Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk News. I am El Fakidor Laurie Blake
And coming up on this episode of Dvorak’s Symphony Number News Walter makes his NXT
UK debut? CM Punk talks about AEW, question mark?! And The Young Bucks’ WWE offer revealed!
But we start with some really bloody good news. Because NXT UK absolutely smashed it
out of the park with their debut pay-per-view Takeover: Blackpool.
It was everything you would expect from a regular NXT TakeOver, meaning back to back
excellent matches. To talk about this in more detail I am obviously
going to have to spoil the pants off of this pants spoiling event, so if you don’t want
to know skip ahead.
The show opened with Moustache Mountain versus the Grizzled Young Veterans for the newly
minted NXT UK Tag Team Championships. This was, as you would expect from a match
involving Tyler Bate, Trent Seven, Zack Gibson and James Drake a beautiful marriage of technical
wrestling and carnival sideshow, roll up roll up ladies and gents and see the amazing big
strong boi spin not one but two full grown men, around and around they go where they
will stop nobody knows Despite the motion sickness though it was
the Grizzled Young Vets who came out on top and became the inaugural tag champs, which
I promise you, they must be happy about. Gibson just hasn’t told his face yet. Resting scouse
face.
Next up Jordan Devlin was set to face Kiwi buzzsaw Travis Banks, but thought that it
would be better to attack before the match, meaning that Travvy couldn’t compete. Luckily
Johnny Saint and Sid Scala managed to find a replacement pretty sharpish: Finn Balor.
So it was Devlin vs Finn in a dopplebalor match to decide the real Finn Balor. Jordan
managed to keep up with the first ever Universal Champion here and came out of this looking
like an absolute star, but the winner of this Balor on a pole match, considering the push
he’s been getting recently, was Finn. Finn with a win.
Next was Dave Mastiff vs Eddie Dennis in a No DQ match which was a brutal affair and
included some feats of strength from Dennis. Tyler’s not the only big strong boi around
here.
After that Rhea Ripley had to defend her NXT UK Women’s Title against Toni Storm in a
fantastic match that felt like we got to see a new aspect of Storm as the plucky underdog
who defied the odds and pulled out a momentous win cementing herself as one of the women
to watch in WWE and earning herself a Triple H pointing pic! The true prize here.
Finally Pete Dunne successfully defended the United Kingdom Championship against Joe Coffey,
who despite not seeming like a main event player going in, certainly feels like one
afterwards, but Coffey is not the biggest threat to Dunne’s title reign, because Dunne,
Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne, Dunne came face to face
with the Austrian Ringgeneral himself, the mighty, ALL CAPS, WALTER. That is one match
that I can’t wait for, and that is giving Luke Owen heart palpitations as we speak.
All in all, it was an excellent show and exactly the sort of attention grabbing event NXT UK
needs. Because not only did it gain some mainstream
media coverage here in the UK, Good Morning Britain Strong Style, but it even caught the
attention of head honcho, Vinny Mac. Who no doubt heard the crowd chanting ‘Is
Vince Watching?’ replying on Twitter: Yes. I watched #NXTUKTAKEOVER. And yes, it was
awesome.’ *sniff *sniff you smell that? Smells like, god’s honest truth.
Sticking with NXT UK, because if Vince did watch the show, he’s no doubt sending out
the talent catcher in his wagon to take the best ones to RAW.
Triple H has clearly been thinking about that too, as he revealed how he reckons stars might
move around from NXT UK in an interview with Inside The Ropes.
"There are some talent here, that you might see come from the UK, that might move straight
to RAW or SmackDown. I think right now there's sort of this perceived
system of where it's kinda - 1. RAW, 2. SmackDown, 3. NXT, 4. NXT UK.
I don't believe that, I believe that talent are talent and I believe they will sit where
they sit, and I believe you'll see talent over the next few years start coming up to
Raw and SmackDown. And I think you'll see them move back over
in to NXT, or come back in to the NXT UK system. I think talent will begin to evolve and rotate
through territories, so to speak." "I think there will be some talent that will
be incredibly successful, will be global names, will be global, household names, that will
probably never leave that NXT system because that's their home base and that's where they
fit, and they'll have incredibly successful, meaningful
careers. And probably over those careers they'll gravitate through different locations within
the globe, maybe without never being on RAW or SmackDown,
but that not being any lesser to their careers." Triple H seems like he’s hoping that the
global expansion of the NXT brand means that stars can stay within the WWE system forever,
just moving around to a new brand when things start to get stale.
