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Royal Rumble Elites, Wrestle Kingdom, Gorilla Monsoon Giveaway & The State of AEW
36 Plays6 years ago
Phil and Marco are joined by guest co-host Mike Lanham to discuss Wrestle Kingdom, Jushin Liger's retirement, a look back at AEW after their first year, Royal Rumble elites hitting Target, and much more!
patreon.com/chickfoleyshow
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Transcript
Introduction and Guests
00:00:18
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Chick Foley show. I am your host, Phil Gentile, here live in the Jimmy's Famous Seafood Studios. And I have a couple guests with me tonight, Marco Denton and our guest co-host, Michael Annum. What's going on, boys? How are you tonight? I'm doing swell. How are you?
00:00:45
Speaker
I'm not too bad, man. About three beers in, just finished up at AEW. Feeling good. Thanks. Mike, what's up with you, buddy? Oh, I'm doing good, fellas. It's good to hear from you.
00:00:58
Speaker
Is that what it takes to make it through an AW show these days? Yeah, I could have used a couple more. But yeah, we'll get to that. If you guys aren't familiar with Mike, you should follow him if you don't already on Twitter. It's at michaelannum, L-A-N-H-A-M. He's been on a couple episodes with us. He recapped, I think, the first AW pay-per-view. You were there in person in Chicago. And then you were on with me on a Patreon episode where we went through the entire lineup of all the retros.
00:01:26
Speaker
I picked our favorites, talked about the future of the line and all that stuff. So if you're a Patreon subscriber, go back and listen to that. Marco, we have a pretty packed show here,
Patreon Benefits and Community
00:01:38
Speaker
dude. Before we get into anything, I want to give some shout outs to our new Patreons. We have like 11 new Patreon subscribers.
00:01:47
Speaker
I'm going to run them down for you here right now. Kyle House, Christian Toonstra, Dave L, Jeremiah Smith-Roos, Meet the 90s Guy, I guess that's his name, Jason Drakes, Shane Tamizer, and Britton Hester. So those are our new Patreon subscribers. They are in our Facebook group. It's all kind of happened when
00:02:12
Speaker
These new Royal Rumble elites have started hitting stores. People are freaking out, aren't going to be able to get them. And I brag about you guys all the time that we have this awesome Facebook group of almost 80, 90 people now strong out there hunting and looking for figures. And for $1 a month, you can sign up. It's patreon.com slash Chick Foley show. Up from there, it goes to $5 for some bonus content, like bonus episodes and all that kind of stuff.
00:02:39
Speaker
Like I said, it starts at $1 a month. You get access to our Facebook group and you get our show notes emailed to you every single week and entry into all of our giveaways that we do. So it's a pretty good deal. And it's a cool community we've built on there on Facebook, Mike. Tell everybody a little bit about it. You're pretty active on there. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become just a daily, just kind of a chat group. Everybody just kind of
00:03:06
Speaker
posting what figs they they've picked up or or they've seen in the wild. And I mean, I just I don't collect a lot of elite figures myself. So when I'm out in a Walmart or Target or wherever and I see figures I can post on there that I of what I'm seeing within minutes. People on that group or hey man, can you pick this up? Can you pick that up? What's it cost to ship? What's it? What's it going to cost me and on that group? Everything's retail plus shipping.
00:03:35
Speaker
We're definitely taking care of everybody. So for, like Phil said, for a dollar a month, pick up those figures that maybe your Walmart or Target may not see ever, may not see for months. And hopefully you're getting some pretty good figs in and you're building relationships with some people you may not otherwise ever know.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, we do some non-wrestling talk on there too. Yeah, I mean, I check it. I feel like every single hour there's something new somebody's posted on there, whether it's about Raw or SmackDown or some figures that they found in the wild. So yeah, it's pretty fun. Check us out. We have the link on our Twitter account if you want. It's at chick foley show. Sheena is not here, as you can probably tell by our three baritones. She is still
00:04:20
Speaker
Tending to her two children. I believe she's gonna make some sort of a reappearance at the Royal Rumble next week But she'll probably be like number 27 get thrown out real quick and then head back to catering But we miss you Sheena shows not the same without you so get back soon Michael fill your shoes the best the best he can but
00:04:44
Speaker
You know your stuff, man. You're not as pretty as her, but you know you're wrestling. If you guys have any questions, hit us up at AskChickFully at gmail.com or shoot us a DM. I want to plug the Chick-Fully Lounge. You have that here on the script. I've been having fun doing that. That's part of our Patreon as well.
00:05:03
Speaker
I interviewed Chris Van Fleet, who's a part of AEW, a well-known YouTube interview of Wrestling
Wrestling Interviews and Sponsorships
00:05:11
Speaker
Stars. And then last week, cheap eats stack guy Greg, who had some nice things to say about our own Marco Denton. And I got a couple more lined up in the can. She's kind of me, one-on-one with some people in the wrestling podcast industry, just kind of talking about how they got into wrestling.
00:05:27
Speaker
It's a good you know 30 40 minute listen, and it's been pretty fun to do so I enjoy interviewing people like that so Definitely another perk to being a patreon subscriber and all those episodes will get eventually put onto our normal Podcast feed so you guys will get them if you're a normal listener the patreon subscribers just get them a little bit a little bit early so um
00:05:47
Speaker
Let's go inside the squared circle, guys. This part is sponsored in part by Chalkline. You can use code CHICK for 15% off of your order there on that website. Don't know too much of what happened on SmackDown. Let's breeze through that so we can get into some of the big things that happened on Raw. Anything of note, Marco, from SmackDown on Friday night?
SmackDown Highlights
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, so the main thing was we had two big returns to the ring. You had Seamus made his in-ring debut.
00:06:17
Speaker
Basically just bro kicking shorty G and folding him in half pretty much killing him in the middle of the ring So that that was out. It was after he had a match with a Dash Wilder of the revival. So it was a one-on-one affair. He won the match Sheamus came out like they're like basically beating the crap out of shorty G Sheamus comes out looks like he's gonna make a save and just hauls off and kicks the head off of a shorty G so
00:06:44
Speaker
but i haven't heard anything from him since they haven't been said in the news are if he's still around but uh... with with briefly thoughts and prayers uh... surey gee uh... uh... the other big return was uh... another another beating was happening so uh... zegler and core were up to their old tricks again uh... bring out that dog food in the uh... in the handcuffs for uh... for old roman rains there and uh... he was saved by the uh...
00:07:12
Speaker
fellow bloodline members, the Usos made their return at the end of SmackDown. That was pretty cool. So it looks like they're gonna start that faction up. So it looks like they're just having Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins team up with twins, twin brothers. So that's pretty exciting. But other than that, nothing too crazy. The female and the parents attacked Daniel Bryan at the end too as well. So their feud is hot and heavy, but that's gonna,
00:07:41
Speaker
bubble over at Royal Rumble. So that was pretty much it for SmackDown. It's two hours, so it's short and sweet.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, which I love. You touched on it. I like the idea, and Mike, I want your thoughts on this, of pairing Roman Reigns with the Usos to kind of like, you know, the Usos have gone for the tag team titles, you know, millions of times. We don't really need to see that again. I like the idea of partnering them with Roman and having them kind of in a feud with some of these bigger name main eventers. And I think it'd be a good twist. And I mean, it's kind of a no brainer to put them with Roman, right?
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think at this point, like we've seen, uh, I guess with the brand split, you see so many repeat matches or, or it just seems like you're seeing the same stuff over and over. So while it sucks to see somebody like the usos off TV for, for months at a time, uh, when they come back, they get that, that huge pop from the crowd and it just kind of gives something new for them to do. At least over the next few weeks, maybe as you build towards, uh, towards the rumble and, uh, the pay-per-view after that. So.
00:08:44
Speaker
Usos sporting a new matching haircuts. Yeah, like that. So that was different. I wonder if one of them has, like, what if only one of them wants to get a haircut? What if one of them wants to get their hair long? They just have to do whatever the other one does. That's weird. I like what you said there because it is, that is the fun part of wrestling. That's why I love the Royal Rumble. I love, like, it's going to sound stupid, but that, like,
00:09:08
Speaker
two-second window from when the buzzer goes off until you hear someone's music play it's like if i could live in that two-second window of of my life would be like the best the best moment in like professional wrestling because you don't know who's coming out and you know it could be somebody returning could be a new wrestler who knows but like i'm all for like people being scheduled for two-month breaks and you know the usos getting to go to you know on vacation for a couple months getting a couple of duis or something
00:09:38
Speaker
And coming back and being kind of fresh and let Charlotte go away for a little bit, bring her back for WrestleMania season. And you have such a big roster, it would make sense to keep people fresh, keep them off TV. So we're not seeing the same matches day in and day out. So yeah, I like that a lot. And we also saw John Morrison, you didn't jump on that. That was like a three second return.
00:10:02
Speaker
And people weren't too happy with him just kind of being backstage for like five seconds and that being his his debut. But I guess that's what we're getting. And I don't know if he's going to partner with the Miz or or what, but I'm probably the biggest John Morrison mark. So I was happy to see him come back. Yeah, it kind of it kind of had like no reaction. I don't know if it's just the the way they they had it on the crowd, maybe and sort of a miss hill turn without really going too deep into it, I guess.
00:10:31
Speaker
by pairing him up with Kofi this week. I know he's one of those easy wrestlers that you can turn from face to heel in an instant, but it didn't seem like they really did a lot with it, and maybe they're going to build on that.
00:10:46
Speaker
Speaking of a face heel turn, let's move over to SmackDown because I'm really interested to see what they're doing with Drew McIntyre here. They basically have the, he's coming out, I feel like he's a face. He's doing like a countdown chant for when he does the claymore. He's talking a little bit more on the mic and kind of getting the crowd behind him.
00:11:07
Speaker
But they're not even putting him against any heel jobbers. Last week he fought the Major Brothers. This week he fought, I think, No Way Jose. Yeah. So I mean, I don't know if they even had, I couldn't even think off the top of my head of any heel jobbers they have. I mean, the Ascension are gone. You know, the clones, maybe. I don't know. I mean, for such a deep roster, there's really nobody you can just feed to people like that. But I mean, he's clearly a face, and I'm excited to see where they're going to go with this.
00:11:36
Speaker
I feel like he's going to be like 60 years old and we're going to talk about how he's going to be like the next big thing. I mean, he was in like, we do these retro wrestling recommendations of the weekend. Like you go back to pay-per-views from 2009 and he's like on the cusp of being a, you know, a world champion. And, you know, 10 years, 11 years later, we're talking about the same thing. But I mean, he has a look. I still think he's fun to watch. And I'm excited to see what he can do, maybe possibly matched up against Brock Lesnar or something as a heel versus face contender, you know? What do you think, Marco?
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think he's kind of like on the like fence of being a face or hail cuz like just the way he's like He taught he was speaking in the ring as well So like we need the claymore kick and he's just like oh I didn't even drop the microphone like just like throwing like little things out like that and like and like the week before he was like oh I'm the sexiest man of this roster and all I guess I don't know he's like it's it's that's something that faces don't really do so I'm not sure what it is or he's just maybe like an anti
00:12:35
Speaker
face or anti-heal right now and he's just trying to like find his like his character I think maybe each week he comes out and probably those things out there and see what sticks essentially but yeah I think he's gonna be like one of like remain like the last like probably like four or five guys in the rumble that's that's that's why I think they're like gonna put him right now and um I think he'll have like the face off with like Brock Lesnar and everything cuz um my prediction is Brock was gonna win rumble for some weird reason I don't know why they wouldn't
00:13:04
Speaker
I feel like he wouldn't make that deal if he wasn't going to win so. Yeah, let's get to that because that was the biggest news of the week probably. Brock Lesnar starts off raw and comes out and announces or Paul Heyman announces that he's going to be the number one entrant into the Rumble.
