In this WrestleTalk News, Shane McMahon wanted a backstage fight, a long-term WWE plan has
been scrapped, and there was concern backstage over a WWE star.
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[SUPPORT WRESTLETALK] Oh Shane O’Mac.
He had a pretty ill-fated return at WrestleMania didn’t he?
Interrupting The Miz, having an impromptu match against him before immediately tearing
his quad and forcing Snoop Dogg to intervene and hit arguably one of the funniest and/or
worst People’s Elbows I’ve ever seen.
This was Shane O’s first appearance since the 2022 Royal Rumble, which was also infamous
in the fact that Shane was the one to book it and tried to only book it around himself,
and then got his numbers mixed with Randy Orton’s, so it was just a comedy of errors
all round.
But looking back a few years though, it seems Shane nearly came to blows with one Brock
Lesnar at WrestleMania 34.
In a now-infamous clip made public on the WWE 24 documentary, following his successful
retention of the Universal Championship against Roman Reigns in the main event, Brock decided
to head backstage and launch the belt towards Vince McMahon, clearly quite annoyed about
something, probably something to do with all the ‘boring’ and ‘this is awful’ chants
coming at the end of a 14-match card.
There’s now another side to this story, as apparently this nearly escalated into a
fight between Lesnar and Shane McMahon, who also wrestled on the show alongside Daniel
Bryan against Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens.
Road Dogg spoke about the situation on his Oh You Didn’t Know podcast:
“...he threw the title across me to Vince (McMahon) and everybody kind of stood up like,
what the crap was that?
…I remember Shane (McMahon) being in Gorilla and being hot and trying to go after Brock
and I said, ‘Hey, let’s let it go, let it go.
Let’s just stay right here and all keep our teeth.’”
Probably a smart move Mr. Dogg, though with Shane McMahon’s lethal punches I think he
might have been able to take it to Brock y’know.
Look, I know it’s been all doom and gloom lately with Vince being back, and then he
wasn’t but he still kind of is and we’re all hyper focusing on little things from WWE’s
shows and picking them apart to see where Vince’s fingerprints are…but I’m afraid
I’ve got some bad news.
There’s more.
Eagle eyed viewers of WWE’s shows, or actually in this case, eyed viewers of WWE’s shows
will have noticed a few pretty glaring omissions from the product recently.
Around Royal Rumble season and in the lead to Elimination Chamber, a story had begun
where The Hurt Business could potentially be reuniting, with MVP hinting as much on
TV, and having meetings with Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin.
It seemed to be part of a larger story that would pay off following Lashley & Lesnar’s
match at Elimination Chamber.
But after Lashley won in the lamest way possible at the Chamber, it seems a new direction had
been thought out, with Lesnar instead going on to face Omos at WrestleMania.
Many fans had speculated that the Omos vs Lesnar match had put a pause to the Lashley/Hurt
Business story, which would pick up post-Mania.
Funnily enough, it hasn’t.
Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio pointed it out, saying:
“They have started it and totally dropped it…we haven’t seen MVP around.
We haven’t seen Cedric or Shelton around, nothing.”
Instead on this week’s Raw, Bobby Lashley and Bronson Reed seemingly engaged in a feud
where the two big beefy lads were two big beefy lads and did two big beefy lads things,
neither able to get the one-up on the other.
While it’s not a bad direction by any means, it’s got Bronson Reed in it, he’s awesome,
there are definitely quite a few fans, myself included, who will be disappointed they dropped
plans for something very fun.
Is this the latest installment of Vince messing with Triple H’s plans?
Or do you think this was already dropped following Elimination Chamber and they never planned
to revisit the story?
Let us know in the comments!
PATREON BUMPER: WrestleTalk's Personal Ring Announcer, Rodrigo Benitez & He Can Last Sean
Furlong-er Than You In The Ring As discussed on yesterday’s news episode,
there were quite a few last minute changes to Raw on Monday as there were severe travel
delays for a lot of talent.
There were some more details given courtesy of PWInsider Elite, who noted that a sizable
chunk of the show was rewritten as Sami Zayn, Bianca Belair, The Street Profits, Damian
Priest, Rhea Ripley and Matt Riddle all dealt with delays getting to Seattle.
The reported cause of this was poor weather in the Orlando area, which is where they were
flying from.
Several of those named talent reportedly showed up too late to appear on Raw, and so immediately
hopped on another flight back to Florida, meaning they were on back-to-back coast-to-coast
flights.
Woof.
There also was reportedly a six-man tag match planned involving the LWO and presumably Judgment
Day, but with the missing talent, it was changed to Finn Balor vs Rey Mysterio.
