If any of the quotes from the following podcasts or video interviews are used, please credit those sources and provide an H/T and link back to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
** Guest appearing on Wrestling Weekly with Les Thatcher and Victor Sosa was Nigel McGuinness. While speaking about the upcoming AEW Dynasty bout between Bryan Danielson and Will Ospreay, McGuinness explained why he thinks Ospreay had a ‘Ring of Honor stench’ on him for a period of time. He said people always assumed Ospreay only did highspots in matches, but Ospreay is versatile and does not get credit for it. Nigel compared it to the stigma about ECW wrestlers.
One of the things with Will, to Bryan’s point, he is so versatile and he never got any kind of credit for it and there was always that… I guess you’d wanna call it that ‘Ring of Honor stench’. That’s what I used to call it because back when, I wanna say the mid-2000s, if you were a Ring of Honor guy, there was an idea that you just did highspots and none of your matches made sense whatsoever and it all filtered down I think from WWE at the time in the sense of, ‘Well, that’s not real working.’ That was the sense that I got. I remember doing dark matches and that was the thing people had about Ring of Honor. It was just, you know… how people talked about ECW. It was just easier stuff to do to get the instant reaction and I don’t think that’s true at all and I think that certainly if you’ve seen New Japan in the 2010s as well, it’s a different type of psychology. It’s not the simple American psychology, but there’s more depth to it, there’s more nuance to it, there’s layers of an onion and that’s what Will Ospreay and so many of those guys did so well and have done so well and you watch the match that he had with (Konosuke) Takeshita, right? And there was some incredible moments and spots but the psychology that underpinned it all, that was the beauty, that was the magic and that’s why I truly believe AEW is giving guys like Ospreay the opportunity to show just how good they are.
** The newest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet featured Mike Santana. Looking back at his time with AEW, he recalled being visibly angry at Daily’s Place when he got the call that his father passed away. It was Brandi Rhodes who found him and she took him to a room. She brought Cody Rhodes to Santana and he shared that Cody sat with him and they shed tears together.
It’s funny because now he’s doing the whole finish the story thing, right? That’s real and I always knew that there was a lot more that he needed to do. I knew that AEW wasn’t gonna be the end-all, be-all for Cody (Rhodes). I give him a lot of praise man. So I found out my dad passed away, we were at Daily’s Place. I flipped my sh*t. I got the call and I go outside and I’m flipping my sh*t. I’m tossing guardrails and I was having a breakdown literally and Brandi (Rhodes) found me and Brandi’s like, ‘What the hell?’ She snatched me up and I’m like bawling my eyes out and I tell her what happened and she’s like, ‘Come with me right now’ and she puts me in a room and she’s like, ‘Stay here. Do not move’ and she went and got Cody. Cody came and sat with me and he cried with me.
** Becky Lynch is continuing to make the media rounds to promote her book and one of her stops was a conversation with Adrian Hernandez. Lynch was asked if The Four Horsewomen could reunite in WWE one day. She said a four-way match between them could headline WrestleMania.
We never got that four-way match (between The Four Horsewomen). But I think if that ever does happen, I mean that’s a WrestleMania main event so, anything is possible, anything is possible.
Along her media tour, Lynch sat down with SPORTbible and told the outlet that nobody deserves to main event WrestleMania more than her husband Seth Rollins. She stated that he’s carried Monday Night Raw for the last decade.
Nobody deserves it more than him (Lynch said about Seth Rollins headlining WrestleMania 40). He really has been the cornerstone. You look at Seth Rollins and carrying Raw, nobody has carried it (more) than him in the last 12 years. And there’s nobody who has had more main events on Raw, there is nobody who has been able to reinvent themselves, there is nobody who dedicates themselves more to this business. Once he got on the main roster, he came home and opened up a wrestling school. I’m sitting here with you, it’s 11 AM and he’s about to go leave and go coach a bunch of students at his wrestling school and impart his wisdom. Any live event, you will see him sitting behind the curtain ready to give anybody feedback on their matches, whoever wants it. He has an incredible mind. He is always able to take whatever is given to him and turn it into gold. He doesn’t complain. He puts business front and center of everything before himself and he thinks about it in a very unselfish way. And so more than anybody, he deserves this. And I’m so happy for him to get that.
** Lyric Swinton pushed out a new interview with Willow Nightingale. As their conversation rolled on, Nightingale recalled praise she received from Zack Sabre Jr. after a match she had with Athena at an ROH taping. Sabre Jr. told her it was the best babyface performance he’d seen in a long time.
The next day (after first ROH match against Athena), I did a Beyond Wrestling show in Worcester, Massachusetts and Zack Sabre Jr. was also on that show and he was at the Ring of Honor tapings the night before and he was like, ‘That was the best babyface performance I’ve seen a long, long time’ and I’m like, ‘I’m so excited that you said that. Thank you’ and like, a bunch of people in the locker room said things similar to me too but that was my first time really talking to him and meeting him. So that stuck with me in my head…
Speaking about what she wants for AEW’s women’s division, Nightingale brought up a women’s Blood & Guts and Continental Classic.
So there’s like a lot of things that come to mind (that I want for AEW’s women’s division) … Having a Blood & Guts is definitely on there, especially going off of what we were just speaking about. I do love the idea of having our own Continental Classic…
** On an episode of Brian Hebner’s Refin’ It Up podcast, he told the story of why he wore an armband in the matches he officiated. After he retired, he spotted another referee wearing an armband and made some calls to discontinue that. He added that he allowed another referee to do it because he respected said individual and that person asked for his permission.
I have an armband gimmick where I wear an armband, and basically, it all started not trying to be cool. What happened was basically in a nutshell, my mom had developed cancer and when my mom got cancer, I told her… every time I was on TV, I wanted her watching and wanted her to know I was thinking about her and praying for her and I told her I’d wear that and do this. Not to acknowledge the truck but just to acknowledge her. So then, she fought it. It was all good. I continued to wear it because now it was like my baby, it was like a part of my body. So, once I got out of the business, there was a referee and I’m not gonna name his name, decides he wants to wear one and to my disapproval, I said because first of all, he’s a sh*tty ref. Secondly, he didn’t f*cking ask. Thirdly, he knew it was my gimmick because he wouldn’t have waited until after I retired to do it. So I called people that I ‘know’ and told him to take the f*cking thing off or I was gonna f*cking go crazy. He did. I was also called by another referee that I actually respected, that was doing a good job and asked me respectfully, man-to-man, could he please wear it and gave me the reasons why he wanted to wear it and I told him, ‘I’m good with it.’
** Joining Sports Media with Richard Deitsch was Becky Lynch.
** NXT North American Champion Oba Femi was interviewed by Jim Varsallone:
** Grue Rume Show talked to Nick Wayne.
** Guest appearing on Logan Paul’s IMPAULSIVE podcast was WWE Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley.
** Tokyo Sports published Jushin Thunder Liger’s latest blog post about Yota Tsuji winning the 2024 New Japan Cup tournament and earning an IWGP World Heavyweight Championship match against Tetsuya Naito.
** There’s an interview on the Paltrocast with Ash Costello, who is the vocalist of Rhea Ripley’s former theme song ‘Brutality’.
If any of the quotes from the following podcasts or video interviews are used, please credit those sources and provide an H/T and link back to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
