Welcome to the WrestleTalk News, I’m Pete Quinnell.
Our top story is not a fun one, as an AEW producer has been arrested and fired from
the company.
BJ Whitmer is also a former ROH Tag Team Champion and according to Fightful was reportedly arrested
on June 4th by the Boone County Sheriff's Department in Kentucky for charges of first
degree strangulation and second degree burglary.
Whitmer had a bond of $25,000 and was released from incarceration on June 12th.
Following his arrest and subsequent release, AEW released the following statement:
“B.J.
Whitmer has been terminated following his arrest on domestic violence charges.
While talent and staff are ultimately responsible for their own personal actions, this behavior
is intolerable within AEW.
AEW has reached out to offer support to those impacted by his behavior.”
Whitmer had been working in AEW since 2019.
And now we have to transition into regular wrestling news.
Which is never easy, unless I just address it directly, which is why I’m saying these
words now.
Isn’t wrestling silly, let’s talk about Vince McMahon.
Ugh.
If you’ve been watching Raw lately, you’d have noticed that Maxxine Dupri has joined
allegiances with Alpha Academy, leaving the Maximum Male Models to…not appear on the
shows at all.
Which seems like an odd choice based on how the storyline had been set up to that point,
but there’s more to it now as Fightful Select have a report.
Mace and Mansoor are reportedly set to be repackaged soon, though the details of what
they’re being repackaged too remains unclear.
While that news in and of itself isn’t hugely groundbreaking, people get repackaged a lot,
the circumstances that led to the repackaging are interesting.
Those within WWE creative reportedly noted that Vince McMahon was originally high on
the Maximum Male Models, but didn’t want them to be “flamboyant”.
Isn’t that like…literally the whole gimmick though?
It gets more interesting, as that was reportedly ignored by Triple H, who encouraged them to
be flamboyant more.
But, since Vince McMahon’s return to the company, their flamboyancy - is that a word?
- has been “scaled back significantly”.
I wonder why that could be.
Which to me seems like Triple H likes them and wants to use them, Vince said that doesn’t
work for me brother and canned the act and made the repackaging happen.
I wonder who’s in control of creative again.
Triple H definitely has the final say right?
I’m sure he does.
Quickly before we go to Luke, there’s two more big things I need to talk about, lightning
speed.
WWE reportedly want Drew McIntyre back and wrestling for them by Money in the Bank, which
would be nice as it’s a UK crowd.
This comes from PWInsider Elite, who also noted however that there’s been “no update
on McIntyre signing a new deal with the company”.
The current reported belief is that until McIntyre is satisfied with what he’s going
to be doing once he’s back, he won’t be coming back at all, considering he’s proven
through the pandemic what an asset he can be the company, not just from an in-ring perspective,
but also as an ambassador to the company.
And lastly before Luke time, Disney might be buying the streaming rights to WWE.
This comes from Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, who said he believes that Fox and
USA Network are still the most likely contenders to retain the WWE broadcasting rights, but
that Disney is also very interested in acquiring them.
Which means the Disney-owned ESPN or FX are likely homes for WWE if they do end up getting
the rights.
There’s tons more about this and all the other stories I spoke about today on wrestletalk.com,
so go check that out for more, but now it’s time for Luke.
LUKE: Before we get into the RAW review, we’ve been alerted to another Match of the Year
and here with the report is Lucha Expert and winner of Telford’s Most Charming Man 2006,
Mark Markerson.
MARK: Thank you, Luke, it’s tolerable to be here.
LUKE: The match this week went down in Las Vegas, Mark!
Are you a gambling man?
MARK: Yes I am, I bet £100 that everybody would be so focused on their mainstream shows
that they’d miss out on the good wrestling, and I tripled my money.
Because this week’s Match of the Year candidate came from the GCW Lifestyle show, and it was
the triple threat match between El Hijo del Vikingo, Gringo Loco and Komander.
The live crowd were READY for this match, and the action was hot right out of the gate,
with the classic lucha-style reversals, highlighting the speed and agility of the three men.
Lucha Libre, of course translating to Loose Action, demands high risk wrestling, and not
every risk paid off, but each man was able to regain his footing and regain control of
their intended spot.
One of the most iconic spots of the weekend saw the three men create a tower, sitting
on each other’s shoulders, only for Gringo to powerbomb both men into the mat.
Soon after he went under the ring to find a wooden door, which he set up in the corner.
He failed to capitalise, however, and ultimately it was Vikingo who sent Komander crashing
through it with a death valley driver- that’s the REAL Forbidden Door!
Vikingo then rode his momentum back up to the top rope and hit a vicious 630 bomb on
Loco for the 1-2-3.
It wasn’t flawless, but it WAS outstanding.
LUKE: Not flawless.
MARK: But still outstanding, yes.
LUKE: It’s just that you’ve been telling us for weeks that you know good wrestling,
so really it’s your reputation on the line here.
MARK: I do know good wrestling.
LUKE: So you agree, you’ve picked out a match better than last week’s seven star
match?
That’s why we keep bringing you here.
To bring us the very best.
And if it wasn’t better than seven stars then what’s the point of you, really?
MARK: …it was a seven and a half star match.
And now it’s time for my review of Monday Night Raw - aka - ‘sorry I can’t hear
Balor’s promo over the crowd singing Rollins’ theme song over and over and over again’
edition of Monday Night Raw… in about 5 minutes.