Interestingly though, Fightful Select is reporting that there was “concern” backstage over
Finn Balor and his readiness to wrestle considering how banged up he was from WrestleMania.
He had his head split open yknow.
Luckily it seems he was ok, but as speculation on my part, I assume he was going to be protected
somewhat from wrestling if he was involved in the six-man tag match.
Wouldn’t have had to take as many bumps and all that.
Another interesting note courtesy of Fightful Select, is that one WWE talent reportedly
said to Fightful that seeing Kevin Owens vs Solo Sikoa three times in about five weeks
was very much a rarity under the Triple H regime.
Now look, this doesn’t mean that Vince is back, but also…Vince is back isn’t he?
One of the matches that was pulled from Raw was The Miz vs Matt Riddle, as that had been
pre-advertised for the show, and you may think that this was due to Riddle’s travel issues.
However according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, this match was actually pulled
before the travel issues started affecting the show.
There wasn’t any further context provided as to why it was pulled, or when exactly,
but it’s worth noting.
And with the big boost in ratings for last week’s Raw After WrestleMania, how did this
week’s Raw do?
Back to normal basically.
The episode drew an average of 1.818 million viewers according to Showbuzz Daily, which
granted, is a little higher than a lot of Raws pre-Mania, but is still a drop off of
about 500,000 people from last week.
But don’t worry gang, because there might be a dream feud on the horizon.
At least for me.
And probably a couple of others.
One of the matches for WrestleMania 39 that fans had speculated about and booked themselves
into a worked shoot about was the possibility of a Brock Lesnar vs Gunther match, with the
two even trading a staredown at the Royal Rumble.
And as that didn’t come to pass, there may have been a few people, including me, who
thought ah well, it was wishful thinking, let’s move on.
But also, don’t.
As according to WRKD Wrestling on Twitter: “While Gunther has publicly stated during
interviews that he’d like a match with Brock Lesnar, the idea has been floated backstage
to potentially have them face off sometime this summer.”
A SummerSlam match of Lesnar vs Gunther for the IC belt just sounds delightful to me.
Please make it happen.
I’ll be the happiest of little boys.
There’s tons more news today, so we’re going to go rapid fire.
Here’s some bullet points.
Eva Marie has said the door is always open for a WWE return an interview with WrestleZone.
The two sides are “in constant talks”, and Marie said she’s always down to cause
some trouble and stir up some things.
Despite there being reported interest from WWE, Brian Cage has re-signed with AEW according
to Fightful Select.
This is a multi-year deal, and there were reportedly both stars in AEW and WWE who were
angling for him to end up in their respective companies, but Cage ended up liking the offer
AEW gave him, so re-signed there.
We are still waiting for news regarding AEW’s videogame Fight Forever, and despite Tony
Khan saying after Revolution that the game is ready for release and that a huge hurdle
had been passed in terms of getting the game a ‘Teen’ rating, THQ Nordic’s community
manager had other thoughts online.
In response to a tweet from Dave Meltzer saying that development was complete on the game,
the community manager who goes by Zyddie responded saying:
“I mean if you want an unfinished game sure we could release now.
The game is doing really well and is getting there, but not 100% yet”
As of right now, the release date for the game is still a mystery.
AEW star Bandido has admitted that at some point, he would like to go to WWE, just not
right now.
He said as much in an interview on SO CATCH by Hal 2, which was recorded prior to him
signing with AEW, where he said “At some point, I would like to go to WWE.
Not in this moment, but I hope after…
later.”
There’s been another AEW signing though, as Tony Schiavone has revealed on the What
Happened When podcast that 18-year old indie standout Billie Starkz has been signed by
the company.
Starkz most recently appeared for AEW on Battle of the Belts VI where she unsuccessfully challenged
Jade Cargill for the TBS Belt.
Logan Paul’s contract renewal picture that he posted has been compared to his original
signing picture and many have deduced that this was clearly photoshopped from the original
one.
Logan has since denied this.
It’s very funny.
Both Konnan and Rey Mysterio have spoken to El Hijo Del Vikingo and told him to slow down
to prolong his career.
Konnan revealed as much on the Keepin It 100 Podcast, and said he told Rey to talk to him
as Vikingo already needs a knee surgery, and Rey has had 14, so he gave him some good advice.
And that’s it for today.
If you haven’t seen Oli’s big speech from yesterday’s news, you should, because now
I get it.
I understand what he wants, and
I
know what he’s going to do.
And I’m going to try my best to stop him.
I-...wait, what’s that?