In this WrestleTalk News, major Bloodline plans have been leaked, a demos crisis in
AEW, a controversial ex-WWE star returns backstage and more.
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First, breaking news!
Jake Hager likes his hat.
Posting on Instagram, AEW star Jake Hager has issued the following statement:
I like this hat.
With a picture of him filling up his car at a gas station with no top on, while wearing
the aforementioned hat.
In lesser news, the next five months of the best story in wrestling right now appears
to have been mapped out.
Saturday’s Survivor Series: War Games Premium Live Event saw a main event angle so good,
everyone didn’t realise how mediocre the show actually was.
After half a year of bubbling frustration, Jey Uso finally fully accepted Sami Zayn into
the Bloodline faction with a passionate embrace.
Move aside, Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth.
There’s a new best hug in wrestling.
Two years into the Bloodline, and there’s still so many possibilities for the faction.
Sami could have the honourary part of his Uso name dropped, making him fully family,
and therefore related to every other wrestler on the isle of Samoa.
The Usos and Zayn could instigate freebird rules, letting all three of them defend their
tag team championships in various combinations.
They could all work together to help Sami win the Royal Rumble, where he’d then be
expected to lay down for Roman at WrestleMania.
Or, most likely, everything will pause for a two month Logan and Jake Paul feud.
We don’t know the exact storyline beats that are going to happen in all this.
But thanks to a new report from WrestlingNews.co, we might now know the matches.
Their sources have told them “the current plan for Roman Reigns at the Royal Rumble
is for him to defend the WWE Universal Championship against Kevin Owens.”
[QUOTE] Apparently at one point, it was Sheamus who was penciled in to be Roman’s opponent
for the show, perhaps when he had significantly more momentum coming off the Imperium feud.
Owens now makes far more sense, considering his relationship with Sami Zayn, and how he
actually got a visible pin on Reigns in the War Games main event.
But Sheamus wasn’t the only possible opponent for Roman at the Rumble.
Sami Zayn himself was apparently discussed just a few weeks back - but now Zayn vs Reigns
has been moved to February’s Elimination Chamber, which doesn’t just give more time
to tell the story, it also means the show will be in Zayn’s hometown of Montreal,
Quebec.
It seems something will happen at the Rumble to cause the Bloodline and Sami to split,
and WrestlingNews.co write this will start the build for “KO and Zayn to challenge
The Usos for the World Tag Team Titles at WrestleMania.”
How would you fantasy book Zayn splitting from the Bloodline?
Let me know in the comments.
Hopefully everyone is available, though, as there’s been a potential injury to a top
Bloodline star.
But first breaking news.
Jake Hager still likes his hat.
There’s speculation that Jey Uso might have broken his hand during Saturday’s War Games
main event.
Just before Kevin Owens enters the match, The Usos and Sami Zayn are seen setting up
a table.
At this point, Jey leaves Sami and Jimmy to set it up while he leans on the ropes.
The camera cuts away from whatever is happening, but if you listen, you can hear Jey tell his
teammates on the live mic that he thought his hand was broken.
Jey did manage to compete for the remaining 15 minutes, including hitting the winning
Uso Splash for the pinfall victory.
While this could all just be good ol’fashioned pro wrestling selling, as Butch was working
over his arm earlier in the match, Jey did suffer a wrist injury earlier in the month,
and had already worked Crown Jewel hurt.
As a silver lining, the Bloodline story is so layered, its characters so well-rounded,
there are numerous options if Jey is unable to wrestle for the next few months.
Now he’s accepted Sami, he could announce him as his replacement to defend the tag team
championships with his brother Jimmy.
So ucey.
If you want the real drama in wrestling, though, you have to go behind-the-scenes.
As usual, Fightful Select have revealed which backstage agents were responsible for laying
out each match on the Premium Live Event.
Tyson Kidd & Petey Williams booked the Women’s WarGames opener.
Jason Jordan produced AJ Styles vs. Finn Balor.
Adam Pearce laid out the brilliantly paced US Championship three way between Seth Rollins,
Austin Theory and.
Bobby Lashley.
Michael Hayes and Shane Helms produced the men’s War Games main event.