And someone who did find WWE a little stale recently may well be Chris Jericho, who sat
down with Chris Van Vliet to discuss his AEW contract and leaving WWE behind for now, even
though he said he’s never work for another company in North America! The Liarheart.
Y2J said: ‘Life changed things, I never would have guessed this. Going from Japan
to the cruise and seeing how life is on the other side I realized that you can make a
good living outside of WWE. When you get a billionaire involved suddenly
I got the biggest offer of my career by far, I simply could not say no.
Maybe in 3 years I might go back to WWE but for the next 3 years its AEW and that is where
I am signed. I never expected my career to go this long
and have suddenly made a difference to NJPW and now AEW. My time in the WWE is cemented
and it does not matter much if I go back or not.’
And according to stool pigeon Dave Meltzer Jericho has a pretty sweet deal with All Elite.
Meltz confirmed that Jericho’s AEW deal is worth more than he has ever earned in WWE
and is a three-year exclusive, but with exceptions for NJPW who Jericho wants to work with and
he’s allowed to continue with the Rock N Wrestling Rager At Sea. Which should be renamed
Cruise Jericho for ease. Meltzer also said that Joey Janela, Penelope
Ford and MJF all signed non-exclusive deals, as there’s a variety being offered, three
year deals, three month ones and single-dates.
There are other deals to be talked about too, TV ones!
Jericho was talking to Sirius XM’s Busted Open Radio about AEW and what is on the table
when it comes to television shows. “I wouldn’t have gone to All Elite if
there wasn’t a strong TV deal on the table being worked on, and there’s a couple that
I know of that are on the table and both of them are like wow.
When it’s announced, if it’s one of those two, you’ll be ‘welp that’s what they
need’.” “By me joining the company, I think fans
and wrestlers most importantly go holy s*** this is the real deal. If Jericho went there,
this is real. Because a lot of people don’t know don’t
know Kenny, or Cody, or the Bucks. We know them. But your average fan doesn’t.”
You’ve got to wonder what channels they could be, people have been flinging around
TNT, especially after the Tuesday Night Dynamite copyright, but there’s also your ESPNs and
other sport networks to consider.
Someone else considering AEW is CM Punk! Punk alert! Punk alert! Battle stations people,
we have a punk alert. Well ok, he’s not exactly considering AEW,
but he has been making conversation about it.
Comedian Mike Lawrence tweeted his theory on AEW: “All Elite Wrestling reminds me
of Image Comics. The established publishers were skeptical and within a few years they
were copying everything and begging those free thinking creators to come back. This
really is the best thing that could happen to wrestling.”
Which seems like a fair comparison to me, considering the deals WWE has reportedly been
offering out. But CM Punk, man who famously hates WWE, waded
in with this hot take: “So everything is going to be late and most books won’t even
come out? Also nobody can draw feet?” Maybe that’s why the Bucks wear flares? No feet…
Punk is quite famously a comic book nerd and has written for Marvel, most notably a series
about Drax the Destroyer, who was played by Dave Batista in the Guardians of the Galaxy
film, who has returned to WWE and expected to compete at WrestleMania, so CM Punk WWE
return confirmed.
While CM Punk is one name people are speculating over for AEW, the other big one is Kenny Omega,
who people just want to confirm is going to the promotion.
Thankfully Dave Meltzer has paid off the right people and got the inside scoop, as in the
latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter it states that Omega turned down the offer WWE made
him and will be signing with AEW as soon as he is able to on February 1st.
Which, if true, is a massive deal, because the WWE offers for the Elite have reportedly
been very good indeed.
Wrestling Observer Online is reporting that Triple H spent over 12 hours in negotiating
trying to tempt the crew to the dark side and Adam Page was offered main roster money
to go to NXT and become one of the top guys on the brand.
Meanwhile the Bucks were being offered AJ Styles money with a debut at the Royal Rumble
and a significant story in the run up to WrestleMania 35.
They were also pitched a weekly WWE Network version of Being The Elite and given a six
month opt out clause in the contract for if the Bucks are unhappy with the direction they
were taking. Which is something Meltzer says he has never heard of WWE conceding to before.
Just before we wrap up this whatever I called this news at the beginning, if you like British
Wrestling and you like documentaries, watch this trailer from new UK promotion WrestleGate.
If that got you interested keep an eye on WrestleGate for the full series, and if you
want to see their debut show it’s taking place in Nottingham on January 26th and you
can get tickets by following the link in the description below.
WWE star lurks out of RAW, that’ll give you a good idea of who that might be, but
if you want to know for certain then click the video oncscreen now to find out. And give
us a subscribe to stay up to date on all of the latest wrestling news. I’ve been El
Fakidor and that was lucha.