00:13:22
Speaker
the champ so they weren't really clear whether this is the the Royal Rumble is gonna be for number one contender or what they're doing they could have easily added a single line Mike and been like you know we're tired of like you know fighting fighting at WrestleMania so Brock is gonna enter the Royal Rumble he's gonna kick everybody's ass so he doesn't have to even defend the title at WrestleMania that would make sense
00:13:45
Speaker
Or said like, hey, I want to face Bray Wyatt, or I want both titles so I can go on both brands and kick everybody's ass. But they really kind of left it up in the air. But I mean, I like the idea of Brock being in the Rumble number one. I mean, he hasn't been in a match more than three, four minutes in a couple years. So I mean, if he's going to be in there, you know he's going to throw out the first six or seven guys. But I'm interested to see, Marco thinks he's going to win. How would you fantasy book this, Mike, going forward with Brock being number one?
00:14:16
Speaker
Man, I kind of it kind of depends on who's all in the rumble With them doing the the three brands now I know I guess you guys haven't really covered this yet if we have three brands and we only have 30 people are we are we only taking? 10 people from raw 10 from smack down and 10 from NXT because that limits who you're gonna have in the rumble it pretty much eliminates you having any kind of Throw throw away type people in the rumble and
00:14:44
Speaker
of the
00:15:13
Speaker
From what I read, I mean, like I try to say away from dirt sheets, but like there are rumors swirl that they may up the body count in the Royal Rumble this year to 60 men instead of 30. That's what I was reading. I mean, that's, I mean, they do with the greatest Royal Rumble. What is it? Like 50 guys or something like that? I think it was 50 or 60. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I mean, they could easily do that. I mean, they've done it over there so they can do it here, but like you're right with the three brands now.
00:15:43
Speaker
of the
00:16:01
Speaker
Is that championship open to get chosen? Yeah. They should definitely clarify that because I would love to see. Does Adam Cole face Brock Lesnar if Brock Lesnar is like, I want to face Adam Cole. If he does win or if Roman Reigns wins, hey, I'm facing Adam Cole, I want that NXT title.
00:16:18
Speaker
How does that work? I don't know. I would use this. I don't think you can have Brock win. I think it's a perfect opportunity to put someone over big. I think it's going to be number 30. I think you're going to see Champa or Keith Lee come out and throw out Brock and then challenge Adam Cole.
00:16:42
Speaker
Because obviously, they're going all in on NXT. So have one NXT match on WrestleMania. Make it the world title match, whatever you call it, NXT title match. And build someone else. Have him get thrown out by somebody that you want to push heavily.
00:17:00
Speaker
because it wouldn't make any sense for him to be number one and not be there at the end, right? I mean, what's the point? But as the champ, hopefully they clarify next week whether, is the Royal Rumble not for the title shot anymore or not for his title?
Royal Rumble Speculations
00:17:15
Speaker
It's just WWE is bad at like...
00:17:18
Speaker
giving us details on stuff they think it doesn't matter but you know nerds like nerds like us actually give a shit you know the kid the wrestling is uh the kids out there don't really care it's gonna be fun to see him in the royal rumble but yeah very interesting to see what happens there i mean brock you know in the royal rumble is gonna be fun i'm sure he's gonna just destroy i mean
00:17:37
Speaker
I don't know who you put number two, but it's that's probably gonna be like the worst draw in the Royal Rumble history that will probably be like Epico or Primo or something. He just gets thrown out in three seconds. But yeah, you're right, Mike. I think if you keep it 30 people, you could have like the best Royal Rumble ever because you could just have
00:17:55
Speaker
With three brands, it would be stacked. I mean, 30 people was like, no, nothing. You don't have to put any tag team guys in there. Just put in all main eventers, and it'd be an awesome match. But I'm sure they'll screw it up at some point. We saw Big Show return in the main event, the team with Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe, which was interesting. I don't know how long he's going to stick around, but I'm sure he'll be in the Royal Rumble, and he'll put somebody over big.
00:18:25
Speaker
Any thoughts on Big Show returning with with the beard and you know still looks pretty good I mean he's been around for a long time, but I'm always I think we have like a limited time with some of these older guys So I mean I'm always interested to see them. You know come back out for one more run All right, it's I think when you anytime you have a mystery partner like that it's hard to think you're ever gonna get the a real reaction out of anybody and
00:18:53
Speaker
Like yes, the crowd cheered. It's the big show. He hasn't been on Raw. I think they said in, when I say they said like two years or something, it seems like a long time, but yeah. Right, right. So, uh, I don't know if there's anybody you really could have brought out that that crowd would have just gone bananas for, uh, that wouldn't have overshadowed the fact that you're pushing Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe towards some kind of match with Seth at some point. Um, so, so yeah, I mean, it's a good way to bring a guy like that back.
00:19:23
Speaker
Uh, I just don't know how many matches you're really going to get out of him. If you're really going to push him, or if he's just going to be that veteran that when somebody gets a win over a guy, like the big show, it's considered a huge win on your resume because you're beating a former champion, a future, all of Famer and just someone of sheer size. So, uh, maybe, maybe that's part of it. He's just coming back to kind of put over some of the, some of the younger guys that they're, they're trying to build.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, I'm trying to think of a big guy that they would try to put over. I mean, he's already kind of built up. Last time he was around, he built, he helped build up, you know, Stroman a little bit. Is there another big guy that he could kind of put up, put over? I mean,
00:20:06
Speaker
It'd be mainly like the AOP Keith Lee, but I mean I don't see him sticking around that long to like get to a program with anybody But yeah, I think it would be probably AOP They like they would beat up on him and he'd beat up on them and if they get a pin on him or something like that Or one of them gets a pin it puts them over as a team like they dominate like the world's largest athlete I'm sure
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure at some point, if, uh, if you're not really turning McIntyre face, which I personally hope that's not a thing. I see that being a guy that they would let McIntyre beat. That's a big win. Uh, I wouldn't be surprised if, if Bobby Lashley doesn't eventually be big show, that would look like a big win for him. So, I mean, there, there are some guys, I guess it just kind of depends on what direction they really want to go with, uh, as he probably winds his, his career down. I got to figure it out.
00:21:02
Speaker
Here it is, stone cold luck. Oh no. Walter throws big show out of the Royal Rumble. I'll take a Walter Brock face off it at Rumble. Oh, okay. That's gonna happen. That'll probably happen. Hey, Sheena Tron 5000, what do you think? Me personally, I just feel like it's stupid.
00:21:28
Speaker
Okay. She now thinks it's stupid that I said that. Okay. That sounds about right. She's correct. We'll see. Let's see what happens. We saw Andrade retain in a weird match against Ray Mysterio and the Viking Raiders retain. Uh, nothing of note really there. Um, let's move on to you at NXT UK black pool, uh, coming up. Is that this weekend already?
NXT UK and WWE Network Praise
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah. It's the afternoon. So, um, if you have anything
00:21:58
Speaker
to do in the afternoon. It's, uh, should stop it and watch the, uh, NXT takeover. Uh, Saturday, Sunday afternoon, Saturday. I'm going to watch the future Superbowl champions beat the Titans, but on Sunday, that's probably going to happen. It's
00:22:18
Speaker
It's inevitable. I've never watched a single show of NXT UK, so we can run through this quarter. I mean, I know a lot of these names. Yeah. There's some pretty good matches on here, though, just from going through it here. Tyler Bate versus Jordan Devlin, which is, you know, those two guys match up pretty well. Trent Seven versus Eddie Dennis, the UK women's title. Mads Kaylee Ray versus Tony Storm versus Piper Nevin.
00:22:46
Speaker
Big fan of Piper Nevin for obvious reasons. Gallus versus Imperium versus the Grizzled Young Veterans versus Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster. All those guys in that match look exactly the same. I don't know which one's which.
00:23:01
Speaker
A bunch of bearded fucking European dudes. And then Walter versus Joe Coffey. Tell me about Joe Coffey. I remember him when NXT UK first came around. He's not a big dude. He's like six feet tall. So is he a legit threat to Walter? Or is this just going to be a squash? Mike, do you want to take it, Mike? I was going to let you take that one. I've only seen Joe, I think I've only seen Joe Coffey.
00:23:30
Speaker
and maybe two matches. So I don't know a ton about him. Yeah, when he first came in, his brother is Mark Coffey, who's one half of, he's in Gallus, the stable Gallus, he was on tonight in that undisputed error match. They're both really big with like the British strong style of wrestling. So yeah, I mean, as far as like skill set, yeah. I mean, he's not like a, who's a threat to Walter?
00:23:59
Speaker
really except for like Tyler B when they had that like amazing match for like he's a he's a he's a threat in the sense where he can he could probably take the title because he's not he doesn't have any like fear against Walter like he's he doesn't fear him at all so yeah no he's it's it definitely should be a good match he's uh actually
00:24:20
Speaker
I forget where I just seen something else about him. He's actually in the United Kingdom tournament as well. Yeah, that's why I remember seeing him at first. I'm going to make a New Year's resolution that I'm going to start watching more NXT UK because it just seems like the free time that I have and just watching random office episodes over and over again every night is...
00:24:43
Speaker
taking a serious toll on me. I mean, that's literally all. I've watched three hours a night of that once my wife falls asleep and then I just fall asleep on the couch. So I'm going to switch over to watching more NXT UK because I mean, I've heard nothing about good things and I need to really up myself on this. But I mean, this would be a cool thing to watch on Sunday. That's the best thing about the network, man. It's like, you know, before
00:25:04
Speaker
There was no such thing as NXT UK. There's no such thing as NXT. And now we have a random pay-per-view on a Sunday in January, which is, you know, there's nothing to complain about, about that. I mean, more wrestling on, on random days like that is pretty cool. So, uh, I will definitely be checking that out. And he actually, um, no, sorry. Yeah. He actually faced Pete Dunne too in the first, um, NXT takeover black pool. If he has remember that match.
00:25:32
Speaker
he did. He did. He faced him and then Walter actually attacked him after the match. It's been bubbling since the last takeover, the very first takeover that they had in Blackpool. It's been a long-standing feud. Was that when Walter made his debut? Yes.
00:25:54
Speaker
I mean, you wouldn't think you're going to take the title off Walter. I mean, I know they don't talk about NXT UK nearly as much, but they've already started to do a lot of cross stuff between NXT and NXT UK and that kind of continues. And it even kind of bubbled into tonight's NXT show. I guess, Phil, you didn't catch NXT yet, right? No, not tonight. Yeah. I was, I was just specifically on AEW. Didn't want to really flip. Yeah. So, so,
00:26:23
Speaker
So mine and Marco's girl, Tony Storm, made our appearance to pretty much open to open up the show, pretty much demanding the title shot against Rhea Ripley, also claiming she's going to win the belt this weekend. And then the crowd broke out into a Tony two belts chant. So I'm sure Marco felt just as happy as I did for that. So I think that match is going to be really good this weekend. I don't know if you'll take the belt off Kaylee Ray that quickly.
00:26:53
Speaker
But I think they build a better storyline with doing a crossover with Tony, because she's already beat Rhea multiple times. And she looks like the unstoppable force in NXT. So if you have a challenger who actually can say, hey, I've beat you for 123 multiple times, and for the NXT UK Women's title multiple times, I feel like that's kind of a big deal for them to build with her and Rhea.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Can we add that she looked?
