In this WrestleTalk News, MJF explains his signing no-show at Double or Nothing, Gallows
& Anderson’s status following their WWE return, Luke’s review of Raw and more.
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Do you remember back in the good old days of May this year, when the big news stories
were Naomi & Sasha Banks walking out of WWE, and then MJF decided to upstage that entirely
when he no-showed a fan signing event, a plane ticket was bought for him to go home and no-show
Double or Nothing as well, but then he stayed and got squashed by Wardlow and was off our
screens and not referenced at all until All Out? Do you remember that?
I know a lot has happened since then, but MJF’s controversial decision to no-show
the fan event remains a point of contention among a large portion of wrestling fandom.
And now MJF has appeared on Notsam Wrestling to explain his actions.
“I did not go because my boss, at the time, was being a f*****g mark. So if you don't
want to pay me what I'm worth, Daddy does not show up to work. It's that simple. Daddy
got the money. Daddy's back. Now me and Tony Khan are best friends. Tony Khan? Great guy.
Great guy.” Noting that AEW sent people to his hotel room
to check on him after there was no response from him, MJF said:
“When I stayed inside the hotel room, they did a wellness check on me. And the AEW security
— this is a very true story — tried to break my door down. Now, at the time, I had
already left.” This appears to confirm reports from the time
that AEW searched for MJF and did a wellness check on him, something that was disputed
around the time. Moving over to WWE now though, and there was
yet another surprise return on Raw from former WWE stars: Gallows & Anderson, who returned
to help their OC buddy AJ Styles. The last time they were seen in WWE was in April 2020
when they helped out AJ Styles in their Boneyard Match against The Undertaker at WrestleMania
36. What a time. What makes this return even more interesting
than the multitude of others that have happened since Triple H’s return to power is that
Karl Anderson is the current NJPW NEVER Openweight Champion, and the status of that title is
currently unknown. Unsurprisingly, Anderson didn’t rock up with the belt on Raw, so
it’s not like it’ll be featured on WWE programming, and you’d assume that he’ll
most likely relinquish the belt and force New Japan to crown a new champion, rather
than WWE allowing him to wrestle another match in New Japan after he’s signed a contract
with WWE. Anderson was originally scheduled to defend
the belt against Hikuleo on November 5, but now presumably that match is off and a replacement
will be announced. A lot of that is currently unknown though.
But it’s not just returns that Triple H might have on his mind though, as he may also
be bringing in some new talent. According to PWInsdier, two-thirds of the former ROH
Six-Man Tag Champions The Righteous, that being Vincent and Dutch, were backstage at
Raw this week. Since the group left Ring of Honor, Vincent has been seen in Impact Wrestling,
while Dutch hasn’t been seen in a couple of months, last wrestling at the tail end
of August at Beyond Americanrana 2022: Blackout. Their WWE status is currently unknown, but
being backstage is a good indication that they may be brought into the company sooner
rather than later. Now hot tag to Luke!
And now it’s time for my review of Monday Night Raw - aka I wonder how they’ll follow
up on that super hot Bray Wyatt return edition of Monday Night Raw - in about 5 minutes.
It’s the season premiere of Monday Night Raw, with a new commentary team of Corey Graves
and Kevin Crabpatrick, who has swapped places in being a human mic stand with Byron Saxton.
But it’s also the DX celebration show, which means we got an unfunny backstage segment
of them doing jokes in air quotes about cocks and that. It wasn’t funny in 2006 years
and 16 years have not helped that. The biggest pop of the night came for the
graphic for Bray Wyatt, which said Bray Wyatt Returns tonight. Now, it should be noted that
the Wyatt return at Extreme Rules was so hot that it shifted a lot of unsold tickets for
tonight’s Raw. And his pop here was somehow louder for the best thing in WWE right now,
the Bloodline who came out for the opening promo. I’m just going to say it now, in
case you’re watching this having not watched the show and you want to know what Bray did,
by “Bray Wyatt Returns”, what they meant was they showed the return at Extreme Rules
in full. That was it. We got a creepy video later, and an announcement he’ll be on SmackDown,
but that was it. This was not the best way to follow up on the hottest thing coming off
your PPV. It’s actually quite terrible. What wasn’t terrible, though, was The Bloodline
and Sami Zayn stepping up to relieve Roman of his duties of dealing with Jey Uso. It
led to Matt Riddle coming out, and Jey convincing Sami that he should deal with Riddle because
he was disrespecting them. I’ve been informed that they attempted to do some comedy with
‘yee’ which Sami confused as ‘yeet’ so Riddle just followed suit and also said
‘yeet’ even though that’s not the joke, but I’m a 36 year old white guy from Kent
so I don’t really have the grounds to comment. Anyway, this continues to rule, and it played
into the Riddle vs. Zayn match later on perfectly. Austin Theory took another loss, this time
to his former mentor Johnny Gargano who hit a hell of a tope spinning DDT and the slingshot
DDT for the win. A very fun match, but Money in the Bank holder Austin Theory cannot buy
a win at this point. And neither can Chad Gable, who lost quickly
to Rey Mysterio despite some distractions from Rhea Ripley and Subanic. After the match
Dom - who this week was dressed like a snooker player who is trying to buck the system - asked
his dad to hit him again. Rey wouldn’t, and after fighting off the rest of Judgement
Day got blindsided by his son for tremendous heat. Following Extreme Rules, I really wish
that Michael Cole was commentating on all of this, because he brings a level of passion
that is missing in both Graves and Patrick. That wasn’t it for Judgement Day, though,
as they gloated about killing Beth Pheonix and making Edge saying I Quit, but turned
their attention to Uncle Alan, AJ Styles. AJ came out and said that Finn was right,
he needed to turn to friends and family when his back is against the wall. After teasing
that he was joining Judgement Day, he revealed that he’s reformed The Club with the returning
Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows. Typical WWE, always signing ex-Impact stars, why can’t
they push their own talent [SCREEN]? Man, we’re never getting those QuizzleMania tag
team championships back are we? This was another great return for Hunter, and this Judgement
Day/AJ Styles story continues to be my favourite thing on Raw.
