Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk Super News! I’m Oli Davis.
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At a WWE Employee Town Hall meeting at the company headquarters yesterday, R-Truth knocked
himself out when trying to leave the set because comedy, and WWE employee Mike pinned him to
become the new 24/7 champion. He even got the compulsory ‘The Point’
photo with Triple H WWE then offered Mike a contract on the condition
he can do five push ups and five sit ups, but Truth pounced to win the title back. But
that wasn’t the only mic that was dropped yesterday, as CM Punk fully debuted on WWE
Backstage. Yes I did only include that story just for
mike drop segway, I’m genuinely very proud of it!
Punk, of course, made his kind of WWE return at the end of last Tuesday’s debut episode
of the Fox studio show WWE Backstage, announcing ‘See you next Tuesday’ - what did he call
me? - because he’ll be appearing ‘periodically’ on the series from now on, starting with last
night’s show. Which opened with a recap package of his return, and my reaction video
to him coming back. Oli Davis and CM Punk best friends confirmed!
I would show you the actual video package, but YouTube blocked it on Fox’s behalf for
copyright infringement, even though it was Fox that totally used our video without contacting
us first. Top stuff YouTube. The reason Punk’s WWE return is ‘kind
of’, though, is because while he is appearing on a WWE branded show with WWE talent talking
about pretty much exclusively WWE content, his contract is actually with SmackDown’s
Network Fox, not Vince McMahon. Which means he can do stuff like call Baron
Corbin’s Big Dawg skit from SmackDown “garbage”. “I mean this is something where the less
said about it the better. It makes me reconsider doing this show… You can’t possibly defend
that. The creative’s bad. I don’t know anything about Baron Corbin really, he’s
one of the newer that I gotta check out. But that’s a bad start. What did you think about
it [Paige]? Garbage! Garbage! It was garbage right, Paige?”
Which Paige then agreed with by doing a thumbs down and a fart noise, before saying Punk’s
a bad influence. Because Paige just re-signed a five year deal with WWE, and that’s a
long time anyway without publicly burying the product on its own show.
But I’m happy to say, Punk had no such issues about critiquing WWE, giving his thoughts
on the current state of wrestling: “I think the product is the same when I
left it. I think wrestling could be so much better. It could be so much more...Stuff’s
overproduced, stuff’s micromanaged. I think the best characters, the people that the people
love the most throughout all of wrestling are the characters that they get to figure
stuff out themselves, instead of being told what to do by somebody who maybe never done
anything, been anywhere, never drew money, brother. I think there’s a lot wrong with
it, but I see a lot of bright spots. But he even had something to critique about
those positives… “I like all the women. I don’t like the
forced women’s revolution thing. Just let the women be the women, and they’ll show
you why they kick ass and why they belong. You don’t need to put a hashtag label on
everything. Selfishly I like the NXT thing, because I obviously see myself in a lot of
that. I was an indy guy… I think those are the characters, for lack of a better word,
less tainted. The still feel new, they’re like the new toys.”
With the Royal Rumble just round the corner, Renee Young’s questioning of course led
to the obvious one: CM Punk return confirmed question mark? To which he answered:
“Regardless of what my answer is, there’s somebody who’s always going to be upset
by this. As I’ve said, I’ve stated, I work for Fox. I haven’t talked to anybody
in WWE. It’s nothing that I’m actively pursuing or interested in, but I’m 41 years
old and I’ve lived and experienced life where I know not to say ‘no’. But that’s
going to be a bridge that’s going to have to be built, and it might take as long as
building the Great Wall of China, because there’s some hurdles, there’s some hurdles
there.” CM Punk in-ring return confirmed!
But for someone who isn’t ‘actively pursuing’ a wrestling return, he sure is building a
feud. Following Punk’s WWE Backstage appearance
last Tuesday, Seth ‘He’s Really Good At Twitter’ Rollins simply posted “Fight
me @CMPunk,” asked Fox to book him a flight to WWE Backstage for a face-to-face confrontation
and then reposted to a tweet from Punk yesterday with: “Don’t talk about me, fight me.
