Finn Balor Joining New Bullet Club?! MAJOR WWE Heel Turn LEAKED?! | WrestleTalk News Nov. 2019

Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk Super News – I’m Oli Davis. And thanks to Luke for sending in that bumper at the start of the episode all the way from his holiday in Japan. He’ll be back on Monday to review AEW Full Ge-IF HE ISN’T EATEN BY THAT GODZILLA IN THE BACKGROUND. RUN, LUKE! RUUUN! 

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Despite slaying the Beast Brock Lesnar to win the Universal Championship twice and getting engaged IRL to Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch, Seth Rollins hasn’t had the best 2019. It started with an awkward storyline back in June putting Rollins and Lynch together as a power couple act against Baron Corbin and Lacey Evans, and culminated in a large portion of the crowd fully turning on him during his feud with Bray Wyatt’s Fiend – where Rollins once cried in the ring from terror, not historically the most brave babyface of traits, and then beat Wyatt at Hell in a Cell in one of the most negatively received WWE finishes of all time, when most fans just wanted to see The Fiend win.

And also, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, sometimes shoots imitate works, brother, as Rollins consistently came across as rah-rather unlikeable on social media, tweeting about his bank account balance to Will Ospreay. Seth Rollins was no longer cool.

According to Fightful Select, though, WWE might have plans to fix just that.

Following Seth’s Hell in a Cell win over The Fiend at the start of October, Dave Meltzer reported that WWE had absolutely no plans to turn Rollins heel, despite all the obvious opportunities to do so. Well it appears something must have changed in the weeks that followed, as Sean Ross Sapp has revealed original plans for Crown Jewel had Seth turning heel on Wyatt:

“We’re told that a follow up match for Saudi Arabia was always planned for Seth Rollins and The Fiend, but originally Saudi Arabia was supposed to be their last one, with a double turn planned.” 

We don’t currently know who is next planned to face the Fiend for the Universal title – and it’s probably not The Miz, who’s being advertised to face ‘El Demonio’ Bray Wyatt at the 30th November WWE live show in Mexico. But with WWE Champion Brock Lesnar set to take on Rey Mysterio at Survivor Series, you’d imagine the Fiend will either be facing NXT Champion Adam Cole to fit in with the ‘brand split champion vs champion’ themes of previous years, or to simply revive his story with Rollins – who he’s been facing, and beating, in the dark match for Monday’s Raw, and at house shows since his win.

In that case, perhaps WWE have moved their double turn plans from Crown Jewel to a potential Seth vs Bray at Survivor Series to have a major angle on the show, especially with Triple H trying to persuade Rollins to turn to the black and gold side on this week’s Raw, tempting him to rejoin NXT. 

Random Halloween picture of Kevin Hart dressed as The Rock from the late 90s segway! 

Seth’s RahRah-gate has rahrather overshadowed the real story of WWE’s travel issues in Saudi Arabia, which came with reports from the Wrestling Observer that there were disputes over money between the country and WWE. The company blamed ‘mechanical issues’ with their  plane for the majority of the crew and wrestlers being stuck in Saudi – Stuck In Saudi, by the way, should totally be the name of their next pay-per-view there! – and reportedly reiterated that at the talent meeting before Monday’s Raw. Apparently some wrestlers still don’t believe that version of events, asking why they couldn’t have just been put on another plane, but Corey Graves sure does on WWE’s only official podcast After The Bell which I’m sure has no agenda at all.

“Long story short, speaking from personal experience; we got on the plane, in our seats and ready to takeoff, the flight crew took our food orders, there was confusion regarding the pilots, there was some sort of mechanical issue, they shut the plane down, restarted it. In the time it took to get this done, the flight crew had timed out and we were informed that we would not be taking off. They deplaned everybody, management came around and said, ‘If we can get a group of you guys to SmackDown, would you be willing to do it?’ This is where it comes down to being a professional… What it boiled down to was, the people that were advertised for SmackDown. It had nothing to do with who was more important or who had the most cache.”

Which totally makes sense with the second chartered flight that took off with those advertised for the following day’s SmackDown on a plane that just missed the start of the show. In the wrestlers who took against that version of events though, I think it was more at the wording of WWE’s public statement on the day that said: “several Superstars felt so strongly that they arranged for their own separate charter in order to make it back to the US for the show” – implying publicly that those that didn’t charter a flight didn’t care enough. And, as Corey’s comments suggest, it was WWE management that arranged that flight, not the ‘Superstars’ themselves.

The other criticism was how Vince McMahon left the country soon after the show on his private jet. Corey explained how that situation has been misinterpreted:

“What really got to me was when the rumors started coming out. The first one being, that Vince left everybody in Saudi Arabia. That’s not true. If you work here, you know that every week, no matter where we are, as soon as the final bell rings, Vince gets on his jet and goes home or to the next city because the guy is busy running WWE… Vince did exactly what he has done every week, without fail.”

That reminds me, I’ve got to get on my private jet to do the AEW live review. Hot tag to you Chopper!

Thanks Oli. We’re still trying to figure out our Thursday format, what with all that wrestling to cover, so it’s now time for Your Weekly Rundown of NXT & AEW…Headlines…News? I’ll come up with a better title. Maybe.