00:27:24
Speaker
Rather fantastic today as well. Don't forget that. I saw a couple of screenshots on Twitter. It looked pretty good. I don't know what it is about Piper Niven. I'm interested in her. I feel like she would be fun to hang out with. And then we would go to a diner at 4 in the morning. She could probably just hang out and eat like me because I'm a fat ass. And then she'd probably kick my ass. Then she'd probably kick my ass.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, she's tough. She can go, so. Yeah, she can go. What do you want to talk about next? You want to talk about Wrestle Kingdom or tonight's AEW NXT lineup? Wrestle Kingdom might be, I mean, it's pretty fast. Yeah, so it's basically Jericho retained, so Tanahashi's not getting his aid. They did open the door to like, so he did like, they do like, if you ever watch any New Japan paper views,
00:28:22
Speaker
They're really sports-oriented, so they do a lot of pre-press conferences, and they do the after-press conference with all the wrestlers and the participants and stuff like that. And they ask Jericho a question about AEW and New Japan, and he, not in K-fame, he's basically just like, everyone needs to put their egos aside, and there's money to be
New Japan Pro Wrestling Challenges
00:28:43
Speaker
made if we join forces, and we let talent basically do what they need to do to make both companies
00:28:52
Speaker
prevalent in this, in the wrestling business, stuff like that. So that was pretty much the message there was like, John Boxley actually took the title. So he actually has the United, their United States title now. So now he actually, they both, they both actually, he has a new Japan title. So, so that's kind of like a connection there. So, so then trying to do that, like, they opened the door a little bit. It looks like they, they want to do it, but I guess there's some like behind the scenes people that, you know,
00:29:21
Speaker
maybe like the Tony cons of the, and whoever owns New Japan is they're not like really, you know, clicking as well as, as they should. But, um, let's, let's take a step back real quick because Mike, Mike is our official new Japan correspondent, like just to get our AW correspondent, uh, tell them, I mean, I've never watched Russell Kingdom live. I've watched like, um, some of the Kenny Omega matches like on like,
00:29:48
Speaker
YouTube or tape delay or like the next morning, but what tell me tell me the scope of Wrestle Kingdom as a whole and Where like you did you watch it live Mike and like how did you watch it? You know should you know where people can find it now and all that stuff? All right, so I mean it plays for me About two in the morning, and I had to work all weekend, so I did not watch it live I watched it after work on Saturday after work on Sunday So this they did two days this year
00:30:18
Speaker
where in the past it's normally the one day and then some events kind of built around the weekend. Kind of the same way WWE will do a show with like NXT and you'll have like your SmackDown on Friday or whatever. So they had a night one and a night two and then the third day was called Dash. It was kind of a tribute to the Jushin Thunder Liger retirement. They still had a few other matches kind of thrown in. But New Japan's one of those companies that
00:30:46
Speaker
uh like to put as many people on the card as possible so even if you're having your your title matches and and uh i guess semi-story lines that they're building they'll also have three or four eight man tags just so they don't have to leave anybody off the card because these people are paying money or flying all the way to tokyo to see a certain star and maybe they're not in a main event caliber match but they're but they're still making it uh into the into the card so uh
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's just kind of the way they build their stories and stuff. And like Marco was talking about the Jericho one, the AW crossover, it's like, why wouldn't you? I mean, you're, you're obviously getting a whole nother set of eyes on, on your product. Um, but there was, there was some controversy over the last couple of weeks about, uh, uh, people in the States being able to watch new Japan because you still, you could watch it on TV, uh, pretty much for free, like hours after it,
00:31:46
Speaker
it aired and they decided not to do that this year. And kind of the story coming out from like the observer, I believe, was that they kind of have this deal with impact and they were trying to get New Japan and impact to kind of work out a deal and AW was like, we're good, hard pass, we're good on our own. So pretty much to see it in the States, you kind of have to pay for the pay-per-view or sign up for New Japan's service.
00:32:15
Speaker
Probably a lot less people saw it, but obviously a lot of people find ways to YouTube and Facebook and stuff like that or shared friends accounts or whatever, or you wait a few days and usually it's airing somewhere else. So. Yeah, just to add to that, they had so access TV is the is the is the station where they had to deal with New Japan and New Japan was airing their like you said, paper views and shows and things like that. But Impact recently signed a deal with them as well.
00:32:46
Speaker
So I think their goal with impact over new Japan, I think new Japan actually their contract ended already. And I don't think they re-signed with access TV. So now like impacts like the, like the premier like wrestling program for access TV and new Japan's like out in the ocean, just floating somewhere. I have, yeah, I have the, I actually got the new Japan world. That's the name of their app. We can, it's literally a new, it's literally like WWE network, but new Japan pro wrestler, you can go back
00:33:15
Speaker
to like the 50s and watch like literally everything that they like every shit. Wow. It's it's insane like that because they've been around for a very long time for years and years. So like you could go back and watch like Hogan face at Buddha, which that night that people play clips of you. If you scroll through Twitter sometimes, like if you follow those, like I think there's one that's called grapple grapple wrestling. They show like old clips and stuff like that. You could watch Hogan actually do like chain wrestling because that's
00:33:43
Speaker
His style of wrestling was chain wrestling until he moved to WWF and he went with a more simpler style because that's what that called for. But if you watch any of Hogan's New Japan stuff, it was literally just all Insiguris and he's doing drop toll holds and doing all these types of head scissor takedowns. It's pretty amazing to watch, or you can YouTube it. But yeah, it's a large, large library of stuff.
00:34:10
Speaker
see all the Finn Balor stuff from what he was there, AJ Styles, Shinsuke when he first started out, if you're into that stuff. But yeah, so I try to dabble in there as much as I can with the new Japan world stuff. I'm gonna ask this without sounding racist, is everything in English on it or is it like, can you navigate the app pretty well or? Yeah, so they have like an English translator. Oh, okay. But then they also started to
00:34:38
Speaker
add English commentary to a lot of the shows. So you could watch, I think it's Kevin Kelly is one of the commentators. And I forget the other two guys, but they started doing stuff. They're like, you'll hear stuff with Jim Ross, because he was a part of that. Josh Barnett, who was a former MMA fighter, it was him and Jim Ross who used to do all the commentary for a few years in New Japan. So if you go back, I think they're just starting to add
00:35:06
Speaker
English commentary, but the older stuff it's all in Japanese So you have to listen to Japanese commentators or put it you either are but yeah, yeah and new Japan has a like an American Touring show about to happen. I think at the end of January early February, so I don't know if that's maybe part of why the AW things not immediately coming forward They announced some of the cards
00:35:32
Speaker
there's a Nashville show, which is only two hours away from me. I was all about going, uh, until I realized it's the night of the rumble and that's going to take priority. So, uh, why, why you would put a show like that at the same night, you're missing out on your, your fan base, I guess. So, uh, but yeah,
00:35:52
Speaker
I mean, I know they're hitting like Atlanta and Nashville and probably Chicago and I think LA and there's there's some other cities. So obviously people get a chance to go see those shows. They're going to get they're going to see some of the big names like Okada's doing part of the tour. I think Osprey and stuff like that will be on it too. And then some of the younger guys or up and comers or maybe guys you just don't know. And then they've signed some like some indie type guys from around the U.S. who are going to be on these shows too. So yeah, I mean,
00:36:22
Speaker
Phil, if you have time, there's definitely a handful of matches from, uh, the first night and maybe one or two from the night too. They're just excellent for just the pure wrestling aspect. Um, I know, I know there's a lot of spot fests in some of these matches and stuff. I'm not a huge Zach Sabre Jr fan is match this weekend. It impressed me that much, but even like Osprey, yeah, the match, the match was full of two counts and false finishes and stuff.
00:36:50
Speaker
but just the actual the actual wrestling with sometimes you know that going in Takahashi this weekend. It kind of like, you know, hits a little bit less hard because, yeah, I mean, his matches are always like that. But, yeah, I saw some of the highlights of that match and it was it was pretty insane. Those guys were super athletic. And just the way the Japanese crowd just the like respect for the wrestlers and stuff in the crowd. They're silent when they need to be. They're cheering when they need to be. There's no
00:37:18
Speaker
There's no what chance there's not people holding up signs in the crowd. I mean, most of these people are, are like businessmen in the first 20 rows that are in like full fledged suits and stuff. So it's crazy, crazy what happens at these wrestling shows, uh, over there. So I think that I want to say they had 40 or 50,000 people the first night and, and like 75% of that the second night. So, I mean, they're bringing, they're bringing in really big crowds for, for single night events. So yeah, they, they actually, the, the,
00:37:47
Speaker
Weird thing I found out about this was there it's fine. It's a five hour pay-per-view both nights, right? The main event had as much energy as the opening match as far as a crowd like participation goes Yeah, yeah Yeah, it doesn't die down. That's pretty cool. I like that. Yeah, they don't know. Yeah, so a bushy and Okada got the same response as The I think it was like the it was like a tag match at the beginning
00:38:13
Speaker
It was like a dark match, but like they got the literally the same idea the crowd was into like every close pinfall and all that stuff so like you kind of admire it watching what we're watching now because What we're watching we don't get that response from our the crowds that we see but like it was kind of like man I wish I was in that crowd right now. Just cheer these guys on
00:38:31
Speaker
Well, you have a cool bucket, like a wrestling bucket list thing to go to because it's probably so much history there. And it's probably the crowd, like you said, the crowd is completely different. The show is just like, you know, it's wrestling, but it's so different than everything else we would see here in the States. It's insane. And it's just some of the guys that have came from there that how big they are in WWE and stuff now, uh, like a Nakamura and then the time like the OC and AJ Styles and people like that that were there. And then you've got guys like,
00:39:00
Speaker
like Kenta who came to NXT and, uh, as, as a Tommy. And when he moved to the main roster, it just never worked out a lot of, uh, injuries, plague them and stuff like that. He goes back to new Japan and he's become a star again. He's the biggest, he's probably the biggest hill they have there. He's in, he's in their version of the bullet club and he's going to fight for their two world titles in like a month. So just, just how easily someone's career can turn around there.
00:39:28
Speaker
Um, and I like what they've done with Jericho and Moxley. And, uh, I think with people like, uh, uh, Luke Harper, everybody's like, Oh, if he goes to AW, he could be the champion and stuff. I think he's perfect for a place like new Japan. His style, he has that look of Brody and he, that was such a big thing over in Japan. And as much as, uh, as Archer ever since he went over there, cause he didn't really, uh, succeed as much in the States.
00:39:58
Speaker
he's become a star. So I'm hoping we see more of that. And I'm hoping the Japan thing just kind of becomes not, not quite mainstream, but that more people get to see that. Not just the, uh, the diehard fans or the people that are anti WWE, maybe even anti AW, uh, that will kind of bridge themselves out and kind of catch a little bit of everything. But we get, we have enough wrestling as it is. So it's hard to watch it all.
00:40:25
Speaker
Um, but yeah, there's, there's definitely matches on that car that if you have some time, uh, in between watching, uh, Lamar run up the score on the Titans this weekend, uh, Phil, you should definitely, uh, catch some, catch some of these matches when you have a chance. Oh, don't jinx it, man. Do not jinx it. Um, all right, cool. Yeah. And, and Jushin Liger retires and the dude has been, you know, a staple for professional wrestling for, you know, I don't know how many years I remember him from WCW. We have some more stuff on him.
00:40:55
Speaker
Later in the show, but I mean Wrestling retirements are always hit or miss I don't know but I mean I feel like he's gonna be a guy who probably this is probably one and done and yeah, we'll see though Just just real quick. He just probably the respect for I guess the Japanese so He went out on his back. He lost they didn't put him in a high caliber match to go beat you
00:41:21
Speaker
some big star, make a big deal out of it. He was in a normal match with, with a lot of like former, uh, and past stars. A lot of his friends, uh, they had a big ceremony for him. They did a 10 bell salute. You could hear a pin drop when they did it. The crowd was completely silent for it. All the wrestlers came out. They all shook hands, took pictures, handed him flowers. It was like this, this beautiful ceremony they did, but you put him in a match.
00:41:47
Speaker
He was willing to lose. It wasn't like, Oh, I have to win. It's my last match. So, and there, there are rumors. I don't know if you guys have heard him or seen him, uh, about him possibly going in the WWE Hall of Fame this year. I don't know how true that is and stuff like that. He's fought for every company from NXT to WWE to WCW. He's been everywhere. So it's not out of the realm that they couldn't put him in. Um,
00:42:15
Speaker
I guess it's possible. We'll see what happens over the next few months. It would be cool kind of with the run we're having right now to go ahead and do it now and not wait a few years and it'd be too late or not have any relevance. We'll get into it in our go figure segment, but the figures that Storm Collectibles are coming out with of his are just freaking amazing. I would love to see those things close up. They are pretty badass looking. You can get those at wrestlingfigures.com at Ringside Collectibles.
00:42:44
Speaker
Let's touch on Impact real quick because it's another thing I haven't watched in a long time, but I'm hearing commercials now. They're really pumping this up. There's a title match on Sunday, Sami Callahan, a former WWE NXT superstar who didn't quite pan out, but he's found success elsewhere.
