00:00AEW could have some fans no-show tonight's Dynamite, the reason WWE changed King and
00:06Queen of the Ring plans, tensions between WWE and France and more. I'm Luke Owen and
00:11this is the WrestleTalk News.
00:15WWE announced they would be introducing their first single women's midcard title to their
00:24NXT ranks recently at Battleground with the NXT Women's North American Championship,
00:29and on last night's show, they revealed who would be competing to be the first to
00:33win that prestigious prize. 12 wrestlers were named as a result of NXT Combine, and those
00:3812 will square off in singles matches with the six winners going on to a ladder match
00:43at Battleground. The women include Sol Rooker, Thea Hale, Jada Parker, Brinley Reese, Fallon
00:47Henley, Lash Legend, Izzy Dame, Tatum Paxley and Ren Sinclair, alongside main roster stars
00:52Mia Yim and Ivy Nile, and the recently called up Kehlani Jordan.
00:56Elsewhere on the show, Wes Lee had his first match back since injury beating Josh Briggs,
01:00Shayna Baszler beat Carmen Petrovic, The Family messed with No Quarter Catch crew by assigning
01:04Stax as the special guest referee in their tag match, Mia Yim beat Ariana Grace, Fallon
01:08Henley beat Kehlani Jordan, Lexus King beat Duke Hudson and Roxanne Perez retained her
01:12NXT Women's Championship against Chelsea Green. There had been rumours that Green would
01:16reunite with her NXT manager Mr. Stone, especially since the release of Von Wagner, but instead
01:21they just had a nod of recognition before the main event.
01:25Corey Brennan of Fightful Select also reports that Sean Spears produced two of the NXT level
01:29up matches that were taped last night, and Fightful Select also reported that NXT ring
01:33announcer Alicia Taylor will be heading to Smackdown to replace Mike Roam, will be heading
01:37to NXT to, you know, replace Alicia Taylor. Peeling back the curtain somewhat, I spent
01:42like 5 minutes trying to find a way to segue into the next story, but everything I tried
01:47just blew up in my face.
01:50Speaking of Dynamite, WILEY COYOTE SEGUE!
01:54Tonight's AEW Dynamite will take place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. A place I know
02:00because I've heard wrestlers be announced as coming from there, and they've stacked
02:03it with Canadian power. It will feature Canadian Adam Copeland defend his TNT Championship
02:08against Brodie King, Canadian Christian Cage confront Swerve Strickland, and Canadian Kenny
02:12Omega will have an important update following his attack by The Elite last week. I'm also
02:17sure we'll see Kyle O'Reilly and Renee Paquette on the show plenty to up the Canadian-ness.
02:20But it could be the Canadian-ness of Canada that could cause caution for tonight's show,
02:26as there was one thing AEW could not have planned for. Sports! Because while a Stanley
02:31Cup match is taking place in Vancouver with the Canucks, they will be taking on the Edmonton
02:37Oilers. And I don't want to presume that everyone watching the show knows a lot about
02:41Canada, but here is something you should know. Canada bloody loves their hockey. But before
02:46we get into the rest of that, first here's a clip from our latest episode of TLC, where
02:51our own Canadian representation Tempest was going through his top 10 worst finishers when
02:55he discovered something interesting about Sullivan's phone.
03:10One woman who's finisher was named after her breasts, which is Nikki Bella, and the
03:16rack attack. Get it? Oh, Siri! Didn't catch that. I said it was the rack attack, Siri!
03:25It's still listening. Sullivan's phone heard the word breasts. Please, please, I must look
03:36this up. He's renamed Siri to breasts. Breasts. Okay, breasts. Set a timer for 12 minutes.
03:49And this one was named after a bum. No, don't get the other Siri! Tits. Sorry, where was
04:03I? Oh yeah, AEW Dynamite. The Edmonton Oilers game was not announced when AEW booked this
04:09episode of Dynamite, so it's not exactly something they could prepare for in advance.
04:13And the worry is now, fans could no-show Dynamite and instead go to a watch party for the Stanley
04:19Cup game instead. And it's a big watch party, with Meltzer explaining on Wrestling Observer
04:25Radio, there's going to be an event in Edmonton right next to the show where AEW is, and there's
04:30going to be 20,000 people for a watch party for the game. And it's not just Dave Meltzer,
04:37as Jimmy Vanna Fightful adds that Roger's Place, where Dynamite is being held, usually
04:42does these watch parties for Oilers away games. He adds obviously they can't due to AEW,
04:47but the game will undoubtedly impact ticket sales here. This all presents two problems
04:53for those going to the shows. If people leave when the show finishes, they'll hit traffic
04:56from the watch party and be late home to catch up on the game. The alternative is to
05:00wait until the end of the Ring of Honor tapings to avoid that traffic, but again be late home
05:06to catch up on the hockey. The third alternative is to leave during the show to beat the traffic
05:12and get home in a good time to catch up on the game. Meltzer adds it's not like when
05:17people bought tickets they knew there'd be this game, so I could see people no-showing
05:23that have tickets and I could see people leaving early to get home and see the game.