Byron interviewed Bayley who said she would win the Raw Women’s Championship, and then
showed how serious she was about being a top contender… by losing to Candice LaRea in
a fluke roll-up... What [SCREEN]? Bayley and the rest of Damage CTRL then beat up LaRea
and Bianca Belair who attempted to make the save and posed with the title. It’s hard
to get invested in Bayley as a serious contender when she lost here, and lost at the PPV when
she had a 3-on-1 advantage. This storyline has lost all steam and should have ended at
the PPV. And speaking of things losing steam, The Miz
had a birthday celebration. I’ve been down on The Miz and Dexter Lumis
storyline, and sometimes unfairly so. I still think it’s weird that the man who invaded
Miz’s home while his kids were asleep is the babyface in this scenario - and before
you say anything in the comments, I’ve had it confirmed to me that Lumis is listed as
a babyface internally so he is the babyface - but I cannot deny the crowd reactions he
gets. The problem is that WWE have been dragging their feet with this story for so long that
the Lumis pops aren’t what they were a month or so ago. Case in point, when Lumis was revealed
under the present like the little Diglet he is, the reaction was.. ‘Yeah we know’.
Maryse did her best to make it look like she fell in a cake when she missed it by a country
mile, and both left while the crowd chanted for Lumis to eat said cake. I was ready to
go mad that this storyline still isn’t going anywhere, but they did some more comedy with
DX later on where they announced next week The Miz faces Dexter Lumis, and if Miz wins
Lumis is gone forever, but if Lumis wins he gets a contract. It is, at the most basic
level, a step forward so it gets a thumbs up.
Omos beat up two local lads and it was as boring as you’d imagine, but then Bobby
Lashley had a great segment prior to his US Championship match against Seth Rollins. Bobby
called out Rollins to start the match, but a returning Brock Lesnar came out instead.
He gave Bobby a couple of F5s and some German Suplexes, and even locked in the Kimura. They
put over so hard that Bobby could no longer defend his title, but Seth taunted Lashley
into doing it anyway because soldiers are not supposed to be cowards.
It led to an excellent match that was nothing but big spots. Lashley kicked out of a Pedigree
and Frog Splash. He hit a Spear but couldn’t lock in the Hurt Lock because of Brock’s
attack, and fell to two Stomps by Rollins to crown him the new United States Championship.
A brilliant way to get the belt of Lashley, who was doing nothing with it, and set up
a Crown Jewel match between him and Lesnar. This was all great.
They announced that Elias was returning next week. LOL I thought he was dead.
And we got an excellent main event between Sami Zayn and Matt Riddle, built around Sami
telling Jey Uso to not get involved because he was handling this situation. He didn’t
handle it well, though, as Riddle pinned him with an RKO. The reaction by Sami, Jey and
Jimmy after the match was awesome, and would have been a superb final visual for the episode.
But there was only 8 minutes left, so DX came out and did some catchphrases and that was
it. I don’t know what people were expecting - I did see some people say that they should
do a big angle or put over some younger talent - but that’s not what DX reunion segments
are for. They’re there to say some catchphrases and look cool. Which they… sort of did.
Look cool, that is, they sure got in all of their schtick and even - finally - gave a
shoutout to Chyna which should have been done a decade ago. Corey told me that if I wasn’t
having fun, then I didn’t belong. Well, I guess I don’t belong then.
So that was this week’s Raw and it was quite a good show. Really good, in fact. The wrestling
was solid throughout, we got three big returns in The Good Brothers and Lesnar, and some
more excellent Bloodline stuff. The Women’s Championship scene needs some tinkering, and
the DX thing was what it was, but for me the biggest failure of the night is not captalising
on the Bray Wyatt return. They must have known it was going to be a big deal coming out of
Extreme Rules, so to have nothing on a show that might get a better rating than usual
off the buzz is mind boggling. I’m not saying my interest has been killed or he’s being
buried because that would be in bad faith, but I do think this a fumbled ball. This week’s
Raw is still 4 out of 5.