Hello folks, this is Grid and Glitter, a weekly podcast dedicated to the power of women's wrestling. This is sort of season 12, season finale, summer has come to an end, so has another season of grit and glitter. This week on the show, we are ending things in style. We've got a bunch of guests, we've got some big things planned for this long episode. Here's the idea. What if we got three people who love pro wrestling, established wrestling fans, and we've got them to watch an episode of weekly television from a promotion they normally don't. We get an AEW fan to watch TNA, we get a TNA fan to watch NXT, we got a WWE fan to watch AEW, they tell us what they liked about the show, what they didn't like, their thoughts on the women's division. It's a random episode of TV, just this past week, we chose a week, that's what's happening because it's easy to compare paper views and say let's compare All In and WrestleMania and Bound for Glory and see what the women's action is like there. But maybe it's more fair representation if we just pick a random week of TV and we see what happens, we see what the cards are dealt, that's what we did this week. Some of it was a hit, some of it was a mess. On the show we have Mayday, Tom Stalpe, and Adriana returning to watch some new wrestling from companies they normally don't and they're going to tell us whether there's any shot in hell that they watch it again next week. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Yeah, I understand where they're coming from, but it is hard to see the pirate go. This is our segment, Ziggy Hyam is here, you know her, you love her, she used to wrestle all over the place, now she just watched the dogs, what are you doing? I do, I do, I've written dogs. Yeah, the professional wrestler to dogwash your pipeline, it's a real. It's incredible. Yeah. I hear, I hear this one for I was doing the same thing. I love that. Good for him. I hope that it's going well. I don't know if that's true. I should have picked, I hear bark gun is known to shampoo or shits you. Honestly, I love that being maven. So Ziggy comes here, you send in your questions, she answers them, we fix people's lives and then we go home happy, knowing we sleep well at night basically. Knowing that we've helped the masses. I haven't heard any complaints, having anybody email back and be like your advice is terrible. My father-in-law is suing me, the pope is out to get me, no no no no no no no no no. I hope not, I hope not, that would, we've, we've given them enough, enough talk about how we aren't liable. So everyone should know by now hopefully. So this week's letter comes to us once again, dear Ziggy. I'm farsighted but I've always resisted wearing my glasses because I feel like they just don't fit me. I've tried many different frames but they always look weird to me and I just think my face looks better without them. Have you ever had anything you resisted against but later came around on and what may you change? Oh, I love this question. What a good start, I thought that we were going to talk about start vision so I could talk about how I have to wear contacts constantly and I'm super blind but I see where this is. I don't know, that's a great question. I think that a lot of time just like growing yourself into something new especially in pro wrestling, like when I first started, all of that was something that definitely like the travel and just the whole like socializing and networking aspect of it all is like really scary and overwhelming and something that I, to this day, don't feel fully equipped for but yeah, it's just something that you gotta figure out and kind of navigate and just figure out what works best for you, much like finding your perfect pair of frames but yes, great question. But if they ask you to take an Alabama slam, say no. Yes, correct. You said you wear contacts all the time, like every day? Yes, I wear contacts. Sometimes I put my glasses on but for the most part, I have to wear contacts. I'm very blind without them. But why contact my classes every day? It's, I honestly started worrying them when I was really young so I've just gotten used to them. Also, I'm blind to the point that when I wake up, if I sleep, I have contacts that you can sleep in, no, it's, I know that it's not recommended, don't come for anyone because I am so blind that if I wake up, I will panic because everything is blurry and I have like a little freak out if I don't have anything on my eyeballs and I started wearing them when I was really young so I think it's just strange to me but yeah, I'm super blind. I have to but I have been trying to get more into glasses now that I don't have to wrestle because that was a big thing too. Yeah I got glasses, I got glasses like 10, 15 years ago, worn for a couple of months and they said, screw this and just stopped and it was only the past year that I got, I went for prescription out glasses again because I wanted to get my driver's license. Yeah, sure. And I was still, I kind of still am very resistant, like I wear them if we're going out somewhere and I like know that I want to be seeing stuff or helping read the street signs but I don't wear them day to day. I am very, and I think, and I'm with a person where I like, I think I look better with that though. Yeah. Oh. That, I, it's so funny because like, I've realized that's more of a thing the older I got, that's just been always been crazy to me but I think that's also like the level of blindness that I am, it's hard for me to be like, how do you do that? Yeah, I, I used to be able to go without my glasses for a period of time. Um, well I mean, once I started wearing them regularly, I still could like go without them. But at this point, if I'm leaving the house, I have to have my glasses on. Yeah. It feels crazy. I just, it's not safe to drive, it's not safe to really do anything that's not like. Yeah, I've just always had such bad vision that it's hard for me to like imagine, like having blurry vision that isn't like completely debilitating. But luckily I really like wearing glasses. So I'm like, I'm okay with it. I do. I, I've grown to like getting fun frames. Yeah. And like, it's so easy to get like cool glasses now, it's, it's a lot more fun. It is. The websites, you can get them from like, I have like, I have two new pairs of glasses on the way. I have like 12 pairs of glasses now. I've recently learned about the magic of buying glasses online. I like truly didn't know until like the past couple of years how easy it is to get cheap frames online. It is the best. And then you can have selections that you can match. You can coordinate. Right. I love that. You can have frames from like, you're feeling a little extra and you want some like sparkle. Are you want some like cool shapes or like bright colors? You can have like some standard ones like I've got kind of have the gamut when it comes to my glasses now. And I started getting extra ones mainly because I had a toddler at the time and he like was pulling in my glasses and he destroyed my one and only pair that I had. Yeah. When I got to one, I was like, yeah, I'm going to get a few. Got it. Yeah. That makes sense. But yes, I completely agree. I, I like wearing my glasses. Well, if you have questions for this segment for Ziggy, send them over to us, great clear podcast at gmail.com or Twitter or Instagram at great clear pod as you hear. It's always anonymous. We just read your questions. We won't out you. We won't, you don't need to be embarrassed about anything. Honestly, we're open to open all questions. This is a judgment free zone. Yes. Absolutely. We love it all. We're here for everyone, anything. Okay, as I said at the top this week, we got three people to watch an episode weekly TV from a show that promotion that they normally don't. Joining us at this time is longtime glitterati member, TNA correspondent, maybe. Whoo. Yahoo. Made it. You are obviously a CNA fan. Everybody around here knows that. What is your history with WWE? Um, well, I mean, obviously I grew up watching WWF. Much like everybody did because that was your only option. Um, I did mostly switch over to WCW. Um, after they went out of business, I went back to WWE. Off and on, but they kind of largely pushed me away, um, came back for CM Punk, drifted away again, somewhere in there, found, uh, TNA started watching that. Would check in on WWE every so often, like I would watch their pay per views, um, which even then I don't really do that much anymore. I didn't watch WrestleMania, but that was pretty much it. Um, I definitely have not watched any of the weekly shows in years, probably the better part of a decade at this point, Jesus. Um, like I just, I do not watch their weekly shows. Any of them, Ross, MacDown, NXT, main event, I'm sure there's, I'm sure I'm missing like six. Um, so this is the first time I've watched just a weekly product from them in a very long time. Um, once in a bloom, I'll still watch their pay per views, but that's fewer and fewer far between. Yes, you were never an NXT guy, like not even during like the black and gold days or any of that. Not really. Um, when it was like the Super Indies, the black and gold era, um, I would watch it occasional, like I would see clips of it. That's probably the best way to say it. Like I would keep up with it, but I would not like sit down and watch, oh boy, NXT is on, um, and then when they did the whole Wednesday Night War, I didn't care, like I didn't have a horse in that race, so I didn't really watch either one. Um, it did force TNA to move back to Thursdays, um, but that was the only impact no pun intended that it had on me. And yeah, like I said, I've kept up with it and I watched the clips and I will say, and this, this might be completely intentional on their part because it's 2024 and everyone has the attention span of a house fly, but it works a lot better as, you know, here's a clip on Twitter, here's a thing on TikTok, like to sit down and watch it for two hours was exhausting. Yeah, I, that is a really good way to put it because I'll get these clips. I'll see, I'll see these clips and I'm like, oh wow, you know, that's really cool. I, you know, maybe I