I’ll catch ya right up.” It’s a bit of fun social media beef slightly
undermined by Seth’s bad Twitter game over the last six months, where he’s seen himself
turn ‘not cool’ in the eyes of many fans stemming from when he argued with Will Ospreay
about who was the best wrestler in the world, and bringing up how big his bank account is.
Renee Young addressed Seth’s challenge on WWE Backstage, and Punk responded with all
that loaded context to hand: “I want my journalistic integrity to be
intact, so this isn’t the show where you come and shoot your little angles, Seth needs
to stop tweeting and realize that sometimes it’s better than to be viewed as the fool
and shut your mouth than when you open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
And that Seth should just delete his Twitter because “it’s not doing him any favours.”
Some very sage advice, that Seth didn’t take on board, responding: “HELL of a “response.”
🙄. Coward.” Showed him there, Seth.
But Punk wasn’t done, as he got in one last shot in a segment at the end of the show,
where he was supposed to be cutting a promo on comedian Tom Arnold, but instead slipped
this one in: “Go start your relevancy somewhere else
Seth, I mean Tom.” If CM Punk returns in-ring, who do you think
he should face and why? Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying to people
FROM OUTTA NOWHERE for the first 30 minutes after this video goes live!
Speaking of replies… that gives me an idea: This week I tweeted CM Punk, because we’re
super best friends now, about when he wants to hang out or do something…
“Hey @CMPunk ! i was in ur wwe byte this video last nite and i think it means were
now best friends! I love grammer a spelling 2 we could talk about grammer and watch moovie
and 8 pizza PIZZA EMOJI WIZARD EMOJI Ples retweet much love OD x”
I’ve got a good feeling on this one. Retweet that tweet, tweet Punk himself about it, Support
WrestleTalk because one day, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this week, maybe not this decade,
but one day me and CM Punk will have a lovely Sunday morning together visiting a local farmers
market. Because he might have some free time back
soon, as during that promo on Tom Arnold, he got carried away and did a cuss, saying:
“If I wanted s*** from you, I would have scrapped your tongue." - prompting Punk to
issue a kind of apology but not really after the show:
“I don’t know if I have a job anymore. Apparently you can’t swear, apparently you
can’t do a few things. But I feel great! Because I got to be myself, and I got to be
brutally honest. And that’s what it is, and that’s what this show’s going to be.”
Punk also cheekily teased Renee Young, asking her who her favourite member of the Shield
was - a reference to her real-life AEW contracted husband Jon Moxley - which she very diplomatically
said “I like them all equally.” But Young isn’t the only one with AEW connections.
Interestingly, Punk revealed that only 10-12 people knew about his WWE Backstage appearance
ahead of time - presumably not counting all the major wrestling news sites who reported
it two months before it happened - but did include Renee, his wife AJ Lee, and AEW commentator
Jim Ross. Apparently JR and Punk still text, and he counts him as in his ‘inner circle’.
CM Punk to AEW confirmed! But while Punk is still playing coy about
an in-ring return, another major wrestling name has confirmed they will be back.
Who’s that Pokemon! Goldberg. It’s Bill Goldberg.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Goldberg confessed that he wasn’t “happy” with
his SummerSlam squash match against Dolph Ziggler as “I’d lost my mojo.” Baby.
I added the baby. But he was “greatly appreciative” of Ziggler’s professionalism and can’t
thank him enough. And he’s now revealed that match won’t
be his last: “It’s by no means my farewell performance,
nor was it my best performance, but you have to be realistic and take all things into consideration.
It’s a very good possibility I’ll be back, but you don’t know it until it’s done.”
Where do you want to see Goldberg return? Vote by clicking the ‘i’ above my head!
Raw creative director Paul Heyman reportedly sees Goldberg as a character who can keep
making one-off special returns as the unofficial sheriff of WWE, similar to Bruno Sammartino’s
role near the end of his WWF career in the 80s. You’d imagine the most likely next
appearance would be in the Royal Rumble to set up a WrestleMania match. But knowing this
company, he’ll randomly return in Team NXT at Survivor Series this Sunday.
Speaking of, Triple H has reportedly clashed with creative backstage over NXT’s involvement
in this Sunday’s pay-per-view! And watch our new super cutdown version of yesterday’s
WrestleTalk Live review of Raw with me and Luke! I’ve been Oli Davis, and that was
wrestling.