In this WrestleTalk News, the backstage reaction to Brock Lesnar winning the WWE Championship,
some major WWE injuries, an update on Tony Khan and Lio Rush and more.
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It’s the perfect new year’s resolution.
It’s been 48 hours now, but the wrestling world is still talking about the biggest news
story of the year that is only 48 hours old - Jeff Jarrett debuting for GCW and attacking
Effy!
In a distant second in terms of news stories, though, wrestling fans around the world haven’t
stopped talking about Scotty 2 Hotty also debuting at that same show and doing an immaculate
Worm just like he did 22 years ago.
Brett Lauderdale, you genius.
In an even more distant third in terms of wrestling news stories, however, is that Roman
Reigns announced he had tested positive for COVID-19, was removed from his Day 1 main
event against Brock Lesnar which meant that the WWE Championship match between Big E and
Seth Rollins which then became Big E, Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens which then became
Big E, Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens and Bobby Lashley would now be Big E, Seth Rollins,
Kevin Owens, Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesnar who then went and won the WWE Championship.
In short, Brock Lesnar won a match he wasn’t supposed to be part of again.
But unlike Mustafa Ali and Money in the Bank, WWE talent found out about Brock’s addition
into the match a few hours beforehand rather than minutes.
Speaking of minutes, and that new main event for the WWE Championship had quite a few of
them cut down.
According to QuizzleMania Champion Sean Ross Sapp over at Fightful Select, the original
fatal four way was set to go 30 minutes including entrances.
In the end, the match went 8 minutes and 20 seconds - nearly 20 minutes with entrances
- because Brock isn’t paid by the hour I guess.
Sapp adds that Brock Lesnar was also listed internally as a SmackDown star, despite on
screen saying he was a free agent and can go where he pleases.
Going into Day 1, it was reported that the loser of the Universal Championship match
between Brock and Roman would likely go on to win the Royal Rumble to set up a rematch,
which would have been a rematch of a rematch, which in itself is a WrestleMania rematch
from 5 years ago and 7 years ago.
Yeah I don’t know why some people say WWE is stale either.
But Lesnar winning the WWE Championship at Day 1 could throw around some really interesting
questions now for the direction of WrestleMania.
However according to Ringside News - so do take this with a pinch of salt - “the Mania
plans have not changed” for Brock vs. Roman.
Apparently this was “explicitly” told to the writing team after the reshuffling
of Brock winning the WWE Championship, and “this change will only enhance the Roman,
Heyman, Brock story.”
For what it’s worth, this has also been backed up by Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer
Radio.
Bryan Alvarez added on the Bryan and Vinny Show that he was told: “the idea here is
that they are doing champion vs. champion at WrestleMania.
Roman would be the SmackDown Champion, Brock would be the Raw Champion.
Either a unification match or just champion vs. champion like they do at Survivor Series.”
He did also add, however, “I don’t have this 100 percent confirmed…
I can talk to 100 people there and 100 of them would tell me, ‘I think this is what’s
happening but I don’t know for sure.’”
But that’s WrestleMania - what’s next for Brock Lesnar?
And what about the former champ, Big E?
Anyone with any sense about them would have seen how the 8 minute WWE Championship match
was laid out: Brock Lesnar was dominating, Bobby Lashley was dominating the dominant,
Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins worked together to take out the dominating dominerance of
Lashley and Lesnar, and Big E was also there.
The match was laid out this way - including the post-match staredown between Lesnar and
Lashley - because Bobbles is set to be the first challenger for Brock Lesnar following
Day 1.
Dave Meltzer spoke on Wrestling Observer Radio that the booking of the match was to make
sure Lashley looked strong coming out of it.
He was the only one to not take the F5, he was the only guy in the match that Brock didn’t
dominate, and Lashley was able to lock in his submission that Brock couldn’t escape
from until it was broken up.
What’s interesting is that Brock vs. Lashley was meant to be a Summerslam programme back
in 2018 when Bobby returned to WWE.
In fact, according to Meltzer at the time, it was one of the reasons Lashley re-signed
with the company: he was told one of the big shows that year would be him vs. Brock for
the Universal Championship after he retained it over Roman at WrestleMania 34.
Lashley even beat Reigns at Extreme Rules to seemingly set that up, but then lost to
Roman on Raw a few weeks later to set up a WrestleMania rematch for Summerslam instead.
Lashley wasn’t on the card at all.
It was also reportedly a planned match for Lashley at Summerslam last year, but this
was nixed as they didn’t want Lesnar to come back and lose his return match because
the WWE Championship would have been on the line - and there was far more interest internally
of the Brock vs. Roman storyline we’re getting now.
