the former is something Punk “apologize” for.
Since it became clear that Punk was indeed returning Fightful notes that any talk of any
“walkouts” have not come up with Punk related tension said to have “absolutely cooled off”.
Now despite this, Fightful notes that AEW have taken measures to
keep Punk separate from his locker room rivals via the Collision brand split,
which is why the roster so far is filled with all his buddies and favorite people.
One of those favs will of course be Ace Steel, who is set to work on Collision in a remote capacity.
According to Dave Meltzer’s latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, both Punk and Steel are
set to be “heavily involved” in creative for Collision, at the very least for Punk’s angles.
And while there were reports suggesting Punk’s first program could be with Chris
Jericho or Samoa Joe, it seems as if Punk may have his eye on
working with one of AEW’s newest arrivals, ‘Switchblade’ Jay White.
According to Fightful, Punk has “taken a liking” to White’s work,
and given Punk’s buddies FTR are currently feuding with Bullet Club Gold alongside Ricky Starks,
perhaps the first Punk feud is lying right there in front of us.
Thank you very much Sat! Now before we get to our Rampage one minute one take,
we have a word from Turbo Jack! Wait, this says Turbo Jake. Surely that’s a typo right?
Thank you Turbo Jake,
now for the show you all been waiting on, this is Rampage baby! Start the clock!
El Hijo del Vikingo beat Dralistico and Komander in a three-way that was
absolutely perfect lucha entertainment. The crowd was all the way into this,
it was exciting, Komander’s rope walk is always incredible, and they hit the
finish right after Vikingo’s 630 through a table. Marvelous stuff.
Mark Briscoe and Aubrey Edwards are going to face The Jarretts in
a mixed tag which is wacky and then we got the AEW TV debut of Zack Sabre Jr.
ZSJ beat Action Andretti in another fantastic TV match. The crowd were into everything on
the show to this point and Andretti actually gave Zack a run for his money. Zack targeted
Action’s Arm and just as it looked like Action might have a shot Zack caught him
with a brutal arm wrench and he had to tap out. ZSJ vs Danielson this time please!
Willow Nightengale beat Emi Sakura to retain the NJPW Strong Women’s title with a doctor
bomb and I have to think if she didn’t get hurt would we have seen Mercedes Mone in
this match instead? Would she have made her AEW debut here in the middle of Rampage?!
And then we had our main event as Katsuyori Shibata defeated Lee Moriarty to retain the
ROH Pure Championship, putting him to sleep and hitting a PK for the pin. This shit brings me
so much joy and after the match Daniel Garcia made the confrontation! Fuck yeah gimme that match too.
Best episode of Rampage in a hot minute.
We start off our review of Friday night recap packages with a look back at Roman Reigns’ 1000
days as Universal Champion and then we got our opening match of the Brawling Brutes vs.
Austin Theory and Pretty Deadly. This match was given plenty of time and once again features a
pretty creative finish involving Pretty Deadly. While Ridge Holland was distracted by Sheamus
going into the post, Pretty Deadly swapped places so the blond one was in the ring,
covering his face with the apron skirt. That way Ridge thought he was the legal
man so the actual legal man, the brown haired one could hit him from behind and
set up Spilt Milk for the finish. 6-man tags are usually quite fun and this had
another good finish. I’d quite like if that became a trend for Pretty Deadly matches.
Paul Heyman tells Solo he wants to pull out all
the stops for Roman’s big celebration and is going to talk to Adam Pearce.
The OC then beat Hit Row for the second time in 24 hours. The first came on Twitter,
of course. Michin will come for your throat. This was a short match with
Gallows and Anderson hitting the Magic Killer on Ashante Thee Adonis for the win and after
the match AJ Styles hit the Phenomenal Forearm on Top Dolla for good measure.
Adam Pearce reassures Paul Heyman that tonight will go as planned with no Usos and then we had
the Grayson Waller Effect with special guest Asuka. Hopefully this would be better than the
last edition of this show and I suppose it was. Asuka does her promo in Japanese while Waller
is like HAHA I COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF. He brings up Money in the Bank and Io
Sky comes down and she and Asuka shout at each other in Japanese. They are joined by Bayley,
Shotzi, Lacey Evans, and Zelina Vega who all say they will win the contract until Asuka
retreats to the stage and says no one is ready for Asuka and is attacked by Bianca Belair.
We get a recap of Baron Corbin showing up on NXT, best of luck NXT, and then we got
Cameron Grimes saying the next time Baron shows his face on SmackDown he is gonna handle it.
This leads to our Money in the Bank qualifying match between Lacey Evans and Zelina Vega where
Zelina hits the Code Red to win in a short match for the win. Backstage after the match Santos
Escobar says he is going to qualify for Money in the Bank next week as he will face Mustafa Ali.
We then got our men’s Money in the Bank qualifying match as LA Knight took on Montez Ford. LA Knight
once again got a very warm reception and would end up winning the match as both men went for
their finishers before Ford rolled Knight up with Knight rolling through and using
the ropes to get the pin. LA Knight in Money in the Bank! The Prophecy has been foreseen!
Triple H then comes out for Roman Reigns’ championship celebration comparing Roman
to Mohammed Ali and Michael Jordan. Heh okay. Roman then entered and was gifted his
brand new Undisputed Championship belt. Aaaand its the same belt.
Covered in gold foil. And it says Undisputed on the belt. Despite there now being another world
title. Meaning that Roman isn’t Undisputed anymore. God I’m tired. There also wasn’t
any extended members of the bloodline in this segment. No Rikishi, no Wild Samoans, no Rock,
obviously. But what we did have was The Usos because Adam Pearce cannot be trusted. Despite
all the security measures Pearce put in place, The Usos still just came out like nothing.
Roman tells Jey to superkick Jimmy to make this right and Jey doesn’t do it.
Jimmy tells Roman that he kicked him because Roman needed it. He says he did it for his
brother. Jey is his brother, Solo is his brother, and Roman is the one betraying,
manipulating, and says it’ll happen to Solo when Roman is done with him. Roman says Solo
can speak for himself and gives him the mic for Solo to say that he acknowledges
his Tribal Chief but those are his brothers as he joins The Usos on their side of the
ring. Jimmy tells Roman that they’re all brothers and they can still be the ones,
they can still run this place like they have been, or Roman can be on the island of relevancy all by
himself. Roman hugs him and then says no as Solo hits Jimmy with the Samoan Spike to end the show.
Roman’s Championship celebration was the only thing of note on the
show really but it was good TV. It feels fresh and interesting with the very new
character dynamic of Roman and The Usos on opposite sides but there was little
else on this show to care about. This episode of SmackDown gets a ⅗
I’ve been Tempest and that belt sucks.