00:00 WWE stars call out fans over the viral clip of Maxine Dupree, Who is Dreadmare, my review
00:12 of last night's AEW Dynamite and more. I'm Luke Owen and this is the WrestleTalk News.
00:24 The internet can be a cruel place, especially on social media, and this was shown in full
00:28 force over the last couple of days as a clip of Maxine Dupree from a house show went viral
00:33 on Twitter. In the clip, the crowd are booing her very, very loudly as she makes her way
00:38 to the back following a match with Nia Jax, with one fan audibly yelling for her to leave
00:44 and not come back. It has raised an interesting topic of discussion of, where do we draw the
00:49 line as fans in terms of reaction to wrestling that we perceive to be "not very good"
00:55 vs. being obviously mean to someone who's clearly trying to learn to get better. Some
01:00 argue that WWE literally has a performance centre for this sort of training, while others
01:05 point out that a) wrestling in front of a crowd is the whole point of house shows, and
01:09 b) you don't need to be a dick about things. It's also caused several wrestlers from
01:14 within WWE to respond and call fans out for their behaviour. Becky Lynch reposted an old
01:20 tweet saying if she hadn't sworn off tag partners for life, Maxine Dupree would be
01:24 her number one choice, and Natalya posted a photo of the two of them together. Many
01:29 other wrestlers have voiced their support and calling the fans out, including the current
01:33 Women's World Champion Rhea Ripley who tweeted, "I really wish that some of you get booed
01:38 and ridiculed in the public eye while being new at your job. Learning and getting better
01:44 is all a part of being human. Be better as humans." Jade Cargill, who recently debuted
01:50 for WWE at the Royal Rumble tweeted, "As someone who was from day one learning on the
01:55 job and had/have had a target on her back, I'm happy seeing the positive support coming
02:01 out of this." On an entirely unrelated note, be nice to each other in the comments.
02:06 And speaking of our comments, I noticed yesterday a few people mentioning the YouTube channel
02:10 Dreadmare - saying that it was a WWE channel designed to tease the return of Bo Dallas,
02:15 Uncle Howdy and the Wyatt Six faction - even claiming that Shawn Spears, who returned at
02:20 NXT this week, was going to be a part of it. This is not the first time a channel like
02:24 this has been talked about online, there was a different one shortly after Bray Wyatt was
02:28 released by WWE, and they're thought to be official WWE channels because the videos
02:33 are so well produced and contain verified WWE social links in the descriptions.
02:39 Shawn Ross Sapp of Fightful has now taken to Twitter to clarify this situation, tweeting,
02:44 "Dreadmare isn't a WWE thing and that channel isn't Bo Dallas affiliated with
02:50 Bo Dallas or their family. Very impressive videos and clearly the person doing it has
02:54 a lot of talent. However, they're capitalizing off the viral nature of the Bray Wyatt Fiend
03:00 Uncle Howdy characters using AI voices." SRS notes that because Dreadmare is not delineating
03:06 that they are a fan account, it is causing confusion, and reiterates that they're not
03:11 WWE related. WWE writer Rob Fee, who was brought in to work on Bray Wyatt's storylines, has
03:17 also asked fan accounts on Twitter to note that they are not related to the actual wrestlers.