Impact Wrestling Highlights
00:43:02
Speaker
Defending his title against a female, Tessa Blanchard, the daughter of former Four Horseman member.
00:43:09
Speaker
Wow what what I mean this is like it's great like I was listening I was like it's crazy think this hasn't had like wrestling has never thought of doing this like they've never thought of giving a woman a shot at the main title like Everly even China never got a shot at them the men's title or anything like wrestling they've done everything in wrestling like they've never done this like it's pretty cool that it's happening now but
00:43:36
Speaker
I mean, I've seen Tessa Blanchard here and there and some brief appearances. She's damn good. I would love to see her win. Are you guys big impact watchers? I dabble in it from here and there. I love that. Sammy Callahan is awesome. He's like probably one of my favorite wrestlers outside of the WWE. Just because he's the type of guy that's like, he does it his own way. Like whatever company he goes with,
00:44:06
Speaker
not gonna take their gimmick, that's why he pretty much left WWE. They put a gimmick on him and he's like, yeah, that's not me, I wanna do my own thing. And he's been successful outside. He's had matches with Jon Moxley in the Indies and stuff like that too. But yeah, he's really awesome. If you watch any of their interactions in the ring where they're fighting each other and stuff like that, you can tell it's legit. They have to hype up the match and
00:44:36
Speaker
almost like a brawl that started from like the studio all the way outside into the streets. And they're like, they're fighting on the sidewalk or him and Tessa Blanchard. It was, it was pretty cool, but they actually had a match before she faced him for the title and she lost. He ended up retaining his title. But this time it seems like they're like really pushing it for like, she might win the title. It might be the first time you ever see a, a women hold a made like roster title.
00:45:04
Speaker
other than a woman's hair, which is pretty huge. A lot of people thought, I had a, one of my friends thought that Charlotte was gonna be that female to win the WWE title at some point, which I wouldn't see, I mean, if this happens, I could see that probably happening now. Like, they'd have to obviously put her with someone that's like, you know, that could do that type of match. You're not gonna throw her in there with just like, you're not gonna put her with Braun Strowman or Brock Lesnar. But-
00:45:34
Speaker
there still time Marco for Nia Jax to show up at the Rumble and challenge for whichever title she pleases
00:45:55
Speaker
He might be making a plan. I like that. We'll get into some royal royal predictions next week, because I got to get some good ones, too. But yeah, I mean, why not? If you're impact, like you're trying to make a name for yourself, you guys have been hanging around. I mean, the crazy thing to me is that impact has been around longer than WCW. So they're doing something right. They have some kind of funding. They have some kind of fan base. But like, you know, shit. And she's 24 years old or whatever. She's the daughter of a big name star, you know, Tully Blanchard, big name four horseman member.
00:46:24
Speaker
Uh, she has the lineage and, uh, you know, it's, it's, I think, I think it could work, you know, I don't, I don't think, I mean, this is the time to do it. Just 2020 shit, you know, like on that. And that's kind of part of it. Like, uh, you don't see this in WWE or even AAW kind of this, this politically correct time. Uh, I think, uh, if you kind of go back, they they've done a lot of these matches on the Indies. Uh, there, I remember seeing some clips of,
00:46:53
Speaker
some Candice LeRae, Joey Ryan type matches like this where they were, they were super violent. Like I was really surprised how, how much they were letting these, these guys actually beat up on these women. Uh, and vice versa, of course, but just kind of surprised they would go to that extent. So, uh, are there any, uh, like rules or is this a special type of match Marco or is it just a standard match? Cause I remember hearing something about a cage match, but maybe that was the last time they wrestled together.
00:47:23
Speaker
Um, I did the last time the rest of it wasn't a cage match. It was a regular match. Um, yeah, they did have like a, like a, they had a few matches. Yeah. I saw a clips of a ladder match thinking she was going to win the belt on that. I think it had more than just those two in the match and, and she took a pretty big, uh, fall off the ladder to the outside, but outside of that, that might be the only impact I've seen in, in quite a few years, because it seems like they change.
00:47:53
Speaker
what network they're on every six months. And yeah, I never know if I have the never know if I have the channel or not. I don't know who owns impact anymore or who their champion is or anything like that. So just kind of having to see clips or hear it from other people. I have to say it's something I haven't kept up with over the last last few years. Yeah, she was in a four way. I forget the other three. It was three dudes in her. That's how she got the number one contender for the title.
00:48:21
Speaker
Oh, talk about a wrestling match, okay. Yeah, a wrestling match. Yeah, I know. It's funny. It is cool and I think it'll get them some extra eyeballs if they do have her win the title, so I'm all about it. I pulled up her, because I remember her being in NXT for a hot second. 2016, she was. She lost a match to Alexa Bliss, then she lost a match to Nia Jax, and she lost a match to Carmella.
00:48:50
Speaker
And then she was in the Mae Young classic and lost to Carrie Sane and then she was gone. And then she was all over in Japan and impact. So yeah, not the shit on her. I mean, she just didn't really get a fair shake in WWE. They have so many freaking women coming up in NXT, but they obviously missed the boat on her. I've heard nothing but good things about her in the ring. So yeah, her stepfather is Magnum TA and her dad is Tully Blanchard. How does that work? Jesus Christ.
00:49:20
Speaker
Her mom was a busy lady. You can't get much more wrestling related than that. Shit.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so that's everything that's happened up until tonight. Tonight we watched AEW Dynamite and NXT. I don't think any of us watched, I mean, I think, Mike, you flipped back and forth, but none of us just watched NXT straight up. I watched AEW, and I think we're at the one year mark of AEW. I'm done, I'm out. This was an awful two hours of wrestling.
00:49:58
Speaker
I mean you have you run down this freaking night of two hours. I mean you have DDP coming out you have Already Anderson who's I you know I can get it He's kind of a coach or whatever, but I mean Cody Rhodes and Dustin Rhodes winning a tag team match and
00:50:14
Speaker
Moxley and Jericho, I mean, there's nothing different about anything that AEW is doing. I mean, they have some talent. They have some legit talent guys, some young wrestlers that are really good, but they've done nothing with the tag team division that we thought was gonna be awesome. The women's division is awful. And it's just a bunch of WWE retreads that they're trying to trounce out there along with a bunch of hot topic fucking Paw Patrol wannabe acts.
00:50:42
Speaker
between the Dark Collective and, I don't even know what their names are, the Collective or something and the Dark Order and the Bunny and the Blade and it's just all, it's way too fucking similar and none of it stands out to me. There's a 400 suicide dives on every show that I watch. It's just, I can't do it anymore. The wrestling is not very good.
00:51:05
Speaker
The storytelling isn't good. Kenny Omega was the biggest wrestler in the fucking world, and he's not even on every single show. He's not even in the main event. He's not even a contender for the title. He's nowhere. I know he's involved with the company, but that was a name that I was excited about seeing that I hadn't seen much on my television or in the ring, and we've got none of him.
00:51:29
Speaker
I mean, I have a bunch of complaints. The Young Bucks quitting, we didn't talk about this last week, but the Young Bucks quitting Twitter because everyone was making fun of them because of the dark order with these fake punches in the ring. This was a couple weeks ago. These guys literally started a Roman Reigns chant after their matches.
00:51:51
Speaker
or basically the biggest trolls on Twitter, for them to get upset because now people are complaining about their product is complete hypocrisy. But I mean, I'm fired up because I've been to three AEW shows, I've watched it almost every single week when it's on TV, it's not what we were told was gonna happen. I mean, they had this fucking guy that came out, Dr. Luther or something,
00:52:17
Speaker
The announcers didn't even know who this guy was. There was a pretty good match between Chris Statlander and Rio for the women's title tonight. And this fucking guy comes out. First off, Cody Rhodes' wife is on commentary. She's awful. She's awful. She knows nothing of what she's saying. She's so blah and fucking vanilla. And she comes out to the rink. She has this whole hot topic team that she comes out with. It just feels so fake. And it just doesn't feel legit.
00:52:47
Speaker
Okay, that's everything I had to get off my chest. But I feel like they had such a chance. I mean, they came around when WWE was down on one knee. I mean, people were shitting on everything they were doing. They were losing fans, the ratings were low. They could have really stolen a huge share of wrestling fans.
AEW Storylines Critique
00:53:09
Speaker
And I don't think they've done it. I think it's been a complete, a full year, and I just haven't seen enough. I mean, you guys tell me if I'm wrong or if you agree with me or what. I'm going to stop talking. I think the butcher and the blade were confused on who that guy was. Yeah. They just, I don't know, like you put Omega and Hangman as a tag team.
00:53:38
Speaker
It's your two guys that you had the chance to push who were non WWE guys. And they've pretty much shit on both of them. I know eventually you're probably gonna make one of the two a champion. They're gonna end up fighting each other, build a storyline there. But you have two guys that you want to be main event stars and you've pretty much buried both of them over the course of the year. I know you're trying to build Cody storylines and MJF storylines and all this.
00:54:07
Speaker
You have, other than it to be part of this nightmare collective and family and stuff, there's no reason to put a guy like DDP on TV. There's no reason to put Arne Anderson on TV. Other than, hey, I watch WWE, I know who these guys are, I'll watch this channel also. You have plenty of people you don't need to worry about adding this other stuff. Worry about your own guys, build your own stories.
00:54:35
Speaker
I want to say like outside of like two matches, everything on the card tonight was like tag team or six man tag type matches. Like it seemed like they were trying to get as many of their wrestlers out there, but there, there was just no progression of any kind of story or anything. Um, I don't, you, you have the dark order, then you turn around and you have Brandi's group and you're like,
00:54:59
Speaker
Which cult is which? Have you heard about my cult? How about my other cult? There's just, I don't know. I get it. The Lucha Bros are really good. They're fun as hell to watch.
00:55:15
Speaker
They should be on like once a month. They were on tonight. They lost to Cody and Goldust in a tag team match that didn't mean anything. And Jim Ross told me before the match that this might be the best tag team in the world. They showed me the record. There's six and six. Now there's six and seven. So how are they the best tag team in the world? The whole record thing was a great idea. It flopped.
00:55:39
Speaker
I mean, I just don't know. MJF, he's wrestled two singles matches in 365 days, but I'm supposed to believe that he's gonna compete with Cody Rhodes, who's been in WWE and is the son of one of the best wrestlers of all time.
00:55:56
Speaker
It just boggles my mind. I just feel like they tried really hard to make this work, but it's not working. And it's only been a year. I can understand. They're going to get better. But how much time are they going to get with this dude that owns the Jaguars? He's not going to just pour a bunch of money. He's a businessman. If they lose money for two years, they don't have any dude. They have merchandise at the show, which I'm sure they sell a lot of. They do know-how shows.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yep. So they do know, is there any kind of action figures or anything besides t-shirts on Pro Wrestling T's? No. Okay. Do they do, I mean, how are they going to expand the roster? Because I've seen these same four matches over and over again. I feel like I've seen the Dinosaur Express versus the Best Friends three times now. I don't know if it's true or not, but I feel like it's just been redone. They just need a bigger roster. I think a New Japan partnership would be perfect.
00:56:55
Speaker
because it would legitimize them a little bit. It would add some talent they could come in and out with. But I just feel like there's more things wrong than that are working right now. And I don't know how much of a leash they're going to get to just keep spending money. There was a picture, I think, of PWStream of the crowd tonight, which was they tried so hard not to show it.
00:57:17
Speaker
and uh i mean i i shit on on aw on the on the twitter account and on the show here but i watch it every single week i want it to be good it's just not good you know and it could it could get better uh we'll see what happens but i mean well your your your best part of the show was the end
00:57:35
Speaker
with Moxley and Jericho. Yeah. Two, two WWE guys that just flew back from Japan and were probably jet lagged and they were the most entertaining part of the show. They didn't, they didn't even, they didn't have to wrestle. They just basically had like dialogue back and forth in the ring and it was really well done and it will continue a great storyline for them. Eventually leading into a match, eventually probably making Moxley their second champion.
00:58:04
Speaker
But for that to be the best part of your show, two guys who mentioned on AW that they fought New Japan all weekend because it was a better product. Yeah, I think I mean, it just kind of sums up the rest of your show for the night. Yeah, I think they need New Japan more than that's what I think it is. They need New Japan more than New Japan needs AW. That's why they want that to happen. But I think they they're they're so confident in their own product that they can make it work.
