00:00AJ Styles on a TNA return, say his name and he appears, Joe Hendry potentially to WWE, and
00:12Jeff Hardy has returned to TNA. Hello, I'm Oli Davis, this is the WrestleTalk News. I'm in the
00:19office all alone on a Saturday, so please don't expect the usual high-octane style of editing
00:24you're used to, but do expect plenty of fluffs, because I'm just going to do this in one unedited
00:30take, there's no editors here today. Fluffing, fluffing myself right now, all the fluffs. Right,
00:37so Jeff Hardy, as reported, returned at last night's TNA Against All Lods pay-per-view in the
00:42main event, but not to help his brother retain or stop getting beaten up. First it was Moose and
00:49broken, broken, yes, Matt Hardy in the main event, Moose defending his championship, and
00:56there was a lot of interference, Alicia got involved, Reby Hart took her, Reby Hart? Who's
01:02Reby Hart? Reby Hardy took out Alicia, but then Matt Hardy accidentally speared Reby through
01:09a table, letting Moose retain. Moose is probably going to hold on to his title for quite some
01:14time, maybe, until Bound for Glory. He's been unbeaten for ages now. But then the rest
01:19of the system, who successfully retained their tag titles against the Nemeth brothers earlier
01:24that night, came out. They start beating up Matt Hardy. The system is standing tall. You're
01:29like, well, you know, if Jeff's going to return, he should probably come out now. But note that
01:35here's Joe Hendry. Joe Hendry comes out, and yeah, he gets beaten up. And then, right,
01:42okay, here's Jeff Hardy. And he just stands, he's there, he poses. He doesn't do his little
01:47finger dance, unfortunately, but he does have a custom chair. And he runs down to the ring,
01:53he takes out the system, and stands tall with Matt Hardy, his brother, and the Nemeth brothers.
02:02So that's a weird two-brother act in there. And Joe Hendry, which is, that's a weird visual,
02:09isn't it? Who would have guessed that at the start of this year? Of course, Jeff Hardy's
02:14contract expired with AEW on the same day, on Friday the 14th of June, which allowed him
02:22to become a free agent and appear wherever he wanted. Matt Hardy, his brother, had left
02:27AEW back in April, I believe, when his contract similarly expired. They just couldn't work out
02:33terms to agree. The Hardys in AEW were, to be honest, a bit of a bust, because Matt Hardy came
02:39in during the pandemic, a lot of that broken stuff didn't quite gel with the AEW audience,
02:45which preferred things at the time a bit more realistic. And then when Jeff came in, it felt
02:51like they were building them to a tag title run against the Young Bucks, just like they had with
02:55their brilliant feud in Ring of Honor back in 2016. Tempest isn't here to fact check me,
03:02so it was 2016. And then Jeff got a concussion, and then he got a DUI arrest, which sort of put
03:11him out and indefinitely suspended for the better part of a year. And the Hardys, ever since then,
03:17just, they felt a bit frustrated than AEW because they weren't getting pushed. But you could understand
03:22why they weren't getting pushed, because they were either injured or arrested. Jeff, of course,
03:28had gone from WWE in late 2022, I think, one of those years. It was certainly at the end of a year,
03:37because he was acting weird. So it was always a risky move for Tony Khan to pick up Jeff Hardy,
03:43given his history. But Jeff Hardy, whenever he's released by one promotion, another promotion will
03:48pick him up right away, because he is that popular and charismatic, and will usually generate some
03:55interest. I would argue that means he never learns from his mistakes, because he's just rewarded with
04:02another promotion taking him. And right now, it's TNA. How long this lasts, we don't know. We don't know
04:08how long Matt Hardy's contract is either. But the interesting thing here is the relationship with
04:14NXT, the prohibitive portal that's recently opened up that saw Jordan Grace appear at the
04:22NXT Battlegrounds show, and have a match there as well, losing to Roxanne Perez. And on the same show
04:30against all odds last night that Jeff Hardy showed up, we had Jordan Grace issue an open challenge for
04:35her knockouts championship, which was answered by NXT's Tatum Paxley. So that relationship is still
04:43in play. And, rather excitingly, it continues on Tuesday. Because Tuesday's episode of NXT
04:51is sort of centred around this match that Cody Rhodes announced on this week's NXT, which is a 25-man
04:57battle royal. The winner will face Trick Williams for the NXT Championship at Heat Wave in July.
05:05Now, surely this is going to be a sort of Rumble-style match. It's not just 25 men in the
05:13ring right from the start. First off, that's too many men, too many men, too many men, too many men.
05:19You won't get into a nightclub with all that, with all those blokes. You need some women in that queue.
05:24And you've got trainers on as well. What are you thinking? This isn't Rochester and Amadeus.