need to make a point of watching this on time and then I do and it's, because those clips are the very best part. I wonder how much of that is intentional though, like are they writing the show so to speak? Are they booking it with the intent to get those little viral clips? I genuinely don't know. Maybe they just find the good moments and put them on Twitter or are they intentionally engineering them? I mean, that's incredibly savvy of so like it because that's, it wouldn't surprise me if anyone's going to do it, WWE is going to do it. Yeah. Everybody else is looking for highlights, WWE wouldn't put them past them to manufacture them. Yeah. And fair enough because that's ultimately like how you're going to build viewership in this day and age, but retaining viewership in that way, like with, at least with like wrestling fans who are not like already, um, down into your, into your product and already committed fans like you're not going to keep it in one that way. Yeah. So I don't know what the end goal is, um, maybe there isn't one. What? So my first question is just overall your thoughts on the format, the presentation, all those sort of little things. Cause NXT does vary, you know, like everybody has their own little logo name font on the Chiron, right? And everybody has their own little. I did notice that. During the second half of the show, I noticed they had like a recap of the results from the first half in the bottom left. I did notice that was also one of my notes that they're updating us on things that happened this episode, um, which seemed very strange and unnecessary, but maybe they're expecting people to not watch the whole thing. Um, but literally the very first note I have on here is, you know, full disclosure right up front. I did not watch this episode start to finish in one sitting like I just couldn't. I had to break it into little pieces. I did watch the whole episode, but I did not want, I didn't watch it live and I did not watch it all in one go. I just couldn't. Um, so maybe they're anticipating that. Maybe that's how a lot of people watch it because yeah, it was very strange to me that they were giving updates on things that happened like 20 minutes ago. Not even last week. It was like, you know, in the first hour, so and so would be so and so was like, I know we just saw that that's fascinating. That, I mean, done for the potential reasons that it was done that self aware to a, to an absurd degree and like very, very subtle, like very much telling on themselves. So we opened the show with women's wrestling. It's each, uh, sorry, not trios was it was a two or two take match, but one of them was a trio. It's that the view of fatal influences, the new faction, JC Jane used to be second fiddle in toxic attraction to Mandy Rose. Now she's got her own faction. Their heels. That's kind of all we know about them. On the other side, we have one half of metaphor metaphor is a four person stable to men to women. Here are the two women wrestling. So this is the first time we get to see fatal influence wrestle as a team as you expect. They go over as a result, see, I didn't know that. I mean, I have my little notes here that's fatal influence and metaphor. I didn't realize this was fatal influences debut as like a unit. I'm just like, Oh, I guess that's what they're called. I think debut is like a like branded like they've been hanging out for a while. But I think this is their first time under that name. Yeah. Like they're apparently this is like their first like under that name and like with like specific music for them, et cetera. I didn't know any of that. My other note here is it says, wow, they started right off. There was no like welcome to NXT, we're live at the whatever and you know, here's a establishing shot of the building. Here's a video package with highlights and a theme song. No, we just start like there's a quick little WWE thing like, you know, this is a WWE then now forever and then boom, we are just off and I was like, Oh, I was not prepared for that. I was waiting for like an intro. We didn't have one. Yeah, maybe that goes back to your like everybody's got a 10 second attention span. We got to grab them right away. I'm not even like, I'm trying to think of like the theme songs they used to play, the I just want to be like, they didn't do it. They just started. Yeah, so we had that match. We won't we don't have the time to talk about each match in this entirety because it's the one positive that we will say about this episode of NXT four women's matches in two hours, which is that's a month of dynamite right there. Yeah. That was that was very pleasantly surprised. The matches and also like a couple of promos, the segment with the woman who is challenging Roxanne at the pay-per-view this weekend, like, like a number of things in addition to the matches themselves, which impressed me because if you take an episode of dynamite and you get like a women's match and a backstage like behind the scenes, like some kind of like promo segment with like a one of the women wrestlers, that is an A plus episode for women's dynamite, which is sad. Yeah, I will also say that, yeah, they had, yeah, they had prominently featured women. Not every story revolved around the title. The very first match had nothing to do with any titles. They were just feuding, you know, like the men do. It wasn't belt or not on TV. Yeah, there's a lot of that here and even I was surprised by the fact that the first two matches were women's matches because like that, you know, you turn on alt-rock radio, they don't play whole and the cranberries back to back. They separate the women. They're like, we can't have two women's things in a row, like we're going to lose all the male audience, but again, here they were just like, we're opening up with a women's take match and then we're going right into a women's singles match. Yeah. Yeah, the one downside I'll say about this episode though, is that I felt like the, and not that like you can't do that, I think that that's pretty impressive to do that right out the gate with an episode of wrestling television, but the like last quarter or maybe the last like third of this episode felt particularly men's heavy because they're like after the Rosemary and I'm like, yeah, sorry, after the Kalani and Rosemary match, there wasn't any other women's content and there was a quick at the time left. Yeah, and the second half, the final third, I don't know, but like you're saying, the last act was very much a slog for me and I didn't even clock into it. That's exactly why is because it was just all these guys that I don't know and don't care about until we finally got to Joe Hendry, the finishing strong. Yeah, strong finish, but there was a, there was a slog there in the middle there. The third fifth, how's that, it was a slog. It did finish strong. So we got the fatal influence take team win. We had Carmen Petrovich go for Izzy Dame, not much to this one, just giving Carmen a win and maybe building her something down the line. Yeah, I will also say another thing that putting them back to back like that, at least to me, made stand out, is what I've dubbed the performance center style. You can absolutely tell who's been trained at the performance center and nowhere else. They didn't do the Indies, they don't, like their day one was welcome to the performance center. You can pick those performers right out. And there was a lot of them in those first two matches. They all have the exact same move set. They all, I mean, they have different like finishers and stuff, but they all, they love to do a tilt a whirl backbreaker. They love to do a drop kick. Someone's going to run out of a corner. Oh, it's a back elbow, like it's, it's the same matches because that's like, I guess all they know, but they start looking really cookie cutter without the versatility or the variation of the different styles that you'll see on the Indies. The other, some of the matches did have, like, what's her name? Maddie, her and Kowski, or whatever she's calling herself now, where they would bring their Indies stuff, kind of mix it up a little bit, but when it's performance center against performance center, it's, it's the same match over and over and over, like. Yeah, it's the, it's the template, it's the, like, yeah, you can tell they've all been trained at the same place by the same people for roughly the same amount of time. Oh, it's awful. Like, just because, yeah, once you pick up on it, then you can't miss it and it makes every match feel like no matter how dynamic the performers can seem, once they are wrestling, they are interchangeable. Yep. And putting the two matches back to back like that did not help. Yeah. Fair, fair points. Like, I have the whole thing feels very sterile is one of my notes here. And again, it's like one of those things where, like, I'm with one hand, I'm saying, like, this is awesome. I'm so glad that there's so much like women's wrestling on here and, like, with the other hand, I'm saying, like, but none of this is very good. Like, like, not the, well, that's when you fall back on the, well, it's actually developmental technically. I get that, but I don't see really hasn't been that in a long time, but that's always the go to whenever you have a criticism of it. Sure. But then, like, that falls apart when you see people who are not like performance that are trained and they are like signees and they are allowed to do a little bit more than what the performance that are trained wrestlers are doing. Yeah. It's true. It's performance. Yeah. And then so you're like, you're watching these like matches and you're reminded of like, oh, yeah, that's, um, that that's wrestling. It is a really weird mix, right? Because you have people like a current petrivation, Izzy Dame and Adriana Rizzo, the female member of the tarantula family, the stereotype Italian mob family. They're clearly like, they've never stood anywhere else. This is all they know. You have people like Wren Sinclair, from, you know, it's Maddie Wankowski and Roxanne Perez, who had time on the Indies, for sure. Thea Hale had time on the Indies, I believe, in Pittsburgh before she