00:58:33
Speaker
and
00:58:47
Speaker
they need to do the NXT thing. I think if you pick one city, whether it be Jacksonville or Chicago or wherever that be your home base to 99% of your shows there. If you want to travel and do your pay-per-views like that, the takeovers and stuff, that's fine. But I think a smaller building that looks packed out every week would help. And, and you could fill that two hours with, with great wrestling. I mean, like you said, the, you had the,
00:59:14
Speaker
the match for the women's title tonight. It wasn't a bad match. But then you end it with such a stupid moment that really means nothing. And it was some guy, I think I looked him up. His name is Dr. Luther. He's a retired wrestler. He's 51 years old. I guess he's friends with Jericho. He hasn't wrestled, I think, since 2005 or 2006. The announcers didn't even know who he was besides Excalibur, who knows who everybody is.
00:59:42
Speaker
Jericho is worth every cent of that $5 million contract because without him, there's nothing going on. He has been awesome for them. I would not take the title off him. I would have some sort of
01:00:00
Speaker
to screw Moxley out of it, and then have him fight Jack Swagger or something, and then eventually get his hands on Jericho in a couple months. I don't know. But I mean, there are some things. I mean, I like Sammy Guevara. I like MGF as a great character.
01:00:16
Speaker
So, I mean, there's some things that work there, but it's just frustrating because it's, you know, it's not what it could be. And I think, you know, once the hardcore, you haven't captured the casual fans. Once these hardcore diehard fans get tired of it after another year, you know, I mean, they're just moving on to the newest thing, you know, they're already done with Rio. They want her to lose the title to some new chick who's been there for a month and already has a title match. Yes, that. Yeah.
01:00:46
Speaker
But they continue to show Britt Baker in the crowd after every women's match. So I don't know if you're building torch. I get eventually you're probably gonna give her the title. She works for the company. Why does she need to be in the crowd? I get they made the one funny reference based off of what happened at NXT and stuff. But other than that, all you really need is she could walk out on the stage, stand and stare down the winner. She could come down and
01:01:13
Speaker
pull Rio out of the ring, congratulate her, and then stare down. You don't need to have her in the crowds and show she paid a ticket. She works there. Have her walk out of the back. That's all you really need. I love Orange Cassidy. I mean, I think that's really fun. It's awesome to see him. But that's not going to last forever. I mean, there's only so much you can do with that. And if you change that gimmick and it's not the same person, then it loses some of its luster.
01:01:41
Speaker
You can say the same thing for Jim JF I mean he can come down and make fun of everybody every single week for you know 52 weeks a year I mean it can't last forever you have to you have to evolve these people a little bit So I think the lack of storylines definitely hurts, you know, but yeah Yeah, I think people I mean the other thing too is it I never said this like anywhere else but like I think where they shot themselves on the foot when it comes to like like you said like with Kenny Omega and
01:02:09
Speaker
and the Young Bucks and stuff like that. They're all EVPs and VPs of the company. So I think it's hindering them from putting themselves over as the main stars. Because we're presidents, so we can do whatever we want, that type of thing. So I think it's kind of like they don't want to follow suit if you want to throw the Triple H's and all that stuff and using his influence to get where he wants.
01:02:38
Speaker
That I think them doing that or them like putting themselves over they think they'll get that type of backlash like oh you guys are just putting yourselves over because you're your EVPs and you're you're high up in the company so you can give yourselves a the championships and all that stuff and like that's what I so I think they kind of like they're like a
01:02:55
Speaker
like a flux almost, they can't do anything. Like Dan, if you don't, you don't want to put themselves over, but they're putting themselves over is probably what's best for business because people know they are. And then did I where they need to be? And then I guess did they, is the show next week? Uh, is it bash at the beach? I know like Cody bought the, uh, like the copyright name for it. Are we basically,
01:03:22
Speaker
Is next week all of that? Is it just that they're going to tape a couple matches on this Jericho cruise, show them as part of AEW? I was kind of confused by it all. Yeah, it's in Miami. I think two weeks from now is the cruise stuff. But Bash to the Beach next week, is that an arena or an outdoor venue in Miami? Yeah, I think the actual tour takes off from Miami. So I think probably they're going to do the matches there.
01:03:52
Speaker
take off from there, maybe. And they're going to have matches on the actual cruise. Yeah, by saying, I know they had matches on the cruise last year. So the logo for Bash at the Beach was great. Whoever made that, that looks cool. Grand Theft Auto-esque. Right. Yeah, but I mean, I would save that for, again, I would save that for a pay-per-view. That's a name that people know. Right. And you're just going to do that on a regular Wednesday night. That doesn't make too much sense to me. But there's a couple good matches. I think Darby Allen versus Pac.
01:04:18
Speaker
Uh, would be a good match for that. I think we saw, uh, so this, this was a match that they announced tonight. MJF the butcher and the blade against DDP gold dust and someone named QT Marshall who I've never heard of. I've never seen wrestle. I've never even heard them talk about him on, on a W.
01:04:39
Speaker
But he's in a match here, a six-man tag, and then it's a tag team match. Sheeda and Chris Statlander against Awesome Kong and Mel, who I'm not too familiar with. They haven't done a good job of really introducing who these, like this bald chick, Mel, they haven't really done much of a job of introducing. It's just, you know, but it's growing pains. We'll see. We'll see. We'll keep watching.
01:05:03
Speaker
So we talked about NXT a little bit. We talked about AEW a lot. Sorry if any of you stop listening because of my AEW rant. Let's go outside the squared circle real quick. The biggest news of the week, we totally buried the lead here.
Wrestling News and Rumors
01:05:21
Speaker
WWE good humor bringing back ice cream sandwiches. My God.
01:05:28
Speaker
We're all trying to get healthy in the new year and they drop this news on us. If you haven't seen it, it's on our Twitter account at chick Foley show. Uh, it's very similar to the old eight, uh, WWE, WWF, I guess ice cream bars back in the day. They don't have the, they don't have the bar on them. They're like an ice cream sandwich type of thing. Uh, they look delicious. I'm going to buy them definitely. And, uh, I don't know why it took them so long to do this. It's a no brainer.
01:05:52
Speaker
Are you going to are you going mitten box on these Phil? Mitten card? Yeah, no, they're not gonna stay fresh very long in the freezer. That was my son. He can sniff out. I tell you that the time that I was like I was doing the dishes and I opened up like one of those little tide pods and like my son like heard me on wrapping it and thought I was giving him candy. Like no dude, this is to clean the dishes with. Get that ass.
01:06:18
Speaker
So yeah, we'll do a live review of those on the show, I'm sure, all three of us. Oh, definitely. Yeah. That'll be a pretty delicious segment to do. I didn't hear about this. Renee Young commenting on AEW. Was that on backstage, WWE Backstage? No. So yeah, it wasn't on Backstage. So basically, she was actually at the New Japan show. OK. She took a few pictures of like indie wrestlers and stuff like that. But she did an interview basically saying like she
01:06:47
Speaker
hates the fact that she can't comment on anything that her husband does without Marx or a fan saying, oh my god, she's all elite. She's going to go to AEW. She's commenting on John Moxley's matches and stuff like that. She wants to support her husband, obviously. If you notice, if you fall on Twitter, which I do because I love her to be young, she doesn't mention anything about John Moxley at all. She doesn't comment on his matches, anything, because she can't.
01:07:18
Speaker
You have people coming out of the woodwork going, oh my gosh, she's signed into AEW. It's confirmed. It's confirmed. So she like, see, she, it's basically she's saying, she's saying she was getting annoyed at the fact that like she can't even like say anything about the company without, you know, cause she kind of works for Fox now. It's not like it's a WWE show. So like that's, I try to like explain this to everybody. So that backstage show is a Fox show with the WWE name on it. So technically they're Fox employees.
01:07:47
Speaker
That's why you don't see, see a punk all the time. And he says he's a Fox employee because he is, he doesn't work for the WWE. He works for the Fox. He works for Fox. That's it. That has a WWE show essentially. I'm just assuming. Yeah. Like he's under a Fox contract and I'm sure she has a Fox, but she probably has a, like a pretty long-term WWE. Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. So I'm just kind of wondering when that ends.
01:08:13
Speaker
uh and Fox wants to pay her a boatload of money because she's one of these people like uh you'll hear all these companies want to sign her to host different shows like outside of wrestling related stuff because they everybody just know she she's that good on the mic so it may not be the play-by-play stuff but like hosting a show she's phenomenal at so I kind of wonder if she's going to re-sign any kind of WWE deal or if she's just going to stick with whatever money Fox will pay her and and like you said like an ESPN
01:08:42
Speaker
or some other company that would want her for other things. Maybe when that happens, she'll start commenting more and more stuff because she doesn't have the ability to kind of speak her mind outside of that kind of like CM Punk has, especially over the last few days. Yeah.
01:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna say there's there might be a job open available on WWE backstage CM Punk tweeted and I quote at at the Miz go suck a blood-covered Blood money covered dick in Saudi Arabia you fucking dork
01:09:21
Speaker
This was directed at The Miz, who was on WE Backstage. And I don't know what The Miz said, because I don't watch. I don't have enough time to watch all these... God, there's so much freaking wrestling now. He basically echoed what CM Punk said. When you think... Remember when he showed up on Backstage? He's like, when you think you have the answers, I changed the culture. Remember when you said that? It's like The Miz kind of like...
01:09:48
Speaker
like was basically make in front of that, like, oh, he's like, sorry, I didn't change the culture. Like basically just like don't shot that. I guess they don't like each other. That's that's what I've been reading. But they've never liked each other at all, like personally. So that was just like the straw that broke the camel's back in that sense, not camel, because it's Middle Eastern. I didn't throw that in there. But yeah, that that I I literally I don't know why I laughed out loud when I read that comment. I think it was a word dork.
01:10:15
Speaker
because you don't see the word dork that much written and just him saying that. That was like the nicest word in that sentence too. Just the most profane things ever. And then he ends up with dork. So I like me being like, I love it in comedy and like watching statements. I thought that was the funniest thing I ever like read. I didn't go back and look. I didn't go back and look. I'm assuming he, uh, he deleted that probably. Oh, he did. Yeah. You can't find that or the video that is posted. Okay. Uh, w w Fox actually deleted that.
01:10:45
Speaker
Like that actual post that they had where he came at CM Punks. Oh, yeah. They were probably real quick to delete that shit. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think CM Punks, I mean, I talked about this in our group chat. I mean, I can relate to CM Punk because I typically will just tweet stuff and then I'll think, like, after I tweet, like, ah, probably shouldn't have tweeted that.
01:11:07
Speaker
All right, well, I already tweeted it. I'll just go to sleep now. He just thinks something and he just his fingers start moving faster than he can think. So it's worked for him so far. So I would love to see those guys don't like each other. But I mean, come on, I want to see CM Punk back in the ring. And we'll talk about next week of our potential Royal Rumble surprises. And he's got to be up at the top of the list there, man.
01:11:36
Speaker
If he came out, the pop would be insane, especially if somebody like the Miz was in the ring or Brock Lesnar or somebody else, Seth Rollins. There's a bunch of possibilities. I haven't watched any of these broken skull sessions yet. I need to get on that. But Kane, I know Kane was on the latest one, man. I'd love to see that. And he's an awesome guy to hear talk. Well, it's a Sunday. He's going to air this. OK, OK. Well, I haven't missed it yet, though. No, no. So I mean,
01:12:06
Speaker
He doesn't seem like probably the most interesting person on there, but I'm a Cade fan, so I think, and just like how he came in is obviously Isaac getting him DDS and all that stuff, and I'm interested to hear how that was pitched to him, and what he thought of that stuff, and how they pitched Cade, and him being a mayor pretty much, too. So it'd be probably like, if you ever listened to Stone Cold's podcast way back in the day, he doesn't do it anymore, but he actually said that,
01:12:37
Speaker
Glen, as he called him, because that's his name, Glen Jacobs. He said he's probably the safest person to ever work with in the industry. If you ever think about it, have you ever seen Cade gone from injury on the shelf? No, hell no. Have you ever heard him like injuring anybody at all? Like, oh, Cade just botched that thing and that guy's out for like two years or whatever. Never.