05:29We need smart shoes here. This is a classy establishment. But that you will probably get
05:35entrances because it seems like we're going to have a few surprises. And you don't really get those
05:40surprises if they're just in the ring already when the match starts and the bell sounds. Cody Rhodes
05:45teased there'll be entrants from multiple locker rooms. So this could, of course, be WWE's main
05:51roster, Raw and SmackDown. But TNA as well. And actually, we've had a report from Fightful that says
06:01that the participants in NXT's 25-man battle royal for Tuesday have been decided. The majority of the
06:09people are already arranged. And some of the participants are expected to come from the main
06:14roster and TNA's roster. They're still finalising those names. So perhaps we could see Matt and Jeff
06:22Hardy appear in that battle royal. And maybe Jeff Hardy wins. So this TNA return for the Hardys could
06:33actually be a forbidden backdoor, title of your sex tape, to WWE via NXT. God, this is such a confusing
06:44web of working relationships. Hopefully one of the other names, though, is Joe Hendry. Because his
06:53name has been said, and possibly he will appear. He was referenced on Monday's Raw, when, you know,
06:59say his name and he'll appear line by Pat McAfee on commentary. And the crowd chanted for Joe Hendry
07:04when Cody Rhodes announced the battle royal on the Tuesday. So Fightful have said that the
07:13commentator's recent references to Hendry were planned in advance and not a coincidence. So if
07:20WWE is sort of planning that stuff, perhaps Joe Hendry really is going to be one of those 25
07:25competitors. In which case, it definitely should be a Royal Rumble-style entrance, so we all get to
07:30pop when his entrance music starts. Yeah, so that's all the sort of TNA cross-up. Just a few more
07:37results. We had Joe Hendry. Actually, yeah, he lost with a steal. Woof, woof. CM Punk's best friend,
07:46reportedly. I don't know what that's like now. He lost to Frankie Kazarian against all odds. It's a bit
07:52of an odd choice there. But the, what we also had the Smackdown taping last night, from taping, live
08:01broadcast from Scotland. And the Clash at the Castle pre-show, as well, the sort of events, the media
08:07event, where Cody Rhodes very sweetly crowd-surfed with all the Scottish fans. So on the episode of
08:16Smackdown with Cody Rhodes, AJ referenced Ring of Honour. He said Cody quit Ring of Honour. He quit
08:22New Japan. He said the forbidden names. It's crazy. But he wouldn't say AEW. We only referenced them in part,
08:28he said, and you helped start a company, and you quit that too. And when, AJ said, and you helped
08:35start a company, of course, everyone knows that means AEW. And the Scottish crowd went, oh, sounded
08:41like booze. I don't think it was booze. I think it was the Scottish accent going, wow, oh, naughty.
08:49But yeah, I don't think it would be booze. So AJ's referencing these other promotions on Smackdown,
08:56but at the Clash at the Castle media press thing, whatever it's called, AJ referenced
09:03TNA. Michael Cole asked AJ Styles about the working relationship between NXT and TNA. And
09:09AJ said that it's the TNA community. He didn't say that, that's just me. I wrote that as a
09:17joke to remind myself to definitely get that spot in. The crowd start shouting TNA. And AJ
09:23said he thinks it's the best of both worlds, which popped me because that was AJ's line,
09:28I think, in that song when they started doing dual-branded pay-per-views back in 2016-17.
09:35And he said if he was running the show, that's what he'd do too. Coldaholic also asked AJ in
09:41an interview whether his thoughts on that sort of TNA working relationship. And AJ kind of gave a vague
09:48answer about, yeah, it's great for the talent, it's great for everyone to cross over. But yeah,
09:53it really has got me thinking now with this whole AJ retires stip for Cody, if he doesn't win the
10:00belt, which I don't think he will, perhaps AJ turns up in TNA. Do you want to see that? Let me know in
10:08the comments. God, that is not something I would have had on my 2024 predictions. TNA does look to
10:16be in good health though, because one of the concerns after Scott D'Amore and all these other
10:20backstage creative names and long-term figures behind the scenes, was this idea that they haven't got any
10:28more dates announced post-early August. But in the Against All Odds pay-per-view last night, they
10:33announced that TNA Emergence will be held in Louisville, Kentucky on August 31st, and TNA
10:39Victory Road will be held in Cleveland, Ohio on September 13th. So a pretty quick turnaround there
10:46for the premium live events. If Emergence is a PLA, maybe it's a live show taping thing. But both
10:55events will air on TNA+. So TNA right now looks pretty healthy, which is surprising all things
11:02considered, all the big-name departures backstage. The only other thing I wanted to mention was
11:08this report from PW Insider that WWE are looking to bring back a classic name from the past in
11:16their pay-per-views, which is Bad Blood. Bad Blood, of course, being the stage for the first
11:22ever Hell in a Cell match. That awesome match between The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels that
11:27saw the debut of Kane. Very important. So that was back in October 1997.
11:34So we're coming up to an anniversary. It's not 97. We're 2024. So we're coming up to the
11:4230 years. 30 years since that. The name could be used for October's premium live event as of
11:51this year because WWE haven't announced the show names past Bash at Berlin, I believe, which
11:57is late August or early September. And yeah, then if you establish that now, in three years' time,
12:04when it is the 30-year anniversary of Bad Blood, it's already revived. You don't have to go from
12:10a standing start. So exciting. Well, please subscribe and everything because we've got the brand new
12:15episode of Tables, Lists and Chairs going out a bit later today. What are the 10 best stipulations,
12:21I think it is? Best 10 stipulations of all time? That'll be a fun one. And go watch Survival Series
12:26right now where we all try and name every King of the Ring tournament winner ever. That's live on
12:33Parts Unknown right now. There should be a link on screen. Click it. I've been Oli Davis. Jam that jam.
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