came. Yeah. She was Nikita Knight. Oh. Nikita Knight. Yeah. It was Nikita Knight, Maddie Wankowski and Roxanne Perez. That was Roxie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they had time on the Indies and then we're, and then like pretty soon, Julia is coming. And it's like, well, that's like, Julia is going to stand out like a sore thumb. Yeah. Like what a huge different level, right? Yes. I'm terrified that they're going to make her like wrestle down. Well, yeah, because like how, what else can they do? Yeah. But that's the thing that doesn't get addressed enough when we, when we talk about like wrestlers like Julius, but like specifically that level, like getting signed to NXT. It's like, who is working at that level? No one. She's going to have to wrestle down to their level. Yeah. And that's, who, how is that like, I, I see the point it does nothing for her. It hurts her. It's going to suck to watch her wrestle poorly. Mm hmm. Other women spotted on the show, not wrestling. We had, um, former Quinn McKay herself, Kelly Kincaid. Yes. I have that in huge letters, Quinn. She doesn't have the boat anymore. She's still doing backstage interviews. I miss the bow tie and the glasses. We had a sighting of general manager Ava. Do you guys know who Ava is? Yes. The rocks. The box daughter, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. She wants to like three matches and they're like, you know what, we're going to make your general manager. How about we put you over here? Can I? Still funny to me. Can I say something that she wasn't a particularly good wrestler. She was perfectly fine, but not particularly good wrestler and what I had seen. And she's developing her acting chops. We'll just put it that way. I don't understand why she's so good. I couldn't, I, I don't buy her as general manager. I don't understand that dynamic, that whole segment was like, like, high shoulder cringe. That's exactly what I was about to say. I don't understand why she's the general manager, like in, in kayfabe even, like, who is this person? She does not feel like she's in charge. And Ethan Page, it was even like giving her shade over it was like, well, this segment felt pointless, which it was, which it was and like, I just, she exudes no authority. Yeah, so she doesn't feel like she's in charge. It, yeah. I don't, I don't understand any. What's so funny is that in real life, but also in kayfabe, Shawn Michaels runs NXT. Like he appears on NXT once in a while, or once every couple of months, he'll pop up for like a segment. And they acknowledge that Shawn is in, is in charge, Ava runs like the week to week. Shawn runs big picture. And the rock famously hates Shawn Michaels. Like wants nothing to do with him when they, when they did the sitcom Young Rock, it was the only role that they recast. They had, they had the Shawn Michaels character on the show and gave him like a new name and a new personality. Everybody else got to be himself. It was, it was something, I'm trying to remember that character's name. It was like, it was like, Julie McFrost or something. It was like kids Stevens or something. I don't know. But yeah. So it's just, I don't know. It's just funny to be that in kayfabe. And they stopped the whole show. They're being like, this guy is not real because I hate the guy that he's supposed to be. So it's like in kayfabe, Shawn gave his daughter like a job, maybe to like suck up to him. I don't know. I guess. But yeah, she does not exude any kind of authority. And I, I wonder now that I'm thinking about it, looking back, I wonder if at least part of that is her wardrobe because she's just wearing like a skirt and a shirt. Like put her in a pantsuit. I don't think you'll, but I don't think it'll matter. I don't think so. Yeah. Try something. Is that part of it? Put her in a pantsuit and give her a clipboard. She feels like really young to be like bossing around. That's embarrassing. Joe Henry. That's very true. She just doesn't have like the, like, she doesn't have the gravitas of appearance or age or any of that to like sell the general manager looks, even if you put her in a suit. And I, this is coming from a person who, if you put me in like a pantsuit, I look idiotic. I look like filed wearing her mother's clothes and I'm 39 years old. So like I get it. Some of us just cannot work the authority look. And I think that she, maybe she will in the future when she is like not very young, but like it doesn't make any sense. And it, yeah, you could put her in a pantsuit, you could put her in a tux. You could put her in like the most, like, you could put her in judges' robes. She's not going to look like an authority. Yeah. It doesn't sound like an authority. Like there's nothing about her tone or the way that she talks. That might be it. I don't know. Or let her tone the way she carries herself. Again, she does not feel like she's in charge. Yeah. And like I don't want to knock on her because like there's nothing wrong with her as a performer. I think she's being put in a position or a role where like it doesn't suit her, whatever the strengths that she has, it's definitely not playing those up. Yeah. But yeah, that, that was a, that was a hard segment. And yeah, I appreciate, I do appreciate there just, you know, being more women on screen in a, to our wrestling future. So they weren't on the show this week, but Ava usually has two assistants who help her run things. And they spend the whole time just bickering with each other and trying to be like, no, that was my idea. No, that was my idea. Her assistants are former British and stardom wrestler Stevie Turner and former X division champion, Robbie E. Wow. Her women's main event of the week was Heilani Jordan. She's our women's TV champion, the first one. She won at the inaugural title about a month ago, I want to say. She's feuding with Wendy Chu. Wendy Chu had a sleepy, sleepy head, nappy girl gimmick, and she went away for a walk. She was injured and she came back and she was a nightmare gimmick and she's evil. So she went into the, what's it say on that shirt you designed, maybe, if you've been portal? The prohibited portal. The prohibited portal. Yes. Apparently, Wendy Chu reached through the prohibited portal and pulled in Rosemary making her NXT debut Rosemary, Heilani Jordan, one on one. Yeah. So like Wendy has gone from being like a cute sleepy baby to like scary sleepy, like scary nightmare baby. So like Dan, like Dan Housing's tag is like very good, very evil or very nice, very evil. I guess you could say with like Wendy, like very cute, very evil. And I dig it, I really dig it. I like it and I like this crossover a lot. I remember we talked about it at some point and they're like, they would pair up well together like now that they're doing this NXT and anything and they did it. They did the thing. Yeah. I think it's really cool. I would love to see this payoff in both directions. Yeah. Like I would like to see Wendy and TNA. Yeah. And I would love to see the like the like legions of lore that are attached to Rosemary and TNA be able to pay off for both of these women. Yeah. She even says like during her entrance because she is famously like loyal to TNA to impact Anthem. Like she's never gone anywhere else. So she's showing up in WWE, she's showing up in TNA, or she shows up in NXT. She even says like straight to the camera, we found a way in. I was like, that was cute. Like I liked that. That's cute. Yeah. And this match was totally fine. I would have liked to say it a little longer. Yeah, it was very short and it was much, much, much too short considering that I feel like this could have been like like the best of the women's matches and it still really was. But like it could have been like at least like two or three minutes longer. And the clean win makes me think this was a one off. Yeah, definitely. At best we might get. Which sucks because. What's her name? What's the chance name? Kivani. Yeah. She might show up in TNA like once maybe. I think Wendy will show up before she does. I want Wendy Rosemary to go after the take titles, the knockout titles. This definitely just felt like yeah, one off, that's a perfect thing for it. I feel like it's really telling and maybe it's just because we don't watch it on the regular, et cetera. Like maybe I'm re-channeling here. But I think it's really telling that May Day and I cannot remember their champions, this champion. I it's another one of my notes here and also in big letters, an NXT name syndrome. It definitely feels like they're just pulling names out of a hat. Steve on a Jordan. I wrote them out. Yeah. Izzy Dame. Jasmine next. Yeah. Nathan Frazier. Brooks Jensen. Miles Bourne. And I have somebody got a baby. Jenny Parker. Got a baby name book and just slipped open. Burnside. Like these good all just make up names, like none of these. Brooks Jensen is so funny to me. I don't know why I think it's a very funny wrestling name. Brooks. It took me a while to figure out again, how do you take the notorious meanie and make her Sloan Jacobs Sloan Jacobs is not going anywhere like that was a weight around her neck right out of the gate. But it took me a while to real to figure out why they felt weird, like why these names are not quite so interchangeable, forgettable, bland, it's because there's no character. It's it's Steve wrestler, it's, you know, Johnny, Johnny, whatever, Johnny Smith. Meanwhile, on the other side, we have Masha Slamovich, Jody Threat, Tasha Steel, Killer Kelly, even, you know, Ace Austin, PCO, I hate the guy, but he's the name moose. Like it's a character, like the names have character. The name is part of the character, whereas on NXT, there's a character, but you cannot look at their name and figure out what their character is. Like, with nothing else to go off of, Jody Threat, you already got a sense of where this character is. Killer Kelly, you already have at least a springboard. Who the hell is Kalani Jordan? What does that mean? Who is that? And like, I get it, like, they do that purposefully to some degree because they might get re- like in the past, like they might get rebranded when they go to the main roster. It's more like in the being