01:13:05
Speaker
Jess, I want to hear what his process is when he gets in the ring and stuff like that. Because if you go back and watch all of his magic, he is pretty clean. He is pretty safe. And he protects a lot of the person that he's in the ring with. And that's what you want to do with that. So guys like Bret Hart, he was prided on that. That's why he was the excellence of the execution. He could look good, as well as make you look good, too, as well, without hurting you. But yeah, so I'm excited about that.
01:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's also like a cool like he had some two awful characters Isaac Yankham and then the fake diesel and to come back from that and become like one of the best characters in wrestling history isn't yeah awesome like they could have like easily just told him to go away or just given up on him or he could have like just quit but you know Persevered so I'll be I'll be definitely watch that's probably after the NXT UK show. I'm assuming is that what when that airs? And Booker T's Royal Rumble ultimatum is this involving the revival?
01:14:02
Speaker
No, he actually wants to be in the Royal Rumble. Oh, really? Yeah. So he said that on the back seat, he actually said it on his ESPN show that he has that he he's given WWE 48 hours to 40. Yeah. To give it to give him a spot in the Royal Rumble. Then they have like a counter like on the backstage show the next night. So he like they have like a counter like a like the clock ticket type of thing. So like I guess he's like ready to go in. I'm not sure if it's like a play on like
01:14:31
Speaker
the whole thing that happened with the revival and all that stuff. And if they're just trying to like latch onto that at all. But like, I think he legit wants to be the rebel. Like it's in Houston. It's his hometown. Yeah. Yeah. He wants to like make an appearance and throw some suckers over the top rope, as he as he said. But other than that, he's an old man. So he's 54, he said. So like he's not going to like obviously probably last too long with the younger guys. But like he wants to make an appearance. And I think they should do it for him.
01:15:00
Speaker
But if we're only getting 10 people from each show, if you waste spots on people like Booker T, Hornswoggle, I'm turning it off. Hornswoggle, oh my god. Oh no, Booker T will get a huge pop though at that music. I don't care. They put him in the Hall of Fame twice.
01:15:18
Speaker
He's good. He doesn't need anything else. He doesn't need to wrestle anymore. If he wanted to keep wrestling, he shouldn't have retired. Don't put him in the rumble. Yeah, I'm with you on it. This year feels different. There's so many guys I would love to see. For every legend, for every cactus jack that comes in, we're going to get one less NXT guy that makes an appearance. So yeah, I'd rather see Elias or somebody that could use the rub. But whatever happened to Elias, man, Jesus Christ.
01:15:47
Speaker
what a guy this he's just doing crazy songs on yeah so he basically just shows up on smacked out another song and then disappears and that's it pretty much all right well that was uh inside and outside the ring this week lots of stuff going on let's do uh you guys ready for our go figure segment sure thing all right let's do it
01:16:15
Speaker
All right, the Major Brothers have their weekly purchase. We have our Go Figure segment. This is brought to us by our friends at Ringside Collectibles. You can hit them up. And if you're a big boy, if you're an adult, buy where the big boys play, man.
01:16:32
Speaker
You can get wrestling figures months before they hit the shelves, if they even hit the shelves at all. Come on. It's wrestlingfigures.com. Use our code when you get there for 10% off. Code Chick Foley, all one word. And if you send us a screenshot of your order, we will enter you into a giveaway drawing for a random elite figure. So you have that going for you there.
01:16:57
Speaker
Mike, you are the guest here tonight. I'm going to let you go first and tell us what figures or what wrestling items you picked up. There was one that I'm really interested to hear what it looks like in person. Yeah. Well, that's thanks to you. I'm not sure who sent it maybe to you and then you forward it out. But I woke up the other day to Twitter telling me that the Macho Man Slim Jim display that people had been selling for
01:17:26
Speaker
hundreds and hundreds of dollars across Facebook and eBay was available from Amazon on Amazon for retail price. So I snagged one of those up because Macho Man is probably, if not my favorite wrestler of all time, he's top three. I thought this display was cool. Never saw one in stores. Even if I did, it probably would have been hell trying to get an employee to let you take it home. So I went ahead, snagged one of those up.
01:17:56
Speaker
Uh, showed up pretty quickly. And then as of today, uh, it may have even been days ago, I looked at Amazon again, they're no longer available. So I'm not sure if they're gonna, they're gonna restock those or not, but, uh, I feel, I feel kind of bad to a point for the people who paid $300 for those things.
01:18:15
Speaker
But I guess if you think it's something you're never going to see or have access to and you have to have it. So I think it's going to look really cool next to the Slim Jim Macho Elite figure from earlier this year. That's one of the few elites that I've personally bought for myself just because it was such a different figure.
Wrestling Figure Collecting Adventures
01:18:35
Speaker
So that would be the pickup for the week for me.
01:18:41
Speaker
Secondly, though, I and I haven't told you this yet, Phil, I completed my Hasbro collection and and found a one, two, three kid this week for more than I probably want to ever spend on a figure, but not more than I've seen him go for lately. I passed on the one that you showed me that had some yeah, some sun damage or colored
01:19:11
Speaker
distortion or whatever was going on with that one I'm glad I passed on this one I picked up came out to be in pretty good condition so outside of a couple of accessories I've still got to come across in some fashion I've completed the in-store collection of all the the Hasbro figures loose so
01:19:35
Speaker
That would be my pickup for the week. Wow. Those are two great pickups, man. Congratulations on that Hasbro collection, dude. I know you've been working on that for a long time. Does it feel like almost bittersweet, like now you don't have anything to chase? Yeah, I mean, that part's great. Now it's just like, oh, well, I have all but like two accessories. Now I got to find those. And some of those accessories go for more than some of the figures sometimes. So going to have to hunt those down, but at least I know
01:20:03
Speaker
I don't have to buy anything else because I've got all the ones that are out. I've got all the the mint on card and loose Mattel retros. One of the Chick Foley listeners hooked me up with the Ric Flair this week. That was the last loose that I needed. Oh, cool. So so I'm I'm good to go there too. So now I just got to decide if I want to build some kind of display or something for him or how I want to
01:20:31
Speaker
want to do it or if I want to go the IKEA route, grab a couple of detoffs like you have and display them that way. So I'm kind of throwing around some ideas with the buddy who's really good at building displays and making custom stuff. So we'll see what happens with that. Where do you have all the Menton card Mattels? Are they just in like a box? They're in a box because I haven't brought myself to spend the
01:20:58
Speaker
$200 is going to cost about 45. Yeah, I was trying to do the math on that. There's never go on sale. I feel like no, no. And I will see unless Sears puts them on their website for bogus price. Right. And when that happened, that's when I wasn't collecting all the men on cards. So even if that had actually worked, I probably would have missed the boat on that one.
01:21:20
Speaker
Okay. Tell me, uh, over or under $200 for the one, two, three kid. Uh, how about right at, Oh man. Oh man. The showcase showdown for that. So I pulled up, I pulled up the wrestle tracker website. Uh, he's, he's jumped in value a little bit more. Uh, cause loose and men on card don't have a big difference for him because they made so few of that figure. Uh, so I went ahead and just, just bit the bullet on that one and
01:21:49
Speaker
I guess now that I'm done and if I ever need to buy a new car or make a house payment, I can always sell off the Hasbro collection. Yeah, I was thinking that too. If I ever get dire straits, that's the first thing I'm probably going to have to part with because that's the biggest return. Cool, man. Well, congratulations on that. That's a couple of good pickets I heard.
01:22:09
Speaker
Excuse me. I think the Major Brothers talked about their show. I listened earlier to their show this week. I think they pulled the Macho Man Slim Jim things because, like you said, some people were ordering them and they were expecting Slim Jims with it. They didn't get Slim Jims and they complained to Amazon. So Amazon pulled it off the website. So I don't even know if they sold out or not. And I don't even know if that's true. That was just what the Major Brothers said, but they're pretty tight.
01:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, I hadn't heard their show yet, so I didn't realize that was part of that. Yeah, so that's interesting, but yeah, that was definitely a cool piece, man. Awesome. Marco, you want to hit us up? Do you have anything you picked up this week? Nothing really for hunting, like physically, but I received my chase variant, Keith Lee, from the Series 104. That was what I chose out of the from Rigside, because I kind of like the baby blue, but
01:23:03
Speaker
She's very, you know, like the the black attire there. Put in my order for the Lars Sullivan to. I think we spoke of that last week because I think I was on the fence about doing it, but I actually pulled the trigger on it. So Lars it is. He's still up there. He's still readily available for purchase, so. Get it while you can. We're not going to go into that story. Any more than we have to. Now, but other than that, I've been slowly trying to
01:23:33
Speaker
Get a do like an LJN collection. I'm not sure if I mentioned that at all the show at all I haven't mentioned that to you guys if you remember at all LJN I'm going back to do like a LJN collection. Are you really? Yeah, I don't think I've heard you say that. Yeah, so I think I have Hogan Macho and junkyard dog the black chain one. Oh, wow. Don't ask how much that was
01:24:02
Speaker
and that they're all from our friend Zorro Mendez, who I've been chatting with him a lot about every time he throws stuff up there, I'd ask for a quote and stuff like that. If you're looking for LG and these guys, always go to Zorro Mendez. He's the LJ and Whisperer. So yeah, I've been trying to slowly get back the ones that I had in my collection and then get ones that I've never owned before. But yeah, so just doing that. But other than that, nothing crazy.
01:24:31
Speaker
trying to find those Royal Rumble elites, so they are non-existent. Well, they exist, but no one wants to go back and look for them. So that seems to be the story of everybody when they go look for them. There's resets coming, Marco. That's the rumor.
01:24:49
Speaker
They've been doing these resets in these stores since like summertime. I've actually been speaking to our buddy Zora Mendez too about an LJN. I have never owned a single LJN and have one as a kid. I'm looking to get a Macho Man because I've decided for some reason, I think Mike is doing something similar that I want to have like, I'm not saying every Macho Man figure, but I'm trying to get like, you know, I've got the
01:25:12
Speaker
and
01:25:30
Speaker
for ljns and i want to give a shout out real quick i have some more people later but on instagram at underscore flama blanka that's f l a m a b l a n c a underscore uh just a good dude he's uh i don't know just been fun to interact with on instagram has a bunch of good pictures of his collection and uh one of my good buddies uh he sent him like a cool care package um my buddy uh i think it's fig foundation on instagram was like
01:25:59
Speaker
You know just I have sent him a note like hey I remember you saying you needed this and I found it and I'm just gonna send it to you so this cool stuff that people in the fake community do for each other like that that you know you don't see too often and you know kind of warms my heart so I'll give him a follow on Instagram and
01:26:16
Speaker
Yeah, Mike talked about, I set up on Friday after work. I was like, oh, I got off work a little bit early. The rush of the holidays is done for me for work, so it slowed down a little bit. So I stopped by IKEA, grabbed a hot dog for 75 cents, and grabbed a new detox, set it up here in the house.
01:26:34
Speaker
and put all my loose retros in it, and they only take up a couple of the shelves, so I'm not sure what to do with the other two shelves if anyone wants to weigh in. I just don't want to put anything on the bottom shelves. That's the only thing bad about a D-TOLF is you have the shelves that you can barely ever see.
01:26:50
Speaker
But they look great. It's right next to my detail for my Hasbro's. I was posting pictures as I was building it on the Facebook page. It was fun and I dropped it at one point and it didn't break, so that's good. So yeah, a lot of good things happening there. I have all those, the whole collection loose and on-card, but I haven't, like Mike, I haven't done anything with the on-card.
01:27:13
Speaker
and
01:27:29
Speaker
I apologize. I'll get this. Oh, it's, uh, here it is. It's at son of Sam. I am. He's a great follow on Twitter. He's actually one of our Patreon subscribers. He's on our, in our Patreon, uh, Facebook page. Um, he's a Clemson fan, but don't hold that against him.