The show opened with WWE tying up the last bits of women’s title confusion by awarding
Rhea Ripley with the new Women’s World Championship, which - as you would expect - looks like Seth's
belt but with a white strap.
Yeah it’s a lazy design, yeah it’s not the prettiest looking belt in the world, but
at least we can stop making fun of the SmackDown Women’s Championship being defended on Raw
and all that jazz.
My bigger problem is that while Asuka got a new mustard drenched belt and a new challenger
in Charlotte Flair, Rhea is getting nothing.
She hasn’t had a credible challenger since she won the belt.
And it’s not like Raw is lacking in women who could be built as credible challengers.
Since winning that belt at Mania, she’s squashed Zelina Vega and Natalya, and been
a second for Dominink Mysterio.
And that’s what she was here.
Because Dom and Cody Rhodes instead were the focus of this segment to build their match
at Money in the Bank, and set up Cody Rhodes beating Miz in a decent little TV match.
Cody later cut a really good promo backstage to hype his PPV match with Dom Dom.
The whole point of the white strap version of the women’s world title - according to
Fightful Select - is so it looks like it’s the same level of quality as the men’s title.
This was the same mindset that led to the last re-designs of the Raw and SmackDown Women’s
Championships.
But, surely, it’s the booking that does that?
It could be a plate of chickpeas, but if you present that plate of chickpeas as a prize
everyone wants to win, it then feels like it’s on par with the main title on the show?
Man, now I want a plate of chickpeas.
Becky Lynch beat Chelsea Green in a match that sadly took place mostly during the commercial
break.
Before the match Lynch had a war of words with Zoey Stark who got the WHAT treatment,
but was a decent continuation of their story.
Lynch ragdolling Green into the barricade was a lot of fun.
Damian Priest became the final man to qualify for Money in the Bank by beating Matt Riddle
in a really good match that was given loads of time to get over.
After the match, Gunther and Kaiser came out to get revenge for Giovanni Vinci by beating
up Riddle.
Byron Saxton interviewed Natalya who said she needed to change who she is in order to
succeed because being herself has only brought failures, and Byron basically went - never
mind that s**t, here comes Sami and Kevin.
They set up a tag title match with Imperium for the main event.
They played the whole Bloodline segment from Friday - because it is the best story in WWE
right now - and Jinder Mahal cut a promo for Indus Sheer against Not The Hurt Business.
Then came what might be my new favorite thing on Raw - well, second favorite but we’ll
get to that.
Last week, Bronson Reed caused a DQ between a match with Shinsuke Nakamura and Ricochet,
so it was Ric’s time for revenge as he battled the much bigger Reed with Nakamura at the
commentary desk.
The action was great David vs. Goliath stuff, and then Reed tossed Ricochet into Nakamura,
who ran in to cause another DQ.
Reed brawled with Nakamura and set him up for the Tsunami, but Ric stopped him and hit
a double superplex with Nakamura.
Later, Ric asked Adam Pearce to book him in a rematch for next week - but was turned down
because Nakamura got the match first.
Ricochet told Nakamura that this was his fight, and he shouldn’t get in his business, but
Nakamura thinks that this is his business and Ric can have what’s left when he’s
done with him.
It’s a really fun three-way feud, and I am really looking forward to seeing the eventual
triple threat.
Finn Balor came out to challenge Seth Rollins for a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship
at Money in the Bank, but couldn’t really get his point across as the fans hijacked
the segment by constantly signing Seth’s theme song.
And I do mean constantly.
It made the segment drag somewhat as Balor was waiting for them to stop so he could talk
about how Rollins took everything from him seven years ago when he injured him at Summerslam,
but it never landed because the crowd didn’t care.
They just wanted to sing.
And that’s fine, that’s their prerogative.
But I do think it’s a shame that Balor didn’t get his promo.
And this was supposed to be *that* promo.
Either way, it was later made official for the PPV.
Shayna Baszler quickly beat Raquel Rodriguez with the help of Ronda Rousey and this has
a shocking lack of heat.
But then came my favorite thing on Raw.
Chad Gable - complete with Otis and Maxxine in her Alpha Academy gear - took on Erik.
Earlier in the show we saw Chad was training Maxxine, and in this match hit an arm drag
and looked at her and said: “this is what I was talking about.”
Valhalla then went to attack Maxxine at ringside, and she hit an arm drag just like Chad!
Gable then picked up the win with a technical roll-up and the good guys got one over the
baddies once again.
I love, love, love, love this so, so much.
Put all the belts on this team right now!
There was some uneasiness between Finn Balor and Damian Priest following last week, and
Balor offering JD McDonaugh advice about friendships in wrestling.
Advice maybe he needs to follow himself.
And the main event saw Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn retain the tag titles against Imperium
in an excellent match.
Matt Riddle brawled with Gunther, leading to Zayn hitting the Blue Thunder Bomb on Kaiser
for the win.
I’ve seen a few people who were down on this episode of Raw, but I actually quite
enjoyed it.
Maybe I’m just really into this three-way midcard feud and the Alpha Academy stuff.
I get that Cody and Dom could be seen as a waste of time for the guy feuding with Brock
and Rhea’s title is a lazy copy and paste, but I am all for Cody vs. Dom in London with
that British crowd.
I will concede on the Rhea thing, though.
Still, I give this episode 4 out of 5.