of like, oh, it's developmental. It's more like, we're treating them as like athletes, so we're giving them names like that. That breaks down when you show them any encounter other names that are definitely not in that mold. But like, I think you hit the nail on the head, like, I just don't really get any kind of like instant recognition when I see those names, even when I look at some of the women or men are like, what are like, I could do just like a kind of cursory, passory look at their aesthetic, et cetera, and not entirely really get what they're going for. The names are completely interchangeable because they have nothing to do with the character and their presentation largely has nothing to do with like their gear, especially. All their gear is completely interchangeable. It has nothing to do with the character. And I said to Mayday, like, I thought I actually thought Mayday would like this more because it's so campy. It's almost like, wow, yeah, and I said it's not can't be enough to be, wow, that's the problem. It is ridiculous, like, wow, has, uh, what was her name, Randy Rava, like, that's, that's full circle. Like, that is a, that's a cartoon name, like, if you're going to do camp, do camp, Chantilly Chilla, the beast, you know, like, how are you going to do, it doesn't work. You know, we're going to have like our fun little cheerleader. And her name is, you know, Jenny Wilson. What the hell? What is that? Oh, no. Randy Rava. Yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a Britney Reese on the, on the roster. What is that? You know, what does it mean he picture? No one. It's someone who started career mode and hasn't unlocked all their points yet. It is a 12 year old. That is one of my students because Brinley. Um, I, yeah, I think, I, I think that also, like, addresses the, one of the issues with the, I have with it is that there's, there's fairly campy presentation in some regards. Um, I really hate the likes free paint edges on the like screen. I think it's so stupid. Um, but there's like, but the problem is that like it's taking cheesy risks without any like rewards for it. The, the parts that I did enjoy were the campy parts. Like I have here, was it the D'Angelo family who I guess are, do they ever say that they're the mob or do we just like heavily imply it and wink at the camera? I'm genuinely curious. They've been two or three wrestlers who've left the company and Tony's had them like, quote unquote taken care of, you know, like there's a bridge where he was last seen talking to them and then we never see these guys again. Okay, because they did a little bit at the end where he goes to like his private restaurant or whatever and he talks to some champion or another and it's done very like, God fathery, you come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding type thing. And it's like, I loved that. That was great. Um, but the end, uh, interview or I guess wasn't an interview, the sit down with again, the whoever the, uh, Roxy and whoever her champion or whoever, as and whoever her challenger is, that was good. I have here. God damn that slap, um, cuz she legit slapped the crap out of her, um, those were good. And then you just have other stuff where they're like, we're chase you, we're sitting at desks and we're great. And then comes these other people saying, no, you're not great. We're great. And we're gonna fight. And I'm like, what? Yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of it, isn't it? I have watched a lot of chase you segments, um, because I love the, and I love her big dopey face. I just obsessed with her. And, uh, so I've watched actually a fair amount of chase you, like segments and like clips and stuff like that. So I have a fondness for them because I think they get basically to the camp level I'm looking for if I'm going to go camp, um, full a little short, but for the most part. Uh, but yeah, otherwise, like the mom family, uh, get the, I don't know, um, I'm, I'm liking certain elements of the, like the Charlie Dempsey's group. And I like that there's like, there's interplay between him and run Sinclair there. Like, I think that's cool to play with in, like a big trio, but it's just not even struck me as particularly memorable. The, the chase used to have fell flat for me because whoever their, their challengers were didn't, didn't own it. Like camp only works when everybody involved is owning it and the chase you people are silly and over the top and they're inexplicably at a wrestling university, but their opponents like are just, this is silly, we're going to, we're going to wrestle you for the titles and, and you'll be sad when we've got those belts, like you have to lean into it. Like maybe they're going to audit the class or something. I don't know. Like do something that would elevate it to, to lean into the camp and own it. And then the whole segment works a lot better. Yeah, there's not enough, like there's not enough cohesion in that regard. Like it feels a little scattered as far as like, okay, so this is a campy group of people. This is a very campy concept, but then these people over here, this is just much more straightforward. And when they throw them together, there's no like, there's no tone meshing. Yeah, that's a good point too. I hadn't really thought about that either. Maybe that's what it is. Like that's why it works in fun little clips and like segments because you're not getting that weird tonal dissonance, you know, jarring from segment to segment. Yeah, I would, I mean, I would assume so because I've watched chase university clips that I liked a lot more and they didn't like feature like other factions involved. They were just like very like, insular. And in that world, it's, it's, it's cute. I thought it actually really cute. Well, I mean, also I meant more like going from silly campy stuff. And then we cut back to the ring and it's we're back to being like regular serious stuff again. Like a wistly blood feud. Like that, that I meant more by like the jarring shift to like, yeah, if they were to put that clip of chase you, just, I'm sure they have up on Twitter, just on its own, I'm, it would probably be a lot better. People would like it. People would share it. People would retweet it. But like when it then cuts to, yeah, like the blood feud stared at on promos, you know, like your tonal whiplash. So October NXT moves to the CW and I said to me, they like it kind of makes sense in a lot of ways because NXT feels to me like the wrestling version of Riverdale or Glee. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. But, but again, like it just doesn't feel like there's ever a really commitment to it. Okay, hello, I'm joined at this time by returning guest. God help me. It's been a year and no, what did I say to over two years since Tom Staup has been on Grading Glitter insane, it's, it's wild and it, it, it feels it. I'm glad to be back man, glad to be talking to you again. Yes, you are still in existence. You are still out there. What are you doing these days in terms of wrestling? Yeah, besides you do, NXT eight years back, the podcast for the posting torch, is that it? Yeah, it basically, you know, it's, it's just sort of a re-prioritizing as my children are getting older and becoming the schedules are more demanding to, to make them the best people that they can be and finances. I, I, I finally had to de-prioritize cable. So I just rely on YouTube highlights for wrestling right now before, before Raw goes on Netflix. Um, but you know, I'm still, I'm still keeping up. I still am very opinionated, even if I keep most of it to myself these days. Uh, but yeah, eight years back, uh, reflecting on NXT from that many years ago on, on PW Torch VIP and occasionally if quite rarely these days appearances on the non pay walled side of things. So this week I got you to watch E.W. Dynamite now you're not an E.W. fan. How much E.W. have you watched in this, in its existence? Um, probably still less than 10 episodes over all I before, let's see, not counting all in. I watched whatever their first pay per view was before they had the TV show. I want to say it was all out, um, and I, I very much liked a lot of what I saw, especially Cody versus Dustin and I gave the first episode of Dynamite a shot and it turned me off so much that I just decided to stick with what I was already watching, but I've, I've kept up via podcasts and whatnot and occasionally over the years I've been asked on sort of a catch all podcast that I feel the responsibility to watch AEW and Rampage from that week and I guess now there's collision, but it's been, it's been long enough since I've watched anything that like I never saw anything that CM Punk did on there. I've never until, until today seen any, uh, Mercedes Monet almost called her Sasha Banks on there. Um, yeah, I, I, there are some promotions like with TNA that I accused it of just being too much wrestling, like I would like to watch TNA and I, and when I do, I enjoy it and I appreciate what it, what it's putting out there, but it's just too much on the plate. Uh, AEW, I have a lot of other issues with. So you're a big WWE fan grew up on WWE, obviously, were you back in the day at WCW? You know, I, I never was, um, and, and this episode has not aired yet, but recently on eight years back, Kelly and I were talking about the passing of Psycho Sid and because a lot of his career was in WCW, like I had to toe the line of being like, well, I want to be respectful of the, the person who just passed, but also I really don't have much to say about this guy. Um, you know, as, as WCW things have been grandfathered into WWE, I'm aware of them, but even when I've gone back to try to be a completist and watch what they put out there, I still, I still wasn't that big of a fan. Uh, I've just, I've just always been on the, uh, the WWE side of things as, as, from the fan perspective. Yeah, and I bring that up because AEW really feels like the spiritual successor to WCW. Not just because it's, uh, the new number two promotion, not just because we've got Tony Shivani and Jericho and Sting, but I watched Dynamite and just do something about the me, maybe it's the