01:27:45
Speaker
Let me know that they were doing 50% off of Big Lots, all the toys. So I grabbed Eric Young, Aiden English, Rusev, and Nia Jax. I don't really have a strong affinity for any of those figures. I actually only grabbed the Eric Young because the guy, the major brothers were doing their kind of best of, their top five and worst five of 2019.
01:28:06
Speaker
And Kurt Hawkins named Eric Young's figure, I think that's lead 65, as one of his top five favorite figures, which I never even thought of. It's a great looking figure. I just never, during the course of my day, I never really think of Eric Young, if at all. But I picked up a couple of those.
01:28:25
Speaker
in English rusev and ijax like i said and i just post this earlier on the facebook page i was um i was just trying to i mean i have this whole new generation collection guys these loose ones i wanted to kind of expand on that so i grabbed three old school 93 94 WWF merchandise catalogs
01:28:45
Speaker
off of eBay. I think it was like 20 bucks, a little less than 20 bucks for a lot of three of them. Put them in some baseball card holder type of things to keep them a little bit fresh. But I'm thinking about displaying those along with some old WWF magazines if I ever get some extra coin for that.
01:29:05
Speaker
That's about it. The Royal Rumble elites have been hitting stores too. That's the biggest story going around the social media world is these Royal Rumble elites hitting targets. I've heard from a lot of people, or at least a couple of people, that some of the stores won't let them take them because they're doing a reset the third or fourth week of February and they're going to hold them for that, which is complete bullshit. If one of my stores would have told me that, I would have just flipped out on them.
01:29:33
Speaker
Why would you not try to sell things that you have in your store? Doesn't make sense, but...
01:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, I grabbed the Macho Man and Lita for myself, and I grabbed Bobby Lashley and, oh, what's the other one? Oh, The Rock for our buddy Daris, who's a local collector here in the Baltimore area. I'm gonna meet up with him at some point to give him those. But, man, props to our buddy Sal in the Facebook group who has found, I think, like eight of them. He just sent me a picture. He's found,
01:30:05
Speaker
Oh my god, sick. Oh, he found more than what he showed last night? Yeah, he found four more today, I think. Oh wow. Geez. Yeah, he's found like five or six Macho Man's in it. He's been just sending them out to people for retail price plus shipping. So we've got a bunch of new Patreon subscribers. We welcome those people. We thank you.
01:30:26
Speaker
Our biggest goal was to interact and form a community and help people avoid having to pay crazy prices on eBay for stuff that we should be able to just walk into a store and buy. The Macho Man's really cool. I'm actually going to unbox the one I have and send it loose to Sheena, who's been looking for it, and Sal's going to send me one of the mint on card ones that he has because the box that I have is a little
01:30:48
Speaker
a little dinged up and crappy looking so I'm gonna send Sheena the the one loose but it's a pretty cool figure and somebody I forget which podcast I was listening to reminded us that the Macho Man actually wore that same outfit for Royal Rumble 94 which is which is crazy to think about because
01:31:09
Speaker
you wouldn't think of the Macho Man ever wearing the same outfit twice, but I think that was the one where he tried to pin Yokozuna and Yokozuna threw him over the top rope, or maybe that was the one after. I have to go back and look, but... You guys remember what I'm talking about at all? Yeah, I remember, yeah. Kicks out and he jumps over the top. Yeah, yeah. I remember the moment. I don't really remember what he was wearing, so... Yeah, pretty similar. Did anybody... I didn't see anybody in the Facebook group saying,
01:31:38
Speaker
anything did anybody grab the those major brother rimco looking figures offerings I don't know they were pretty pretty limited so I saw them on there and I was like man I don't own any rimcos I don't have any reason really to buy these other than it to just be something that's that's pretty limited but I don't know if anybody anybody jumped on that or not
01:32:01
Speaker
Now I haven't heard anybody and they actually listened to the podcast earlier. I think they did 500 of those and now they're going to do 250 of one set and another set. They're doing two more sets of themselves.
01:32:16
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I've never, I mean, I love the major brothers. I listen to their show every single week. I've never bought any of their merch. Um, not that I don't like it. I just, I mean, like you said, those figure, those figures don't really fit with anything that I'm collecting right now. And it's just like, they were cool, but, um, they just don't, you know, they're, they're definitely, they're kind of similar to the, uh, the masters of the universe figures. Kind of a little bit, a little bit that weird, that weird shape. I, uh, uh, speak, you were, uh, Parker was talking about L J N's like,
01:32:44
Speaker
I like, I watch a lot of the major brothers, uh, fig hunting videos and stuff on YouTube. And I saw the history of LJN the other day that they did with Conrad. I was like, Oh, I'll watch this thinking it was going to be like 20 minutes. And it was like two hours later, I was like, Oh man, I got a little, uh, little into this and couldn't stop. I had to finish it, but it was, uh, for what it was, it was really well done. I don't know if they just basically aired the audio on the podcast or not, but the video setting at a Conrad's on Christmas day going on.
01:33:14
Speaker
over each and every LJN and the variants and some of the bootleg stuff. And stuff was pretty educational for something that was a little bit ahead of my time as a kid for wrestling figures. Yeah, it's pretty awesome seeing that type of stuff. And I always say, if you guys are doing right now with Macho Mids and Hoagids and stuff like that, whatever collection you're doing, I think you should always, if you're going to start your collection and you're going to have every variation, you should definitely start it off with the LJN.
01:33:43
Speaker
figure if that person was around obviously back then. So like if you're going to do a whole good collection, you definitely want to get the whole good LJN. If you're going to do the Macho Man like you guys do right now, definitely have a Macho Man LJN as like the first figure of that so you can see the progression of like Macho Man figures as they go along. I'm trying to think of anybody else in an LJN figure besides like the Jax ones that they try to do, but that's still that you can do a large collection on which I think is pretty much it.
01:34:12
Speaker
Actually, no, that's it. I think it was only really two, or Ultra Warrior. His LJ is super, super expensive. But if you're doing an Ultra Warrior collection, you definitely want to have the Ultimate Warrior LJN. And I think the series he was in is probably the most like holy grail series ever. I think it had like Haku, Warlord, and I forget who else. It himself in it. And that's like probably like the most like expensive of the LJN series, actually.
01:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, I was just gonna say something. Oh my god, total brain fart. Oh, Mike, yeah, they did they did that on like a bonus episode on Christmas. And then the year before they did a bonus episode for the history of Hasbro's. It was just Kurt and Kurt and Zach that did that. So yeah, it's pretty cool. Conrad was kind of out of it by like an hour and a half into it. But
01:35:07
Speaker
You know, it was cool to have him as part of that show Very educational because I don't like like you. I was the the LGN's were a little bit before my time I wasn't really into wrestling until I was like, you know 10 or 11 like in the early early early 90s and that's what Hasbro's it kind of taken over so But yeah, I agree with you. I think LGN's are like, you know, they're kind of I don't know They're not really the most expensive way to go but it's just like they're just kind of harder to find there's so many different variations and there's you know people just beat the hell out of them, so
01:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, pretty cool stuff. We did get pictures of the Jushan Ligar. There's going to be a Storm Collectibles. There's a pre-order, I guess, coming soon from Ringside Collectibles of this new one. It's an all-black outfit, a couple interchangeable capes or something. Yeah, that looks sick. Yeah, that looks really, really bad ass, man. I'm pretty excited about that. Yeah, I know everybody put out their
01:36:04
Speaker
figure of the year type list a little early, so come around the end of 2020, there's a good chance that that's going to be top of the list for most people, including myself. It's going to be hard to beat the details of that figure, and we'll see what color variations and versions of Liger we see over the next year or so.
01:36:26
Speaker
Uh, we did see the survivor series elites showing up on ringside collectibles. Uh, so you can check those out there at wrestlingfigures.com. If you want the Don Morocco or the Jeff Hardy, um, those are available there. Uh, there are some rumors circulating around, uh, from our buddy on Instagram, unstable 10 47 1 0 4 7.
01:36:49
Speaker
of the next couple series of basics, basic 107. Now these are rumors, this is not confirmed. Series 107, EC3, Strowman, The Rock, Nakamura, and Bianca Belair, which I'm excited about.
01:37:07
Speaker
108, Basics 108 is AJ Styles, Roman, Aleister Black, and the Street Profits, which would be cool to have them in figure form. And then Basic 109, Ricochet, Lana, Becky Lynch, The Undertaker, and Seth Rollins. So again, these are not confirmed, but he partners with another website that sells figures.
01:37:31
Speaker
I'm excited about Bianca Belair and of course about the Street Profits, them getting figures. I like the NXT folks getting basics before they get elites, just to kind of test the waters and have kids kind of get them in their hands before they show up on the main stage if they move up. But yeah, and I think we talked a couple weeks ago about the rumored series for 76,
01:37:56
Speaker
I gotta think that's gonna start getting pre-ordered soon on Ringside, which is a Christian, Lacey Evans, Doctor of Thumbanomics, John Cena, Strowman, and then Heavy Machinery, which is a pretty cool series. There are people waiting for that brood Christian for a long time, so.
01:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of cool stuff coming down the pike. I think the series after that is Elite 77, which is, I think, gotta be SummerSlam figures. So, I mean, it's crazy to think that two series from now, we're gonna have SummerSlam figures coming out.
01:38:29
Speaker
It just shows you how far behind the stores are. Walmarts, for me, have been just totally dead, completely empty. I know some people are still finding some gorilla monsoons here and there, but it's been pretty tough since I found them around Christmastime. What about you guys? Same here. Walmarts have been pretty bare-shelled. I think I posted a picture a few weeks back of that. It was like five velvety dreams and they had like
01:38:59
Speaker
all different titles. It was Seattle with the North American title. And they all had like one had the big gold belt and one had like the women's title. And like I just see stuff like that all the time at the Walmart. I go to something like I've been just like not even going there. I'm going to give it a few like give it like a bump and then try to like reappear again and see what's going on there. But yeah, I just would find it like things like that here and there. But those series are showing up, which is which is good.
01:39:27
Speaker
I'm assuming, but not like that. Not in that sense. Yeah, Mike, you've been pretty awesome. As you mentioned, you don't really collect elites all that much unless they're kind of your top favorite wrestlers. But you've been going on business trips and traveling for vacation and holidays and finding figures for people. And I give you props, man. You've been awesome about that for someone who doesn't really collect them as much as some of the other people in our group, man. Thank you so much for all that you do for everybody.
01:39:57
Speaker
Actually talked to you, and thank you exactly. Thank you also for the the Jordan grace Video which I watch every single day when I was Actually pretty cool. I was like I was I know I like it. I'd like a toady-sober video Yeah, she blew me a kiss man. She did yeah, and I seen it I witnessed it
01:40:21
Speaker
Husband's probably not happy, but can't help it ladies I Think that's it for our go figure segment. You guys have anything else any other wrestling news? Oh, we did get pictures of the next series of the masters of the universe figures Which look pretty cool the major brothers posted that up on their Instagram major WF pod Did that a did that series like double from what originally was talked about at a
01:40:51
Speaker
Oh god, I guess Comic Con maybe? Because I feel like they had only talked about like three or four people and now it seems like it's double that. Yeah, it's nine now. So you have two different versions of an Undertaker, you have a Rey Mysterio, Macho Man, Strowman, Biggie, Roman, The Rock, and a John Cena. So I'm excited about all those.
01:41:12
Speaker
I haven't opened up any of these. I have the ring with the with the Cena and the Triple H and I've picked up along the way at some point for Walmart.com. Finn Balor and what was the other one? Ultimate Warrior. And I'll probably let my son open them up because I think he'll have a lot of fun with them because they're kind of like a little, you know, they're wrestlers, but he can also kind of do some, he's pretty, he has a good imagination for that kind of stuff.
01:41:38
Speaker
But I like that you can kind of pop off the head and the hands and the arms and the legs and kind of intertwine them all and move them around. So, you know, I miss the retros, Mike, I'm sure you do too. But, you know, it's saving a little bit on the pocketbook that they're on the shelf because you don't have to spend as much money buying all those and the elites. So, you know.