03:23 We'll have our review of AEW Dynamite shortly, but prior to that show airing, Tony Khan announced
03:28 that the Meat Madness match was no longer taking place due to multiple wrestlers suffering
03:33 from injuries. However, the three men already announced for that match are still in the
03:38 newly announced All Star Scramble match, which begs the question, who else was going to be
03:43 in it? And it might tie into the report from PWInsider, who notes that nearly 20 wrestlers
03:49 from CMLL are in danger of losing their US work visas due to the Texas-based promotion
03:55 Full Blown Pro Wrestling running into issues with CMLL. PWInsider writes that PBPW essentially
04:03 sponsored the group visas, and report that Full Blown's promoter Jerry Cadena contacted
04:08 CMLL who said they would take care of the issue, but are now "no longer communicating
04:14 with him". The issue has meant that talent like Volador Jr, Hechicero and Masakura Dorada
04:18 - who have been working with AEW recently - would not be able to travel into the United
04:23 States legally to perform until a new work visa is acquired for them. And this would
04:29 impact several shows over WrestleMania weekend, including New Japan's Windy City Riot, which
04:34 has several CMLL talent booked on it. This Saturday we have another WrestleTalk
04:39 video essay, this time with me talking about how WWE has shaped and changed the history
04:43 of consuming media multiple times over. I think it's quite interesting. Here's a
04:48 little clip from it. And so Starrcade 1987 was announced to be
04:52 available on nationwide PPV too. The ire of Vince McMahon, who felt that he should have
04:58 a monopoly over the PPV model having hosted main years 1 through 3 through it. So Vince
05:03 did what Vince does, he tried to shut down the competition.
05:06 WWF announced a brand new PPV that would compete directly with Starrcade on PPV Survivor Series.
05:15 It's Thursday so you know what that means, it's time for my review of AEW Dynamite,
05:20 aka the Hangman Swerve edition of AEW Dynamite in about 5 minutes. Not the first person to
05:32 make that joke, but still pretty funny. The show opened with Hangman Page doing that
05:36 aforementioned swerve. Because last week, Page landed awkwardly avoiding getting hit
05:40 by the Muscle Buster from Samoa Joe to the point where it looked like he was legitimately
05:44 injured. Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select broke the kayfabe however, reporting that
05:48 Page was fine and he is just "really good at selling". What I'm trying to say is
05:52 that SRS spoiled this segment, curse you Fightful Select for being so good at your jobs, best
05:57 $5 in the business. Hangman cut a babyface promo that he picked up an injury and was
06:01 unable to compete, which brought out Swerve Strickland to say that they've been in
06:05 wars together and they're destined to do this forever. Just as he is destined to win
06:11 the AEW World Championship this Sunday at Revolution. Samoa Joe came out to run both
06:17 men down and Swerve said that he'll do whatever it takes to win that title, maybe even sending
06:21 Joe back to the commentary booth to be Poncho Joe. Isn't it amazing that this man is the
06:26 current World Champion of All Elite Wrestling? He even brought up that he once invaded Hangman's
06:32 home and cut a promo on his sleeping child yet somehow is still treated like the babyface
06:36 by this AEW audience. And it was at that moment that Hangman revealed all of this was a ruse
06:41 and he laid Swerve out with a crutch shot, shouting to Joe "he will not be champion,
06:46 I will be champion".
06:48 So let's address what a lot of people have already said about this segment. What was
06:53 Hangman's plan here? Was his plan to play mind games with Swerve? Was it to hurt Swerve
06:58 before their title match? Was it just there to be a Swerve? Was it a segment that was
07:02 just designed to further the heel turn of Paige and the babyface turn of Swerve? Or
07:08 was there something else to it? It was only after Swerve brought up the home invasion
07:12 that Hangman snapped, so maybe he had a bigger plan in mind but his emotions got the better
07:16 of him. Although I think I'm putting that narrative onto it because that wasn't brought
07:21 up by commentary, they just said he's a liar. I'm not exactly sure what Paige's
07:26 plan was, but all I know is this. I want Revolution to end with the Young Bucks as tag champs
07:32 and Hangman Paige as the World Champion. The Heel Eat.