lighting. I don't know. There's something about the mood of it feels like Nitro to me and I say this because I've been watching a lot of old, I've been working my way through all of them at a night war. I've been watching every episode of Ron Nitro and a lot of just like the lighting, like it feels cooler. It feels, I don't mean like hip, I mean like, like bluish, gray, steel kind of colors, whereas we have always feels brighter. Yes. I, the gray in particular stands out to me. Uh, I, I do get that when I tune in. Now, I, I watch all the paper use. I read the results week to week. I don't watch any weekly TV shows. I just don't have the time in my life. So this episode this week is a real experiment for me too because I don't usually watch weekly NXT or impact or dynamite and I watched them in order. So I'm watching dynamite the night after NXT where NXT had four women's matches, a W dynamite had one women's match, it went three minutes to our show, three minutes of women's wrestling. Yeah. With, with the WWE side of things that I'm much more familiar with, like, I, I stopped counting a long time ago because it has started, it started to feel several years ago, basically the equivalent, uh, at least fair. It was not a top concern how much time the women were getting anymore, uh, as of a handful of years ago. Before we get into, into the one match and the other women who appeared on this episode, your overall thoughts on the production, the presentation, the vibes of the show, how it compares to other wrestling shows or like your personal tastes. The interesting question, um, I'll try to give the short version when I've tuned in in the past and to be clear, whether or not I succeed in any given moment, I do try to go into these with an open mind. I, I have very, I have very strong philosophical disagreements with AEW's approach to what they call wrestling to the point where I almost consider what they do a different genre of entertainment, um, that is, that is not based in what pro wrestling has been for so long and what I feel should be. Um, but I, but I do try to go in with an open mind because the fact is that no matter how any podcast I listen to, I'm not watching the product myself to decide for myself. And in the past, I've felt that the production side of things, it's, it's succeeded in trying to come off like it's a big deal. It's at least swinging in the direction of looking like this is a true competitor. This should be on national TV. This is something that should be considered major league, but there are just so many production hiccups that it's, it's, it's kind of embarrassing and it kind of feels like, all right, either you have people who don't know what they're doing or you have people who do and you don't know how to run the company and connect all of these dots. And I, both things are probably true depending on which specific area you're looking at. This particular episode that we watched, I was more impressed than I've ever been with what I've seen anecdotally from AEW's production value. I thought it was a better looking show. I thought the graphics were improved. Uh, last, last time I watched an episode, they were all red, white and blue and doing this very patriotic thing. And they're kind of back to the rainbow now, but it's not like powder explosions everywhere. It's more confined. The, the, the graphics on the Tron look more top notch, the, the camera angles and everything. It wasn't distracting. I never, I was able to, as much as an AEW show can, I guess, immerse myself in watching a wrestling program without thinking too, too much about, oh boy, they're messing this up. They make that edit or why is the sound so off here. However, this is the first time that I've watched the show and I've, I've personally felt this way for a long time, uh, just based on my perception of the company and what I understand about it. But this is the first time I've actually watched the show and felt this is not big time. This is not major league. They, the, the crowd appeared full, whether it was a reshuffling of where audience members were sitting or whether it was a late arriving crowd, I don't know, but in the opening segment, so few people were there and in the wide shot and, you know, they strategically shot the crowd throughout, but in the wide shot we got at the beginning, there were so many empty seats and it just felt like formerly famous people were and, and former indie performers were performing for a very, very small crowd. And I personally think that, that the commentary is awful. So you've got that soundtrack of, of just obnoxious commentary that I just, the tone is all off in my opinion, um, and some of their observations just, I don't know, that's a different can of worms, um, but yeah, I don't know, just this, this time was the first time that I felt, okay, yeah, there's the proof in the pudding that this kind of, there was a point where we wrestling journalists eventually like quietly agreed to not keep considering TNA among the headlines. It was like, oh, okay, we all know it's still there, but we're not really going to talk about it anymore. And part of me isn't really sure why that hasn't happened with AEW yet because it feels like the kind of promotion that it should have happened with, um, just, just from watching it, but I don't know, I guess, I guess it still gets the clicks on the articles and the headlines. So maybe there's still just enough big names that are accepting big paychecks to be there that it, it still is relevant in wrestling media, but it, it felt like a small time show. This being Gordon glitter, we'll try to focus mostly on the women stuff on the show, but our opening segment actually kind of circled back around to being women's relevant later on in a, oh, true, in a surprising move. So we open with John Moxie making his way through the crowd. That's how he always enters. He hasn't been around in at least two months. He was ever on injury. He wasn't at the pay per view to celebrate with Brian Danielson when he won the title, even though they're in the same stable together and people thought that was weird at the time. He comes out here alone, they say it's on, this wasn't the plan as the opening segment. Shivani meets him in the ring to ask him what's happening. He addresses Darby Allen, says he's not here tonight. We, I think it's time that we talk. We have a lot of things, non-comm, we also have a lot of things in common in some ways. He goes to leave and he comes back quickly, gets in Shivani's face and says, this is not your company anymore and walks off. A lot of question marks, very mysterious. We don't know what any of this really means. He's been part of the Blackpool Combat Club with Daniel Sand, Cesaro, and Willa Yuda, but he wasn't with any of them at the pay per view or here tonight. Later on in the show, we see Moxie again backstage and he says something, or I think somebody else wanted to ask him more questions to get what does all this mean. Marina Shafir shows up, beats up three security guards, and her and Moxie walk off together. Now for you, who doesn't watch weekly, Marina Shafir is like, she hasn't been around a long time, I think she had a baby, she's been slowly picking up a bit of undefeated streak on ROH. Like she's won a bunch of enhancement matches on ROH, but she hasn't had like a real feud or anything yet there and she's never really on a WTV. Heard Moxie have never been associated together in any capacity. So this is like the very first beginning of something, whether it's the two down to partnership, whether it's them trying to rope Darby into some sort of stable and building something new and Moxie leaving the Blackpool Combat Club, his comments to Shavani. Big question mark, don't know what any of this means. But I'm intrigued by the fact that Shafir has been included in this because we've seen so many times in all companies is very rare for like a woman to get invited to be part of a stable or a faction or anything with like a top male wrestler. It may be an empty sentiment because the fact is I'm not going to watch again next week, but I was relatively compelled by her inclusion here. Oddly enough, I recognized her faster than I recognized Mercedes in Mercedes little scene. It's like, oh my gosh, that's Marina. And her just speaking aesthetically, like her hair looked good. She looked, a lot of what we were seeing of her was her back, you know, part of these production quibbles, which I don't know, maybe if I want to be complimentary, it felt a little bit more organic, but I guess I've just gotten so used to the idea of, okay, make sure your hair's not in your face, make sure you're facing it out toward camera, try to do it as naturally as possible. But the fact is, this is a TV show, we need to see who you are. So for a little while, we weren't exactly sure who it was, but man, we got a good look of her back and her back looks very muscular. She probably looks better than she ever has before. And it's TVD, what her role is going to be, I haven't heard, I don't think I've ever heard a single positive review of her ring work since she went to AEW. But I was never down on she and Jasmine Duke in NXT and you and I have spent so many episodes on PWTorch talking about that faction with with Shayna Baszler and how high in particular was on yes, Shayna, but also her cronies. So Jasmine and Marina were learning at her side and I never doubted that they had some kind of future and then I ended up being more or less wrong, at least in terms of WWE. But yeah, no, based on this one segment, it seems promising. AEW's track record of making pushes consistent is certainly not high. Even when one week they're making someone seem like a big deal, it's never a promise that they aren't just going to disappear forever and continue just earning their paycheck on Ring of Honor or sitting at home. But yeah, no, I mean, as optimistic as I can be about something AEW related, I'm optimistic about her inclusion here and as an aside, I thought it was hilarious that John Moxley said pearls before swine and Tony Shivani's reaction on commentary was to say, John Moxley speaking in riddles tonight, not exactly a riddle, but