01:42:01
Speaker
But these look pretty cool. I mean, the macho man's pretty basic. Nothing cool about that. But the Undertaker one looks pretty awesome. The John Cena one looks cool. We'll post a picture up to our Twitter account tomorrow so everybody can see it. But if you follow the Major Brothers on Instagram, it's on their feed. I guess this is going to stick around for at least a little bit. I mean, we saw the ring was pretty heavily discounted. People were talking about between $10 and $15 getting the rings with the Cena and the Triple H figure, which
01:42:27
Speaker
And they were 30 when they first came out. And my store had a whole pallet. And then it was like a week later, it was gone. I was like, oh man, these are selling pretty good. So I don't know if they just didn't sell in certain areas or what. But it's an interesting line of figures. I was never a huge into Masters of the Universe as a kid. I had some of the toys, but I can see the attachment. Yeah.
01:42:54
Speaker
All right. Cool. No, no comment from the peanut gallery. No, I think that that New Day figure is all three. I think the head switches out to Kofi and to your Elijah Woods. Yeah, I think you press on the head and maybe his head twists around and you get different, the three different faces from the New Day. Yeah. I forget the name of the actual character on He-Man, but yeah, that was his like,
01:43:23
Speaker
Gimmick, he would like his head would switch and you'd have different faces though. That's actually pretty cool. I like how you dropped the Elijah Woods reference. That's a deep cut on the podcast, man. I still do that every time I say Xavier Woods' name because I have just like my son and my, just like that's what we call him. That's what it's been forever. He's going to be off TV for so long, people are going to forget his name.
01:43:47
Speaker
Let's get into our random merch of the week. This is a pretty pricey item here you've found on eBay. Yeah. So, yeah. So we're, we're going to stick with the, uh, the Jushin Liger retirement, uh, with Jushin Liger heavy on this show. Um, but yeah, so it's a DVD from Japan. Um, it's, uh, a, uh, I didn't believe it's like a six hour DVD or something like that.
01:44:14
Speaker
Let me see. Let me look it up real quick again. Oh, 21 hours and 27 minutes. Wow. The DVD. It's it's actually only a thousand were made. It shipped from Japan. Only only a thousand were made. It's a special limited edition DVD. I'm going to save the price for later because you guys are going to love it.
01:44:38
Speaker
Yeah, so it actually comes with some goodies too. Hence the price I will tell you later. So it actually comes with like, it's unopened, so it's never been used. It comes with some t-shirts, some Liger t-shirts, as well as a 16 page full color original booklet, which is pretty awesome. It has 84 matches on it. So if you're a Liger fan, you can watch 84 matches of Liger throughout his, it's a 30th Memorial DVD. So it's,
01:45:06
Speaker
pretty, it's 30 years of Liger. It is $600 for this DVD. It's a $40 shipping charge as well. So it is, it is outside the US. So usually it's a lot, I mean, it's, that is pretty C for shipping, but it does ship from Japan. It is unopened. So if you are a hardcore Jushin Thunder Liger fan and you want like the most special limited edition DVD,
01:45:36
Speaker
Definitely, if you have the pockets for it, because I know I don't, I would definitely love to see the DVD.
Jushin Liger Tribute
01:45:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's 600 bucks, $40 shipping charge, and it's all yours.
01:45:48
Speaker
I guess I mean that's a wrestler and some of those matches are probably hard to like be able to watch those on the WWE Network, you know, yeah, so yeah, it's it's you know, if you're a hardcore fan shit I mean makes sense especially because he's retiring that the price is only gonna go up on that. I'm sure Yeah, good fine. Let's get into our retro wrestling recommendation of the week. I
01:46:09
Speaker
Sponsored in part by Pro Wrestling Tees.com. You can get our shirts there just in the search bar. Type in Chick Foley Show and it'll take you to our page of our shirts. We appreciate any support. This is one I picked, Marco, in the theme of Jushin Thunder Liger, a great match which people can watch on the network for $9.99 a month.
01:46:31
Speaker
It's NXT TakeOver Brooklyn against Tyler Breeze in a damn good match. This was the only match we've ever seen Trusian Liger in the WWE, correct? Exactly, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's the only time he's actually ever appeared because I was actually looking up his theme because watching Wrestle Kingdom, it seems like an 80s, it sounds like an 80s
01:46:55
Speaker
like Asian like love song or whatever. So I was trying to find it. And WWE actually made him a special theme for that, for that show. So if you go on like Apple music or Spotify or wherever you get your music, you can find that the NXT Jewish and Thunder Liger theme. It's up there to listen to, which is pretty, it sounds very similar to his, his original theme, but it's a little bit more updated. But yeah, just a little tidbit. I was trying to hold this, but I actually see Jewish and Thunder Liger wrestle.
01:47:25
Speaker
in person. It was at 2013. It was the first Wrestle Media in New York. There's a company called PWS Pro Wrestling Syndicate. It was a show that they did. We got front row seats and everything. It was New Jack's retired match, if you know who New Jack is.
01:47:50
Speaker
Actually had the DVD. I wish I could like I think I'm gonna try to make it like digital so I could share it everyone cuz like oh cool Yeah, he's like he I had some he faced a dude named necro butcher and it was just the most bloodiest match ever and he actually Threw necro butcher almost all my lap because he threw him over the guardrail and I'm sitting at the guardrail so like literally the whole front row just like Gets up and just scatters and it's like bloody chairs. Everybody is it was pretty sick, but he actually so jushin thunderlager I seen him wrestle
01:48:20
Speaker
He faced your man, John Morrison in a match. Yeah. It was actually, it's really cool. So maybe I'll probably, I mean, I got to find the DVD, maybe I'll just send it to you so you can see you can watch it. It's here at a John Morrison fan, but it was actually a really good match. Um, so yeah, I'm not sure how many people have actually seen you should thunder Liger perform live in front of them. And I actually got to see it, which is pretty cool.
01:48:47
Speaker
Man, if you want to get really depressed, Google Necro Butcher and see what he looks like in 2019. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah. People were posting pictures on Twitter. He's like the same age as Edge. He's like 46 years old, and Edge looks like he could be his grandson. Yeah. It was an entertaining match, but yeah, like you said, it's pretty depressing to watch as well.
01:49:16
Speaker
But yeah, so back to NXT TakeOver Brooklyn. So that match is awesome. The rest of the card is stacked, obviously, because it was the first TakeOver Brooklyn. You get to see the Vlog Villains. I don't want to skip over them because they're pretty awesome when they're on NXT. They took on Blake and Murphy for the, I think it was the NXT, Murphy, E-Buddy Murphy. And I was a manager, I believe at the time, right? Yep, he was. Yeah.
01:49:45
Speaker
So yeah, so she, uh, so they, I think they retained, you know, they, they actually know that I have it here. No, they, they won the tag team. That's right. Yeah.
NXT TakeOver Highlights
01:49:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, this, this, this whole card, I mean, you had Samoa Joe defeating Baron Corbin, but those guys in big spots now on a raw on Smackdown Bailey versus Sasha Banks. She, she beat, uh, Sasha Banks for the title and a great match. Then Finn Ballard, uh, defending against Kevin Owens in a ladder match. So, I mean, you, I mean,
01:50:12
Speaker
Up and down this whole card, you have even Murphy. And that tag team match is kind of like a throwaway. But yeah, there's a ton of guys that are big names now that four years ago when this happened, we're kind of still making their name. So definitely a good card to check out, the first takeover card. And I love that they had the old school black and white posters for this card. It was pretty cool.
01:50:40
Speaker
but uh... yeah that is uh... a good time definitely go back and check that that was a match of the year candidate that should that sasha banks versus bailey match was before they're kind of what iron woman match happened so yeah damn good match uh... so we need to wrap it up here we we are doing a gorilla monsoon figure giveaway we got over two hundred retweets on this tweet but before we do last week on the show here we were trying to give away
01:51:09
Speaker
Maybe the best wrestling figure of 2019, Marco was donating a Slim Jim Macho man mint on card. We gave it away, we picked out a name, and the person never even said anything. And I usually, I'll send the person a hint on Twitter, or I'll send him a DM, like, hey, man, did you listen to the show this week? What'd you think?
01:51:32
Speaker
Uh, I was not going to do that this week. So sorry dude, but I forget your name already. F you. Uh, no, no, I'm just joking. I'm just joking. I'm just joking. Maybe you're behind on your podcast, but, uh, you shouldn't be. So we'll, we'll, we'll, let's give that away. We'll do a quick giveaway with that on Twitter this week or something. Uh,
01:51:51
Speaker
We'll talk. We'll brainstorm, Marco. But we need to give away this Guerrilla Monsoon figure that we found here. Our buddy Dennis Montesano is going to give away. Let me pull it up right now. Hold on one second. All right, we have picked a winner. Kevin Eugene, you are the winner. Twitter handle is m-c-z-o-u-t, up in Canada. Can't wait to pay those shipping costs. But hey, you won, dude.
01:52:19
Speaker
I guess it's better than shipping it to Tanzania or something. Kevin, welcome and you've won. Congratulations, you get the Mint On Card Gorilla Monsoon figure and just slide into our DMs with your information and we'll get that out to you. And like I said, we will be giving away
01:52:38
Speaker
this Macho Man Slim Jim. I think what we'll do is people that have to retweet or show us that they're listening to this week's episode and randomly next week we'll pick a winner for the Macho Man Slim Jim. Side note, Sheena is doing a contest like she did last year for the Royal Rumble where she's going to add a person's name to every spot in the Royal Rumble. Whatever spot wins, she'll end up picking a winner.
01:53:06
Speaker
Just like she did last year some people are stealing her idea, but that's a story for a different day Yeah, that's about it listener mail we have I've compiled a ton of questions for a Exclusive episode me Sheena and Marco once Sheena gets back from her sabbatical we have a big mailbag episode of a bunch of questions you guys want to ask us so I
01:53:29
Speaker
That's coming in the works, so hang on for that. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram. Follow us. Give us a five-star review on iTunes. Hit us up via email, askchickfoli at gmail.com and patreon.com slash chickfoli show.
Royal Rumble Preview
01:53:46
Speaker
Next week, we will be previewing the Royal Rumble. As crazy as that sounds, that's coming up two weeks from now.
01:53:53
Speaker
And I'm excited for that. The road to WrestleMania is starting, guys. Mike, thank you for joining us tonight. You've been awesome and enjoy interacting with you on an almost daily basis. I feel like I talked to you, well, I definitely talked to you more than I talked to my friends here in Baltimore. And I've enjoyed getting to know you, man. Hopefully we can meet up in Marco's hometown of Boston later this year for SummerSlam. Hopefully you're up for that. Yeah, I got some buddies that live up in
01:54:25
Speaker
Western Massachusetts so it's been discussed that we're going to try to figure a way to meet up and then come down and meet up with you guys if we can make that work. Very nice. Get some chowder. That sounds good. Don't tell my boss I'm cutting out work early on Friday. I'm going to go catch SmackDown on Friday.
01:54:51
Speaker
It's happening about 40 miles from where I live, so I'm going to make about an hour drive and go watch SmackDown with some buddies. I'm going to get out of work early and watch 1917 on Friday because that movie looks pretty freaking badass. Yeah, that's on the list to do sometime soon. Yeah, just tell my wife that I'm working and put the phone on silent. She doesn't listen to the podcast, it doesn't matter.
01:55:19
Speaker
Marco, thank you for joining me, man. Hopefully we will have Sheena back here with us next week, but I think we've been holding it down pretty well. We're closing in on two hours here, so we've had plenty to talk about. So thank you guys for listening. We appreciate you. We'll be back here next week as we get closer to the Rumble. We'll recap Raw and SmackDown. We'll get into some new figures dropping and a bunch of new stuff for Mike and Marco. Thank you for listening. Stay classy, Marks. We'll talk to you next week.
01:55:50
Speaker
You got niggas that don't like me for whatever reason You got niggas that don't wanna see me rich You got niggas that's mad Cause I'm always with they bitch Then you got niggas that just don't like me You know those PhD niggas But you know I pop a lot of shit But I back it up though See it's a difference A lot of niggas pop shit And a lot of niggas don't make hits But it's like this old bad boy