In this WrestleTalk News, the Usos call out salty tag teams over PWI 100 list, potential
Bray Wyatt faction members spotted on NXT and Austin Theory apologises backstage, plus
loads more.
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Luke is not feeling well today so you’re stuck with me, go and wish him well on Twitter.
Feeling well and doing well though are WWE Undisputed Tag Team Champions Jimothy and
Jeyson Uso who found themselves riding high on PWI’s Tag Team 100 List.
Not just high, the highest taking the number one spot for themselves.
They is the ones.
But their placement at the pinnacle of tag team wrestling has drawn the ire of some of
the other names on the list who have also had a stellar year - namely number 2 slot
FTR and number 3’s The Briscoes.
FTR’s Dax Harwood tweeted to say: “Did Paul Heyman write this issue?
‘Cause this s*** FULL of lies.”
Whereas, Jay Briscoe said: “Imagine if we weren’t banned from TV…
Usos my ass #DemBoys” But the Usos hit back with “A lot of Salty
ass tag teams out there huh??…#WeTheOnes”.
Salty ass.
In the case of FTR that’s two big trunks full of salt.
It’s not the first time that a PWI list has opened up a whole can of worms for the
wrestling community - but it’s wrestling, and the truth is there is no can, it’s just
a big f off colony of worms.
From worms and beef, to worms and teeth and maggots and magic as we’re talking Bray
Wyatt.
Well at least tangentially as two former ROH stars were spotted in the crowd of last night’s
NXT episode.
Vincent Marseglia and Dutch of the Righteous were among audience members for the episode.
According to PWInsider the pair are currently in Orlando as part of ongoing WWE Performance
Center tryouts that are happening throughout this entire week.
Now it’s unknown whether the pair have signed with WWE, but this all feeds back to Wyatt
because they were previously rumored to be eyed as part of Bray’s suspected Wyatt 6
stable.
The fire was of course fuelled by Bray who interacted with social media posts from Dutch
a while back suggesting some sort of alliance between the two.
Other names listed as potential members by Dave Meltzer back in October were Alexa Bliss,
Liv Morgan, Grayson Waller, Joe Gacy and Bo Dallas.
We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds for The Righteous, but considering they
were spotted on TV the signs look promising.
Sticking with WWE and very newly minted US Champion Austin Theory had a match with Mustafa
Ali on Raw this week in Washington DC for which he has reportedly apologised backstage.
During the match Theory botched a top rope hurricanrana spot that left both men crashing
to the mat awkwardly.
Fightful Select did some following up and found that there was “no heat” between
the two stars and the champ took full responsibility for the “slip up” and offered an apology
to Ali.
It’s wrestling, these things happen, this is the way to conduct yourself.
The spot should have gone down with Theory blocking the hurricanrana attempt and then
angling for a top rope powerbomb only for Ali to hit the rana anyhow, however, Theory
just didn’t quite hold on to Ali and both men faceplanted the canvas instead.
It was awkward and ungraceful, like me trying to do any wrestling move
at all.
The culmination of AEW’s year long story about backstage unrest is upon us as former
NXT dad, turned winning-nest AEW stable father, William Regal is the centre of speculation
about leaving the company and returning to WWE.
Rumors have claimed Regal had a contract clause allowing him to return to WWE if Triple H
ever gained power, which seems wild, and various other reports have suggested that Regal thought
there was a maturity issue backstage at the younger company - and that makes Dad mad.
EC3 even went so far as to suggest Big Willy Reegs “immediately regretted” his decision
to join AEW, something which a new report from SEScoops refutes.
According to the report, AEW Sources called EC3’s claims “completely inaccurate”
and said EC3 was merely venting frustration over not having landed a job himself.
So they’re suggesting that EC3 is trying to control someone else’s narrative, interesting.
Wilhelm Regal isn’t the only person potentially on their way to WWE, as I mentioned earlier
the E has been holding performance center tryouts this week which The Righteous have
been attending.
But so have a couple of other interesting names - namely Kylie Rae of the smiley gimmick
who has we’ve seen in All Elite, Impact and the NWA as well as indie shows up and
down the US.
And also KC Navarro who has been making waves with appearances in AEW and Major League Wrestling,
and is the current Warrior Wrestling World Champion.