okay, Tony. Our token women's match of the week, Jamie Hader taking on Harley Cameron, Jamie returned at the pay-per-view in a big surprise moment, she was out of action for some like 15 months, various injuries, she had a stroke, I think, like a lot of their points where they weren't sure if she'd ever wrestle again. So she returned at the pay-per-view, big ovation, she's pretty beloved by all demographics. Kay Fabe, she was taken out by a group, a trio of women, Saraya, Formula Noor's page, Ruby Soho, Formula Noor's Ruby Riot, and Tony Storm, always Tony Storm. Now Ruby is off of TV right now because she's pregnant, and Tony is doing her own thing, Tony's a babyface now, so we don't know how that's gonna play out, so Jamie comes back, she sets her sights on Saraya to start to get revenge for them, taking her out of action. Of course, Saraya being the heel says, wrestle my henchman first, Harley Cameron. Harley, there's not much to her, she's 0-7 in AEW, you know, she's Saraya Satgek. And she like takes the beatings that Saraya doesn't want to. Yeah, there really wasn't much to take from Harley Cameron here, she's definitely, you know, just the nature, my nature of how I watch wrestling, I see somebody that I'd never heard of before in Harley Cameron, and I've never watched Jamie Hader work to my memory, but I'm aware of who she is. But my eye goes to, it's why I'm such an NXT fan, my eye goes to the new person to see what I can see from them, and there were basically no takeaways. And even behind her, like during her entrance, Paige is soaking up all the attention, just like putting her arms out to the crowd, and the, sorry, Paige Saraya, it just felt like the segment was so much about Paige, which of course seems like where the storyline is going, so okay. But as a viewer in this particular instance, again, anecdotally, just for me, I was curious about Harley Cameron and got absolutely nothing to go on. Saraya is another one that I have not heard positive reviews about how she's done since going to AEW. I don't, I don't believe I've really seen anything significant that she's done in any of the times that I've tuned in and still, still haven't really, because the one significant thing she did here was getting the ring at the end to confront Hader, but then instead used Cameron as her human shield and walked off. And one awkward production quibble was while Hader is celebrating in the ring, and honestly looking quite good as commentary is talking her up very strong. So that was a positive moment. If you're trying to get her over as an avenging baby face, I think that all of that was a good step in the right direction. And she looks very striking with her gear and her hair and her physique and everything, even if nothing in the match particularly stood out to me. But as she's doing that, you can just see the silhouette of Paige just making her way back to the back through the crowd. And there's no focus on it. She didn't take a different route to be off camera. It was just an awkward little detail that I honed in on. Our next women's sighting on this show, we go backstage. AEW women's television champion, Mercedes Monet, she retained the title at the pay-per-view over Brit Baker. She is with her bodyguard Camille. They're celebrating in one of the back rooms hanging out. The take team private parties show up. Their whole shtick is that they're always throwing private parties themselves. Hey, it was a party. Why weren't we invited? They hit on Mercedes a bit because they've heard that she's getting divorced. That's true. And they hit on her and she's basically disgusted at how dare you. Kazushka. And rightly so because they specifically said, "Oh, you would look good on top of me." And then Kazushka Okada shows up because he's just living his goofy, not serious life right now. He's just happy to not be the workhorse in New Japan anymore to just have fun and call people bitches. That's his thing now. Yeah. He's having a good time. He shows up and they insult private party and they walk off. That's it. There's nothing to this segment. If you hated this, I get it. And it was literally just like, "Let's remind people that Mercedes is still here and that she stole the champ." Yeah. And yes, I thought this was awful. And it's not really AEW's fault. Almost all wrestling no matter what company it is, all wrestling parties don't really feel like parties. And this segment goes off the air with Sasha being the only, sorry, Mercedes, being the only person who is audibly chanting her own nickname. It just seems very pathetic. I didn't think, I have nothing really against private party from what I know of them, but even they were not good in this segment. And they were the best part of it, I thought, because they at least brought some life to what was supposed to be perceived as a party. And then just the most embarrassing part of maybe the entire episode, Mercedes has never been a great promo and she's always had some odd vernacular, but she spent some time in Japan and you don't have to have spent some time in Japan to know how to say goodbye in Japanese. But the jokey joke of the segment is that she asks Okada, "How do I say goodbye, bitches, in Japanese?", he whispers to her. And then she mispronounces it and she says, "Sara Nara". Very typical of Mercedes, but just yikes. She's still the same person she always was, I just, I've tried over the years to be a fan of hers and sometimes I have been quite a bit and she makes it hard. I've been pretty sour on her lately and as you know from listening to it, Kelly Wells and I recently extensively covered her NXT run and I was always trying to see Sasha Banks's side of things and very often just ending up being like, I don't know, it's a good thing she's a bump machine because the rest of this doesn't really work. Our last women's segment on the show is supposed to be the championship celebration for new AEW women's champion, Mariah Meish, defeated Tony Storm at the pay-per-view, she's the new women's champ. She comes out, she says, this is just like heel 101, she comes out, she says I'm not going to do it in this town because this town sucks, but I will let you take a quick look at me wearing the championship, feast your eyes, enjoy it, that's it, I'm gone. And she walks off. Again not a lot to it, I think the idea is just get her on TV to acknowledge that she won the championship, we maybe don't have time, there's so many titles in this company. We don't have time for every champion to get like a meaningful long segment. I also think we have another pay-per-view coming up in a week and a half, I think she's not going to be resting on that one presumably. So I'm thinking maybe next week she teases again, now we'll do the championship celebration, she doesn't. And then the week after once that pay-per-view is done and over with, then she can officially finally do her celebration. And at that point, be interrupted by somebody by this Tony Storm or somebody new and then start the ball along with her next feud, but don't want to start doing that right now while we've got another show to promote first. Sure, in theory I like and agree with that formula and even though you hit the nail on the head, this was heel 101 and as somebody who was getting their first impression of Mariah May here, I didn't really get much to go on. I cannot accuse this segment of being poor because it's teasing out for something in the future. So at least she got a moment on the show in front of the crowd and it was fine for what it was. So as I said off air, my idea with this experiment this week, getting three people to watch episode weekly TV from a show they normally don't, was to pick a random episode because it's easy to say like, let's watch all in and whatever the fashion Berlin, whatever the next WWE paper view is, sure. And the next DNA paper view and compare those three paper views, but weekly TV is really more of an accurate perception, especially a random week of TV where we're not building to a specific big match. This was a random episode that we chose just happened to be this week and this is what we were given, you know, a three minute match that was just an enhancement match to show off the new vessel returning to very brief sightings of our champions. Here they are. They're still champions. That was kind of it, you know? As somebody who actually likes a lot of what AEW does and likes it more than WWE or TNA, you know, there's a little part of me that's like, god damn it, guys, you embarrassed me in front of my friend Tom, like Will and Aiden Gale is fantastic. She's so good and she's such a like, she's like, she's like the classic Bayley and that she's like such a pure wholesome baby face and everybody loves her and she's so great but she's also not push over. She's really tough too. And I think in a lot of circumstances you would like her and like, this is all you got to see from her this week was this, but you got to see Saraya and you got to see Mercedes Monet like saying Sienara and it's like, it's disappointing, but hey, maybe we can do this again in another two years. Yeah. Hey, you know what? And I'll probably say yes and Tony will probably still be paying the bills no matter what the ratings are and how few people are showing up assuming that trend continues. There seems to be an issue of roster bloat all over the company, but especially when, like I take your word for it and in certain specific cases agree that there is some great talent in that division. But when they're given so little TV time, I mean, it's not even surprising what little we got on the show. And I mean, I guess I'm even pleasantly surprised to be reminded that there were technically four segments that included women because until you mentioned it, I completely forgot about them or I am a thing. So they're there, but this certainly wasn't the episode showcasing it. All right. Well, thank you for bearing through with us and where can people find you and support you online? Yes. This might not be the segment to get this over, but the main place that I've been interacting online lately engaging with, I should say, is my YouTube channel, which just you just Google my