And Ronda Rousey vs Shotzi for the SmackDown Women’s Championship was booked by Jason
Jordan… and a returning Brian Kendrick.
This is interesting for two reasons.
Firstly, Rousey vs Shotzi was comfortably the worst match on the show, with Ronda seemingly
deciding she just doesn’t want to sell anymore.
And secondly, because the last time we heard from Kendrick, he was cancelled.
Kendrick left NXT at the start of this year after requesting his release.
He was scheduled to show up on AEW Dynamite almost immediately, announced for a match
against Jon Moxley on the 2nd February episode.
This was pulled on the day, though, when video footage from about ten years previously was
shared online that exposed him talking through various conspiracy theories on 9/11, the Sandy
Hook shooting and the Holocaust.
Fightful reported at the time that the backstage reaction in AEW was mixed.
One said they “hate that this happened from 10-year old stuff’ while others were annoyed
this wasn’t known about in advance.
Some believed it was a Turner executive that “was not happy” that caused Kendrick to
be removed.
AEW issued the statement: “There’s no room in AEW for the views expressed by Brian.”
Kendrick himself apologised for the decade old comments, saying “"These are not my
beliefs and never were beliefs of mine, and I crossed the line.
I spread the most vile comments without thinking of the damage it would cause.
I will live with this regret for the rest of my life.
I am truly sorry for the pain I have caused.
It’ll be interesting to see if a similar backlash occurs at his appointment in WWE.
He’s not an onscreen figure, so it’s nowhere near as public, and I would argue there’s
a different moral bar for that company.
With all the firings and Saudi Arabia deals of the last five years, the fanbase’s outrage
is somewhat dejected.
PWInsider has reported Kendrick’s producing spot was a tryout, and the Wrestling Observer
writes that his appearance backstage at Survivor Series “was a surprise to most people, including
those at NXT who know him, that he was back.”
It was obviously kept under wraps.
Some of it could just be down to momentum.
WWE is more favourably pictured amongst wrestling fans right now, so the Kendrick stuff could
just bob under the backlash threshold.
Despite a great week following Full Gear, AEW is still rebuilding its own momentum.
And a new stat shows what an uphill struggle lies ahead.
One of AEW’s big selling points to TV executives is how young their audience is.
That’s why the 18-49 demographic became such a meme.
First from Dave Meltzer focusing on those ratings figures, and then from AEW themselves
popularizing them, with Chris Jericho declaring himself the Demo-God.
But be careful where you plant your flagpole, because that then becomes a benchmark you
will be judged against.
And with Rampage, AEW’s struggling Friday show, it is at its worst yet.
WrestleNomics has posted on Twitter: “AEW's live+same-day TV audience has aged
up in recent months.
Rampage has moved from being the youngest audience in wrestling to closing in on Raw's
median age.”
Doesn’t the hat count for anything anymore?!?!?!
While the average age of a Dynamite viewer on TV - and it’s important to say TV, as
that doesn’t include trendy, hip, cool people like me who watch it online on Fite - has
risen from 48 to 51 years old, Rampage has gone from 46 last August to 53.
That makes it very close to Raw’s 54 year old average viewer.
This is not the viewing statistic Tony Khan wants to be beating WWE in.
But showing age is just a number to be crossbodied, 69 year old… heh, nice…
Ricky Steamboat wrestled his first match in 12 years - at last night’s Big Time Wrestling’s
Return of the Dragon show in North Carolina.
It saw Steamboat team with FTR, because if a retired wrestler from the 80s even thinks
about getting back in the ring, Dax and Cash will materialise out of thin air next to them,
where they took on Arn Anderson, Jay Lethal in his Randy Savage-inspired Black Machismo
gimmick, a reference to Steamboat’s WrestleMania III match against him, and the mystery partner,
Nick Aldis, he of recent NWA controversy.
The last we heard of Aldis, he was suspended by NWA after publicly criticising the company
and requesting his release.
His contract expires at the end of the year.
Steamboat and FTR picked up the win with a triple figure-four leglock, aka a figure twelve.
Now go watch my conspiracy theory on how Triple H is secretly influencing AEW’s demise!