05:28WrestleTix are reporting that around 350 tickets were available for tonight's show so it
05:32was close to being a sellout for the promotion. So as always in these scenarios, AEW is not
05:38to blame, Canada is.
05:40Speaking of ticket sales, and WWE boasted about their backlash results after the show
05:44noting it was their biggest arena gate in WWE history. In layman's terms, that means
05:49they made the most money from ticket sales at any event they've done in an arena ever.
05:54This was, according to Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics, due to the average ticket price
05:58being around $300.
06:00WWE's international shows, which have seen them do PPVs in Wales, England and Australia
06:06and in the next few months will be heading to Scotland and Germany, have been a great
06:11financial success for the company. Not only because they charge a lot for the tickets,
06:15but also because the tourism boards for those places pay WWE to do their shows in those
06:22countries.
06:23The same can be said for Puerto Rico, who reportedly paid WWE $1.5 million to do Backlash
06:29last year. WWE wanted to originally run Clash at the Castle in London in 2022, but the Welsh
06:36Tourism Board actually offered them money to do it. So they did it there instead.
06:40So it was presumed that this year's Backlash would be a similar story, but not so according
06:45to Post Wrestling, who report that neither the Leon Metropolis nor the region's authorities
06:50gave a cent to the company. And perhaps the reason for this is because Leon was not WWE's
06:56original choice for Backlash, as Post Wrestling add that WWE actually wanted to do the show
07:02in Paris, the country's capital and most famous city.
07:05However, like AEW Dynamite tonight, WWE hit upon a problem. Sports. As anyone who watched
07:12this year's Great British Men you will know, hands up those in the comments who did
07:15watch this year's competition that Kirk's awesome isn't he, Paris is hosting this
07:19year's Olympics. And because of that, according to Post Wrestling, with the Olympic Games
07:24less than 100 days away, not one building was willing to accommodate them for a four
07:30day stop, counting two days for installation and disassembly.
07:34This might be why WWE agreed to host the show for free in Leon, as they wanted to do the
07:39show internationally but could not get a fee for doing so because of the Olympics.
07:44This won't be the case for Clash at the Castle 2 or Bash in Berlin later this year,
07:47and newly re-elected Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said that he does want to bring WrestleMania
07:52to London, presumably for a big fee.
07:56Sticking with WWE and this week's Raw saw the 2024 King and Queen of the Ring tournaments
08:00kick off with aplomb, featuring two certified bangers with Gunther beating Sheamus and Ilja
08:06Dragunov beating Ricochet to advance. However the tournament wasn't without its issues,
08:11as four of the announced eight matches were either changed due to injury or scheduling
08:16issues. Both Drew McIntyre and Asuka were pulled from the tournament, with both being
08:20announced as injured. Fightful Slope confirmed that Asuka's injury is legit and not a work,
08:25Nia Jax took to social media to praise Asuka for working live events and TV tapings while
08:30being hurt. On top of that, the matches between Shayna Baszler vs. Lina Vega and Rey Mysterio
08:35vs. Kofi Kingston were moved off Raw and will instead be taking place at house shows
08:40this weekend. According to Fightful Select, this was a very last minute decision, as the
08:46participants for at least one of the matches that got moved off of Raw found out the day
08:52of. The reason these matches were removed from the show itself was a timing one. It
08:57would have seen Raw have eight matches, which would be the most wrestling matches on an
09:02episode of Raw in history.
09:05As to why they're being done this weekend rather than Raw next week say, Fightful Select
09:09were told there wasn't enough time between now and the PLE to do so. Fightful were also
09:15told the plan is to air highlights on next week's WWE Raw and possibly social media,
09:20however they also add that could be adjusted or changed.
09:24Lastly for today's show and we're going to circle back to AEW and that angle they
09:27did a couple of weeks ago where The Elite laid out Tony Khan, who has since been written
09:31off TV following taking the TK driver. It led to a lot of speculation that this could
09:36lead to TK becoming a regular on-screen character, or even worse, stepping into the ring for
09:41a match. However in speaking with Cincy360, Tony Khan has downplayed this idea, saying
09:47AEW is where the best wrestle and we mean that. In this case, I'm not the best person
09:52to pay those people back. After what happened to me last time, I don't think I'd be
09:56making a smart move trying that.
09:58Now go and watch that episode of TLC where our heroes count down the top worst 10 wrestling
10:04finishers of all time.
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