name, Tom Staupe. And I've been posting just like silly video game clips and whatnot. So that's probably the best way there. But, you know, every week, Kelly Wells and I have NXT eight years back coming out right now, eight years ago, Shinsuke Nakamura has just become champion, Asuka is continuing her reign of dominance. I believe if I look at the calendar, she's not quite halfway through it. Ember Moon just debuted and, you know, a lot of what we look back on, we have rose tinted glasses and we see that like hell, I kind of love Sasha Banks's NXT run and reliving it. I had some different things to say, but there's a lot of stuff that we love as well just being so dedicated to that developmental brand as we are and I know you are as well. So yeah, those, I guess, would be the two things and yes, I do still find ways to make my little side elbow jabs over at AEW since it's just a, if I may use the word and this episode reproved it to me, particularly with that hangman, Yishi, match, and with Daniel Bryan or with Brian Danielson's celebratory words after his championship win, it's just still very much a masturbatory promotion that sets aside psychology in favor of popping the crowd in circus-like fashion with not just little regard for potential injury, but celebration of working through injury as evidenced with Brian Danielson's like, "Hey, I need neck surgery, but I'm not going out easy, I'm going to keep on wrestling," I mean, come on man, you got to make the next town, that's how I serve. Okay, my final guest of the week is returning to the show. Last time she was here was the way back in May to talk about the debut show from Merigold. This week she is here because I made her watch TNA, Impact, please welcome back Adriana. Hi, thank you for having me back. Yes, thank you for returning to the show. This is an exciting week. You watch a lot of wrestling. Yeah, I do. You watch WWE, you watch AEW, you watch Merigold, you watch Stardom, and the others. And Noah and New Japan and DDT and all Japan were wrestling, that's a lot, now that I say that loud. But not TNA. Not TNA. Why? That, okay, I did watch it before when Trinity was in there, because I loved TNA and I wanted to follow her there, but after she left, that kind of just died down because she was like the main reason I was watching. And just when I was watching for her, it was mainly just for her, I never really stuck to any other parts of the show. Yeah, I don't watch TNA week to week. Whenever I check in, I'm like, "The knockout's division is good, but they don't get enough screentime for my liking." And it feels small. Whenever I watch TNA, it feels like there's eight people in the knockout's division and that's it. If you watch NXT, there's like 15 women in the first half hour. Yeah. That's my one thing, and then the men's division is like, it's cringy. That's my thing. I tune in, I'm like, "You're kidding me, like Moose is the world champion?" Still, he's not anymore. Whenever I tune in, I'm like, "Oh, it's the top men stars in AEW or like, Fondongo and PCO and the Hardy Boys in 2024." And I'm like, "What are we doing?" Yeah. I was like, "Okay, cool, Nick Nemo's champion, that's awesome. Great." Yeah, I've seen him be Intercontinental Champion 12 times and I'm kind of over it. Yeah. So that's why you don't watch TNA usually. This week you did. What were your initial thoughts on just, did you watch the whole episode? Did you just watch the women's stuff? I did. I skimmed through the whole episode, like I'm getting attention to the women's. Yeah. So what were your initial, like sort of overall thoughts on just the show as a whole, like on the presentation, on how it looks compared to other things you watch, how it was formatted, commentary? Yeah, I appreciated that they advertised the women so much, like they were like always saying like, "This is coming up, this is coming up so I like that." But the overall feel of the show, it just isn't from me, it feels very much like something smaller and that's fine, but I just don't vibe with it, I just don't vibe with like the people on it as well, like, I don't know what to compare it to, but it's just a very very, like, it's like NXT, but not like NXT, but it's like the feeling like overall, like how many people are there, like that kind of vibe. So it's just, I don't know, I just prefer something bigger. The pacing of it was actually, it was, um, it's hard because like I said, like the men I'm just not vibe with them, they all look the same to me, they all kind of have the same character and it was like, okay, cool, so, because like the system, I cannot tell you those two men apart, like they're just kind of all blended and they're kind of all are just a guy, so it's kind of, yeah, not for me. Yeah, I don't watch Impact week to week, I watch the paper views, but I read the results every week and I will say this episode was kind of typical of like a weekly episode of Impact in that most weeks I think there's still only one women's match. Maybe once in a while there'll be two, but usually it's just the one women's match and maybe some sort of other backstage segment, and that was the case this week. The women happen to get the main event slot this week, which was nice, but typical, typically like, yeah, in a two hour show, the women might get about 15 minutes and that's about it. Yeah, it's about the same for like other, like, those on there, like WBEs, Raw and SmackDown, you'll kind of expect there'll be like a one women's match, maybe some backstage segments, AW, kind of like the one women's match, NXT actually like does a lot of women's segments in matches, so I'm not the biggest fan of NXT, but I will give them that that the women's division is always highlighted and there's so many like interesting and like unique characters in our show case, so I really enjoy that about NXT. So there really wasn't much to talk about on this episode other than the main event because I think other than the main event, which was for the Knockouts title, we had a brief interview with Jordan Grace Scurry on the show where she didn't really say anything interesting about it was just like, yeah, I'm looking forward to the match, I don't know what this is, but I'll win anyway, that was kind of it. So the main event is Jordan Grace versus Ash by Elegance, the former Dana Brooke in a match by Elegance and the joke that they're making is like we don't know what that is, what's a match by Elegance, we have no idea, then it comes match time it turns out it's just false count anywhere, false count, oh, sorry, not just false count anywhere, but all the weapons are pink and fluffy, so that's something I guess, yeah, my co-host Emma has complained about Ash in the past saying that like she's not, it's not comedic enough or not like over the top enough, she plays it too straight, because it's still a little bit of like, well, what is this character, she's like, she's kind of like a model, kind of like a perfume model with like the name, but then we don't really know too much about her other than she has this guy, the concierge and he like stands around and talks to interfere sometimes, we still, still this far into Ash's TNA run, we still don't really know a lot about her. And this was her return match so she challenged for the first time at the last pay-per-view Jordan won clean and now we're back here doing this rematch, presumably the last time before they go to separate ways. As you said, like, they hyped this up throughout the show, they kept mentioning, we got the title match coming up later, we got the interview with Jordan, we got backstage, we saw the concierge talking to our Tate team champions, Moshe's name revision, Alicia Edwards, plotting something. So we did build nicely to this match and then the match starts and we immediately went to picture-in-picture commercial. Yep, that was so, that was so weird to me. I'm like, this is your main event, the second the match starts that goes commercial break and I don't know about you, but when any company, as soon as they go to picture-in-picture, I just tune out. I do too. I'm not watching that messing on the little white side of the screen, I'm just like, oh pizza commercial, I'll stare at my phone. Yeah, because I'm so accustomed to like, there's sometimes not being picture-in-picture, so I'm just like, okay, commercial time, phone time, but then it's there, but it's like it's so small, it's like I cannot focus on both things at once, but it's weird. And it felt so disrespectful to like, your women's championship in your main event, that you couldn't have done this during one of the other matches. I think they think it's like, I think they think it's a good thing, like hey, we're not going to just commercial, we're going to picture-in-picture, that's a step up, you get to see part of the match, but I don't know, it feels insulting to me. Yeah, I don't really, I don't really get it. I just think a lot of companies are kind of struggling with balancing, like when to go to commercial, when to not, like, smack down especially, it's just commercial, a little bit of the match, and then mostly commercial, and then you'll like maybe see like the last 30 seconds. Yeah, and it's like, I do, I watch these wrestling shows because I like wrestling, I want to see the wrestling, especially when it's the main event, and it's like a weapons match, and it's for the title, like half the match is behind commercials, and we come out of commercial though, the match is already like, there's weapons everywhere, they're really getting into it, we get a table set up at ringside, concierge helps set up a tablecloth on it, we've got, well, what weapons do we have in this match? We had the pink chairs. Yeah. Oh, we had a pink head, those stick. They put out like some diamonds or something? Oh yeah, fake cubic zuconia diamonds instead of like, that's, that's a little fun. Like that's the, that's the kind of like goofy wrestling energy that I like. It was camp, it was cute, I liked the cute little pink stuff, because I love pink stuff, I'm very girly, so seeing that, I was like, okay, I like it. And we build to the concierge, wants to get involved, he thinks about, he