Sticking with WWE and Drew McIntyre announced that he would be missing this week’s edition
of Smackdown as he was “medically disqualified” from competing, which meant that the planned
match where he teamed with Sheamus against the Usos for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships
would not be going ahead.
Huge opportunity missed for McIntyre there.
Dave Meltzer followed up on Wrestling Observer Radio noting that this isn’t a storyline
injury and is legit.
Saying: “He is injured.
I was told an injury, but it’s not from a first-hand source.
But he’s supposed to be back for the Christmas show.
So it’s only a couple of weeks, I know that.”
While WWE’s stock of talent dwindles, AEW’s ever-expanding roster continues to swallow
up all of the wrestling landscape.
Last week’s Rampage introduced us to another new face for AEW, Shane Taylor, master of
beer-pong, all around lovely guy and phenomenal wrestler.
However, some fans took issue with the way that Taylor was introduced, essentially sidling
up to Keith Lee during a backstage interview and challenging him to a tag match at ROH
Final Battle.
Little was said of who Taylor was and his previous accolades which left some fans confused.
Tony Khan has defended the decision to introducer Taylor like this and generally his booking
of debuts for his swelling roster: “There are fans who have never seen Shane
Taylor before, and that’s okay.
You get introduced to new faces all the time.
When I was a young wrestling fan, that was one of the things I liked about WCW Nitro.
I think it would be very ironic now that the same promoter [Eric Bischoff] would tell you,
you don’t want to see these faces or introduce new people on TV because they were the ones
who did that.”
Back in October, AEW’s Athena came under fire for a particularly stiff match she had
against Canadian independent wrestler Jody Threat on AEW Dark, with reports at the time
even noting that the pair were spoken to backstage afterwards to make sure everything was ok.
Now though, Athena has appeared on Busted Open Radio and voiced her frustration with
a certain double standard in wrestling, something that both she and former AEW Women’s World
Champion Thunder Rosa have been criticized for:
“People forget that the girls can hit just as hard as the guys ... I guarantee you, if
I was a man, I feel like there wouldn't be as much backlash or anything about that.”
She went on to say that this double standard usually came from “old, bloated farts”,
and told them to “Get over it.
We're out here to be just as good as the guys and we give it our all.
We put in all this time and effort to hone our craft and I feel we're under-appreciated
when we do things like that.”
It does indeed seem poignant that we have matches like Gunther vs Sheamus or Chris Jericho
vs Tomohiro Ishii or Minoru Suzuki vs…well anyone really, and we praise it boundlessly,
but the same level of stiff striking seen in women’s matches is often condemned.
And over on Raw, a women’s triple threat main evented the show, with Alexa Bliss being
victorious over Becky Lynch and Nikki Cross, earning the right to face Bayley next week
to determine the number one contender to Bianca Belair.
Unfortunately though, it seems this wasn’t enough of a draw for the viewers of the show,
as despite the overall viewership of Raw coming in at 1.536 million, the third hour of Raw
drastic go down.
According to Brandon Thurston of Wresltenomics on Twitter, the final hour of Raw averaged
1.263 million viewers, which is the lowest third hour recorded since Raw became 3 hours
in 2012, and the lowest single hour ever recorded for the red brand.
But hey, the 18-49 demo was up to a .41!
So y’know, silver linings and all that!
NXT last night was definitely a noteworthy show, not least because the final entrants
for the Iron Survivor Challenge were revealed and boy, that match type sure is going to
be something isn’t it.
Also, the bloody New Day showed up from out of nowhere to challenge Pretty Deadly for
the NXT Tag Titles, which will be happening at this weekend’s Deadline show.
That sounds fun.
And that wasn’t all for the returns, as Drew Gulak showed up for the first time on
NXT in 3 years to have a little watch of Charlie Dempsey in his win over Hank Walker.
Charlie Dempsey of course being the son of William Regal.
William Regal to return to NXT and make his own Blackpool Combat Club faction with Dempsey
and Gulak confirmed?
And finally before we get out of here today, we just wanted to wish a quick congratulations
to our friend Denise Salcedo, who will be part of the NXT Deadline Kickoff panel this
weekend.
Go get em Denise.