But you may have noticed that the one name we haven’t mentioned in all of this in terms
of big plans is the former WWE Champion - the man who took the pin in the match - Big E.
And that’s because - as far as anyone can tell - there are no real plans for him.
He’s not the next challenger for the title as that’s Bobby Lashley, and he’s not
the WrestleMania direction as that’s Roman Reigns.
Bryan Alvarez on the Bryan and Vinny show noted, “All I know is that Big E was going
to leave as champion until all of this happened.”
This was seemingly confirmed by WWE on Fox’s Twitter account, which tweeted out a photo
of the results from Day 1, but underneath the picture of Lesnar had the text: “Big
E def.
Lashley, Rollins and Owens”, which indicates that was the plan for the evening.
That tweet was quickly deleted.
Sean Ross Sapp over at Fightful Select adds that the talent in the match were not told
ahead of time who was originally going to win the Championship match at Day 1, but the
people he spoke to also believed Big E was supposed to retain.
He does note, however, “​​that's hardly confirmed”.
He’s also reporting that people backstage in WWE felt Big E “wasn't booked consistently
throughout his title reign.”
He also adds that multiple people in his storylines - which presumably means Owens, Rollins, Lashley,
MVP, etc - would go "above and beyond" to make sense of the storyline “to the best
of their ability.”
What did you think of Big E’s WWE Championship reign and what do you think should be next?
Let me know in the comments down below.
But that wasn’t the only thing that happened at Day 1: Drew McIntyre had a match with Madcap
Moss that went longer than the WWE Championship match.
Thankfully, Drew won the match, but was attacked by Moss and Happy Corbin later in the show
to continue the feud, with WWE tweeting out that McIntyre was injured in the assault.
According to Mike Johnson over at PWInsider, this isn’t a work.
McIntyre has been working the last several weeks with a neck injury, and this was done
to write him off TV while he gets checked out.
Johnson adds that many within the company noted “how hard” McIntyre has been working
as of late even with the injury, and that he “went down swinging” for the company.
Dave Meltzer notes that Reigns vs. McIntyre is still a plan for 2022.
Ridge Holland also legitimately broke his nose during the kick-off match.
And it’s now being reported that Sasha Banks might have picked up an injury at a house
show last night in North Carolina.
It was reported by those in the building, that following her match against Charlotte
Flair, Banks had to be helped to the back after awkwardly landing from a backbreaker.
A referee checked on her immediately after the spot, and Banks needed assistance to get
backstage.
Thankfully there appears to be nothing to worry about, though, as Banks tweeted: “I’m
good.
Thank you for the love always”.
The other big talking point in the wrestling world over the weekend was Big Swole’s comments
she made on her Call In show, where she noted that she made the decision to leave AEW late
last year - explaining they parted ways mutually - but while the company is “making better
strides than before”, there is a diversity problem within AEW.
She said, “There is no representation, truly, and when there is, it does not come across
in the black community as genuine.”
She also added, “You have to be able to call people out because not everything is
perfect.
I hope they listen to this with an open heart and not just, 'Ah, she's just saying this
because of XYZ.'
I genuinely want them to succeed.”
Tony Khan responded to this by saying “I let Swole’s contract expire as I felt her
wrestling wasn’t good enough” while listing talent of colour that had picked up wins on
TV during December.
To say this tweet didn’t go down well would be an understatement.
After all, he did what Big Swole hoped he wouldn’t do.
And although AEW Extras Coordinator Capt Shawn Dean noted that they’re “giving as many
opportunities to minority talents” and that “the things we are expecting can and will
happen” and Powerhouse Hobbs posted his praise for Tony Khan and AEW, Lio Rush was
less than impressed.
He posted, “If nobody says something, then I will.
Because this is f***ed up and now I’m pissed.”
Later asking for Tony Khan and AEW to apologize.
He has since put out the following statement: “I do not consider this to be a diversity
issue, and I at no point have thought or said that AEW or Tony is racist.
We can all clearly see that wrestling as a whole in the AEW roster is perpetually diverse.
The issue at hand was a racial insensitivity issue.
Having spoken to Tony and Megah, we have discussed the endeavours to further understand the struggles
of the black community.
I am grateful to be able to understand more about Tony and Megah’s own ethnic backgrounds
and glad that they are actively seeking input from an African American perspective.
I look forward to working with Tony to keep making steps towards positive change.”
One final thing from us here, and we are proud to say that - thanks to the Friendos watching
this video - this happened on Going in Raw’s Friendo Awards 2021 in the Best Wrestling
Youtube channel category!
Thank you everyone who voted for us, it really means a lot to the team.
I also did give an acceptance speech, which you can watch in the full video by clicking
the link in the video description.