gets in the ring, he's about to do something, Rosemary shows up, Rosemary's been kind of stalking Ash by Algens lately, so she shows up and he just gets scared, she kind of like, runs off after him. Then we get the Tay Team champions, the militia, they come in, they interfere, then we get their challengers, Spitfire, which is Danny Luna and Joey Threat, they show up and they chase away them, and actually two nights or one night after this, they had a TNA+ streaming service event where we had a six-woman tag with Ash and the militia teaming up against Jordan and Spitfire, so it was a little bit of a preview of that as well, having these teams involved here. But does that take away from this big title match? You know, the match only went 11 and a half minutes, we had outside interference from six people and we had a commercial break. Yeah, I was kind of like, this feels like, it feels like the pay for me match, so to know that like, actually, on my emergence, it's going to be those six women's in a tag match, I was kind of confused, a little bit confused while that was on there and this was on this, but it was cool to see that many women being like, in a segment, but also it's like, this is like, the women's world championship, the knockout championship match. Y'all couldn't have saved this for something else or something. Another thing we've talked about lately with Jordan Grace, especially this year with her being in the War of Wumble and wrestling on NXT, is she just feels like she's at a completely different level than every other woman in TNA. Like, nobody feels like they can be incredibly beat Jordan and I kind of felt that way, I especially felt that way coming out of this one as well because it's like, Ash is the closest thing she has to her rival in this company. This is a match the Ash chose, Jordan didn't even know what the rules were until she showed up. Jordan gets hit over the head with a champagne bottle, kicks out, she's hidden to have the title belt, she kicks out, it's like, I don't know, at that point I was like, this is overkill and this is where you risk you risk people like me turning on Jordan because she's just like, it's too much. Yeah, I feel, I was feeling that way too, because I don't watch, you know, TNA, I don't keep up with that, but it did feel like, it's just like, who else is it for Jordan to have? Because like, I didn't see any other woman who I recognize that would be credible enough to face her. So, I don't know, it's just, I feel like Ash probably is the closest thing to like, someone who could beat her and have it, you don't have to do it like, cleanly. It could always, because like, for her character, it could do some shenanigans, but it just does feel like Jordan's kind of not, not to peek, but it just feels like, what's next for her? Like, who else can face her? Yeah, I don't know if they have like a big surprise in store, because they're, we're coming up for like, a month and a half away from TNA's biggest paper of the year. Their WrestleMania is coming up in October, I think, and you know, we, yeah, we saw like a bunch of women's segment, but it's clear that we're gonna be moving into an Ash versus Rosemary Feud now. And the other four women are in take matches with each other. No other women were featured on this episode of TV. It's like, it's not like there was another woman who's like, one enhancement match, or who got like a video package. Like, nobody else was even presented. And like I said, Jordan just like, smash a, smash a bottle over my head. That's not enough. Hit me with a title belt. That's not enough. Nothing's gonna put me away. And she gives Ash a muscle buster through her table for the pin. Yeah, I don't know who they could, it's like, I'm thinking of like, the woman I do know who are on TNA. It's like, none of them, I can see facing her at that. I think you said some of our show. I think that's her biggest one. I think that's what Gloria is next. Oh, okay, no, I'm not sorry. No, I just can't, I just can't think of anyone, like, the book said I saw her like featured in the package. Can't, I don't think that's happening. It's just, oh, unless they're bringing like an NXT girl, because I know they've been like, partnering and like doing things together. So maybe that's what they're heading for. Yeah, that's the only pitch I've heard at this point. My, my co-host made a pointed out that Jordan's undefeated in TNA this year, but she does have one loss in NXT. She lost to Roxanne Perez on NXT. So Roxy coming in and challenging Jordan saying like, you know, I be you from my title and I want to be you for your title. That's kind of the only thing that makes sense at this point, because nobody else in TNA feels on Jordan's level, which is not great for the TNA, not God's division, that they all feel like that we, the fans are feeling like the only way this paper will be good is if they bring a WWE person in because nobody in TNA is interesting. Yeah, I just, when I did watch her Trinity, I feel like the women's division was a little better. I don't know what it was, but maybe it was just the idea of seeing Trinity like wrestling all these new faces. But now I just, from what I've seen, it's not enough to make me like even like interested enough to like check in on the results. So I really don't know what the disconnect is between what happened because like, Jordan's cool. I do like Jordan Jordan's pretty sick. She's really based, but it's just, it's just her, like the division just feels like it's just her. And I don't know what else she can do at this point. We definitely, we lost a couple people, like we lost Trinity and she wasn't really replaced. Like Ash came in a little while later, but they're not on the same level. Sorry, sorry, Dana. And we lost Killer Kelly at the same time. And I think we might have lost somebody else as well. And then maybe even most importantly, backstage we lost Scott DeMoor, who is like the head of the company. He's gone. And now it feels like T&H is just being run by this organization by Anthem Sports and not by like anybody with wrestling history. And I think the women's division has really suffered because of that. But we've noticed this year since that the women like aren't as compelling anymore and that they're not getting as many like cool stories and like cool moments and stuff. That sucks. Cause I feel like a big part of like T&A and like some of the pros like of it was people like at least their women's division is getting time and getting like energy and getting matches. And it doesn't feel that way from what I've seen. It doesn't feel that way anymore. Cause like Trinity, when I was watching then, it felt like she was always on the show and there was always something happening. But this kind of just like, I feel like Ash and Jordan from what I've seen on like the internet and stuff. They've been at it for like a while. Cause I remember Ash popped up on this NXT show. I don't remember which one. So I think they've been at it for a while. Yeah, this episode felt like the end of that feud. Ash is going to go feud with Rosemary now. What's next for Jordan? We don't know. And it sounds like, you know, for you, you're not interested enough to tune in next week and find out. I love Jordan too, which I think he's had. Cause this is kind of awful to say. But part of me just wishes she kind of like, go to WWE already. Cause I do like her. But I don't, it's what, where she is right now, it's not interesting enough for me to go watch just for her. That makes sense because it's like, I don't, there's nothing over there for her to be. And that's going to be compelling for me to watch. So I'd rather just her go somewhere else, maybe. So that's kind of where I'm out with that. It seems like it's just a matter of time. I don't know when her contract it runs out, but it seems inevitable. Yeah, I think so too. Okay, well, I think that's, that's all we have to say about the show. Cause like I said, one, one, one is match and that was the show. Yep. So Adriana, where can people find you and follow you online? You can all follow me on Twitter slash X at cosmic Adri underscore. I have a wrestling blog where I like to write about wrestling, mostly women's stuff and Joshy stuff. So you can check my stuff out there. That is our show. Thank you to Adriana, Tom and Mayday for being with us. I'm sorry that I made you watch these shows that you did not like. But hey, how do you know, how do you know whether or not you're going to like something unless you give this shot? They gave it a shot. It was not for them. That's fair. Everybody's got different tastes. With that, that is a wrap on a season 12 of Great and Glitter. Thank you to them. Thank you to Em and the rest of the Glitter Roddy for carrying us here through to another season. You can support us on Twitter, Instagram at greekglitterpod. You can find us on patreon, patreon.com/gritglitterpod. If you support us on patreon, you get weekly news that are written by your friends in the Glitter Roddy. You get archived episodes of this podcast going back to season 4, season 5, old episodes not available anywhere else. And there's a hell of a lot of gems in there. You'll get bonus patreon podcasts. Me and Nate James have a podcast called Women's Interesting Entertainment. We're watching old episodes of Raw and Nitro and Trace in the History of Women and WWE and WCW through the 90s and into the present day, eventually, maybe someday. That's all up there on the patreon for you, our dear beloved listeners. Next week here in free, free bevel, land of the free, it is the season 13 premiere of Great and Glitter. Next week on the show are listeners choice special. Our friends over on the patreon, our supporters have chosen matches that they want us to watch and talk about from various eras, various promotions, just some women's wrestling matches they love. They asked us to watch. We were watching them, we were talking about them. Next week here on the show, me, Emphyr, and two new Glitter Roddy members. Next week on the show, the debut of two brand new Glitter Roddy members for the season 13 premiere and the five year anniversary of Grit and Glitter. [BLANK_AUDIO]