07:36 Speaking of the Bucks, they had a series of funny skits backstage looking for Stiiing
07:40 to conduct his exit interview - which I believe was just to play a friendly game of baseball
07:44 - and at one point saw them get into an exchange with Eddie Kingston and go into Sting's
07:48 locker room where there were lots of bats hanging from the ceiling. Baseball bats that
07:52 is, Nicholas hilariously asked, do you think he's playing mind games? More on them later,
07:57 because now it's time for a bunch of tough lads to beat the piss out of each other for
08:00 20 minutes. FTR teamed with Eddie Kingston to take on the Blackpool Combat Club in a
08:05 wonderful trios match that really picked up in the final act when Kingston got the second
08:10 hot tag. The first two thirds were filled with the usual brawling and ad break rest
08:14 holds, but the final act was a terrific spectacle of big moves, chops, submissions, bigger chops
08:20 and even harder moves. Everyone hit big moves and Danielson ducked the spinning backfist
08:25 to hit the knee plus, steppies and triangle choke to put Kingston out - a great final
08:30 build for their title match this Sunday. We got a video promo to explain why it's
08:34 significant that Chris Jericho is wrestling Atlantis Jr. Are you happy now O'Shea Jackson?
08:39 Which is because Jericho wrestled and teamed with Atlantis Sr. when he worked with CMLL
08:44 in the 90s. Very cool. Speaking of very cool, and Will Ospreay is now officially All Elite
08:50 having finished up his duties with New Japan and is here to be full time in AEW. It was
08:55 kind of weird seeing Will Ospreay do an American Wrestling TV segment, but I kind of dug it
09:00 because he was just Will. And that's what was great here. Perhaps I'm blind because
09:05 I've got such an emotional attachment to Will, I shed a tear during his final speech
09:09 at Rev Pro a couple of weeks ago, but I really liked him in this segment. He was unapologetically
09:15 Will Ospreay.
09:16 Don Callis came out to put over the family and the match with Tekeshta this weekend,
09:20 and I think there may be an Ospreay split from this group coming soon.
09:24 Orange Castity beat Nick Wayne in a fine little match to retain the International Championship,
09:28 the Christian Coalition were ejected from ringside, an Undisputed Kingdom came down
09:31 for some distractions but Best Friends brawled with them, and Daniel Garcia stopped Wayne
09:35 from cheating to allow Cassidy to hit the Orange Punch for the win. It was a simple
09:39 build for several matches this Sunday, but this Orange Cassidy/Undisputed Kingdom feud
09:44 is ice cold at the moment.
09:46 The Bang Bang Scissor Gang made fun of Max Caster for forgetting his rap lyrics on Collision
09:50 and announced they'll have another trios match this Saturday. In the first of two matches
09:53 that didn't do any build for the PPV this Sunday unless some TBS stuff gets announced
09:57 on Collision, Sky Blue beat Chris Statlander in what was, arguably, the best match on this
10:02 whole show. Stokely wanted to cheat but this distraction allowed Junior Hart to clock Statlander
10:06 with the TBS title and Sky hit the code blue for the win.
10:09 The second of those two matches saw Chris Jericho come out as Lionheart Chris Jericho
10:13 - which means I got to hear White Zombie on Dynamite so it's a five star show. He had
10:17 a decent exhibition match with Atlantis Jr. and his dad threw in the towel for him when
10:21 it was clear he wasn't going to tap out from the walls of Jericho. And because Jericho
10:24 won, I got to hear White Zombie again - a ten star show.
10:27 We got the Meat Madness match change announcement and the main event saw The Young Bucks come
10:31 out to find Sting on his final Dynamite. What they instead found was Darby hiding amongst
10:35 fans in Sting's mask - a missed opportunity to not have one of them be Sting, although
10:40 one time they did it in TNA. But that's because he was being saved for something much
10:44 better.
10:45 Ric Flair came out and turned on The Bucks and after Matthew and Nicholas laid out both
10:48 Flair and Darby, Sting descended from the rafters and all of a sudden I was a kid again.
10:55 It's pandering, sure, but it's the best kind of pandering.
10:58 The tag champs stood tall and it was a wonderful way to close out the show - which was, overall,
11:04 broadly fine. Good wrestling, good build and some good teasers for things down the line
11:08 post-Revolution. This week's Dynamite is three out of five.
11:11 To whet your whistles ahead of this weekend's latest WrestleTalk feature, check out Oli
11:15 Davis covering the fall of the McMahons by clicking the video on screen.
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