It goes without saying, spoilers for both AEW and NXT! I’ll be going through AEW first, and then NXT, so if you want to avoid spoilers for any one particular but want to hear about the other, press the timestamps in the video description below!

Firstly, let’s take a look at AEW, who had their go-home show for Full Gear this week, and what a go-home show it was. The episode ended a big brawl, furthering relationships between characters and feuds heading into this weekend’s show. Speaking of which, Laurie and I will be doing live reactions for Full Gear on Saturday, so stay tuned to WrestleTalk for that!

One of the biggest talking points coming out of the show was Cody’s promo that he made mid-way through the night. Advertised as a “career announcement”, it did not disappoint, as he added yet another stipulation onto his AEW World Championship match against Chris Jericho, stating that if he couldn’t beat Jericho, he would never challenge for the AEW World Title again.

This came off the back of an incredible promo from Cody, running down all the insults Jericho has given upon him and firing them back, before going into a passionate rage and listing off the things that make this title match important. Their match on Saturday feels like one of the biggest matches going right now, and this promo only elevated that further.

It seems this is a common opinion, as Jim Cornette took to Twitter to praise Cody’s promo.

“The promo @CodyRhodes just cut on @AEWrestling is the modern version of his Dad’s “Hard Times” promo. To quote the Dream, “That’s how you do it, kid”.”

Being compared to one of the greatest promos of all time? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Elsewhere on the show, Private Party managed to take the bronze medal in the Tag Team Tournament, and as such were added to an AEW Tag Team Title match at Full Gear against SCU and The Lucha Bros.

There was also confirmation of Joey Janela vs Shawn Spears at Full Gear, which makes Full Gear an 8-match card, culminating with Jericho vs Cody for the AEW title, and Omega vs Moxley in an unsanctioned match.

But which of those two matches will close out the show on Saturday? Well according to Dave Meltzer on Twitter, the Lights Out match between Moxley and Omega will close the show to play into the “lights out” stipulation as the rest of the show must take place before it. This is one of the rare occasions where it makes more sense to not have your main title close the show.

Now let’s flip on over to NXT, and after NXT invaded both Raw and SmackDown this week, there were probably some repercussions, right? Those repercussions came in the form of The OC, who came out and targeted the Undisputed Era, before instigating a verbal war with Tommaso Ciampa, which led to the announcement of the main event that evening: Tommaso Ciampa, Matt Riddle & Keith Lee vs The OC.

Said main event was a great match, which is just shocking considering the talent competing in the match. There was never a finish to this match however, as it all came to a head following a ref bump.

Finn Balor came down when it looked like Ciampa was going to get the victory over Styles. Balor hit the 1916 on to Matt Riddle on the outside, while the distraction allowed Styles to hit a Pele kick to Ciampa. The two stared each other down, before Styles raised a too sweet, and Balor raised his finger guns. This then led to Adam Cole coming out, Superkicking Styles, before also hitting a Last Shot on to Ciampa. Everyone hates everyone and I love it.

What does this mean for Balor? Is there some sort of reunion in place, despite Styles and Balor never being in Bullet Club at the same time, or was this merely a mutual sign of respect? AJ certainly seemed interested in Balor’s heel turn, tweeting “well well well” in response to it when it first happened. Finn joining The OC? Probably not, but maybe they start their own version of Bullet Club, where Finn reigns supreme down in NXT while The OC rule the main roster. I’d like that.

Also on the show it was officially announced that the men’s War Games match is taking place, and it will be Undisputed Era vs Tommaso Ciampa, Matt Riddle, Keith Lee and an unannounced fourth member. You’d think that would be Johnny Gargano, but he very well may be caught up in a singles match with Balor at the show.

And finally it was announced that Dakota Kai missed out on her spot in the women’s war games match, with the fourth spot instead going to Mia Yim. This seems like an odd decision, but perhaps could be leading to something greater down the line with Kai. There’s one spot left on Shayna Baszler’s team, and neither of the horsewomen have been picked yet…what if Baszler picks Dakota Kai?

Before we end today, we’ve got a new signee for Crap Gimmick Wrestling, which is a segment in which you guys send in your crap gimmicks and we “sign” the best worst gimmicks to Crap Gimmick Wrestling. Today we’ve got another piece of awesome artwork from Lewis Tillett, so welcome to CGW, The Orange.

The Orange is the leader of a stable called Gluten3, and has his own talk show “segment” called The Highlight Peel. Orange runs roughshod over CGW, hitting his patented finisher, the Vitamin CDT, and captures the hearts of minds of the CGW Universe with his signature catchphrase: “juicy”. Thank you and congratulations to Joel Bevan for sending that crap gimmick into us! The Orange is All Crap!

 

Follow Crap Gimmicks on Twitter and support Lewis on Patreon by pressing the CGW link in the description below, and if you want to find out about Randy Orton’s future, it’s been confirmed, so press the video to the right, and press the one below that to find out more about a backstage showdown that’s happened within WWE. I’ve been Chopper Pete Quinnell, and that, was wrestling.

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