Category: wrestlingobservernewsletterhalloffame

AEW’s got their whiskey, they got their wine, this time the lights are goin’ out

May 17, 2023
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The constant chatter, if not outright yelling over, and study of TV ratings for both AEW, and WWE has long passed the threshold of being an annoyance. But AEW fans couldn’t help but occasionally peek to see how Dynamite and Rampage were doing, if only to assure themselves that the company was doing well enough to stick around. While it’s been a pretty poorly kept secret (most everything in wrestling is), Wednesday’s announcement of a new two-hour show on Saturday nights on TNT called Collision can send everyone’s nerves to the hammock for a while.

The new show will give AEW the exact same amount of airtime that WWE gets, five hours, though Rampage will now be officially a B-level show for mid-card stories, and below, which it kind of unofficially has been for a while. This is why we saw a couple returning talents last week in Miro and Thunder Rosa, and will continue to see more, including one CM Punk before too long. AEW has more slots to fill.

While there had been talk of a brand split, mostly to keep The Elite away from Punk, and vice versa, the buzz today is that there will be than first thought, though those carrying various titles will not be show-exclusive to either Dynamite or Collision. For now. That could change. And in some parts, probably should. We’ll get to that.

Splitting the roster between the two shows definitely gives more room for more talent to get on TV and engage even more fans. But there are pitfalls to having two separate rosters essentially, and AEW would do well to avoid them. Here’s how we think it should go.

The titles shouldn’t be show-exclusive except for the TNT and International titles

The two mid-card belts should be kept apart from each other for a couple reasons. One, it always seems jumbled to have two titles below the main titles, and it was hard to create clear divisions for them when they were mostly on the same show. They were drinking from the same trough, basically.

Second, the TNT title has really waned in importance thanks to some wonky booking for it, and also from the glow of Orange Cassidy’s run with the International title. OC has been putting on a banger pretty much every week to lift the profile of the International title, while the TNT title is kind of covered in whatever muck Wardlow applies to it. Or the stunted run of Powerhouse Hobbs kind of exhibited that AEW didn’t really know what to do with it. Let the TNT title be on TNT on Saturday nights, and put the fucking thing on Brody King, and let him toss people into a garbage can in the upper deck for a few months to get its luster back. They can both be the anchors for their own shows as the main title floats between the two.

Put Jamie Hayter in the main event more often

Most AEW fans will have given up hope that Tony Khan, or Warner Bros-Discovery quite possibly, is going to allow for more than one women’s match per show more often. But AEW can make up for that by not always dumping it in the 9:30 slot on either Dynamite or Collision. The women’s title, which Hayter still holds in case you may have forgotten, can bounce to whatever show MJF isn’t bringing his title to each week. Give it some gloss and importance by putting it in the slot where the biggest titles go. The trios titles aren’t going to headline a show, the tag division is in kind of a weird place, so now’s the time. If we can’t get more women’s wrestling then at least make the little we have feel like it matters. It also wouldn’t hurt to let Punk pump Hayter’s tires the way he was for Britt Baker in his first run. Khan would say that there aren’t enough opponents for Hayter that can carry a main event-on-TV feud through a few weeks. So build them, and there’s room now to do it.

Stick to the split

While the various title-holders may not be leashed to one show or the other, one thing that WWE had a habit of doing that made things confusing and stupid was just disregarding their own rules on a whim, having various wrestlers bounce between shows without explanation, and then watching others fade into the background so we could all watch the same matches on both Raw and SmackDown. And then months later they would tell us there was no brand split…until a few weeks later when they would say there’s a brand split again, usually to promote a useless Survivor Series.

It’s wrestling, there really aren’t rules, but fans like to know that investing in it will be worth the time. If that means AEW has to reshuffle the rosters of the two shows twice a year instead of once, cool. Just do what you said you’re gonna.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate as he lobbies for a Malakai Black and CM Punk feud.

AEW heads into its biggest summer with its biggest rivalry

May 11, 2023
Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega worked through their issues in a reasonable and respectful manner on Wednesday’s Dynamite, using time-tested conflict resolution strategies including “punch the other person until they bleed,” “choke them,” and “stab them with a screwdriver.”

Even four-plus years into its existence, AEW still has that magic of being able to get its fans excited by just having two guys step into the ring. Just the sight of a certain matchup coming to fruition — be it simply a fantasy booking dream, a high point in another well-told story, or some combination thereof — can send spectators into a frenzy. Maybe this is where all those empty-arena pandemic shows helped, because there’s still a novelty to it that might have worn off if we’d already seen these wrestlers face off in front of a baying mob for four years straight. Or maybe AEW is just that good at making things still feel special.

It happens on smaller scales. The Chase Center crowd went loopy when Malakai Black climbed through the ropes to encounter Kenny Omega in a trios match, in a kind of, “Holy shit we never even thought of these two together and this is great!” mode. There was the Katsuyori Shibata-Orange Cassidy blowup, which was more in the “never-thought-it-would-happen-and-it-doesn’t-really-make-sense-but-fuck-it” joy. But what AEW does best is the big spectacle of the big match, for its own sake.

Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega have now had four bouts together, and all of them felt immense before they even started. The sight of them staring down one another from across the ring is theatre by itself. It probably has something to do with both of them representing the two poles that AEW was founded on. Moxley is the leading light of the ex-WWE contingent — the former indie darlings who were underused and underappreciated in New York, and have been reborn in AEW by doing what they’ve always wanted. Omega is the biggest cult wrestler around, the one that never dipped a toe in the mainstream but attained a mainstream audience by being that good and forcing people to seek him out in Japan, and Ring of Honor. Basically, Kenny is wrestling’s Tool, because I have to get a Tool reference in every month or I die.

Along with the “pillar” types who were essentially developed through AEW after making minor waves on the indies, this is the entire composition of the company. Which is why every Mox and Omega encounter feels massive, because they’re two of AEW’s truest identities crashing into each other.

Peanut butter and jelly (and violence)

Also, they’re just incredible wrestlers. Moxley’s 3 a.m. back-alley fight aura and Omega’s acrobatic showmanship are two styles that simply blend together seamlessly, especially when these two are as good as they are. Omega wants to put on a show but can crawl into the muck if he has to, and Moxley just wants to create mayhem but can make that crowd-pleasing. It is a version or a modern update of the Shawn Michaels-Bret Hart dichotomy, except Omega doesn’t come with any of the empty, cock-rock horseshit that Michaels could be enveloped in, and Moxley is Hart’s dedication to the craft if it also had an incredibly bad childhood. Mox and Omega have essentially brought that Michaels and Hart juxtaposition closer together and twisted it just enough to give it layers.

It is notable that in two of their last three matches, when one met the other on his terms, the former needed a backdoor to beat the other, with that backdoor being named “Don Callis” (a more apt metaphor than it appears on the surface). When Omega beat Moxley for the AEW title, it was a straight wrestling match, and Callis interfered on Omega’s behalf — before strangely fucking off to Impact for a brief respite that we’ll leave unstudied. Last night, in a caged no-DQ match that should be Moxley’s wheelhouse given his predilection to violence and bleeding, Callis flipped the script and turned on Omega before he could claim victory. AEW rewards you for paying attention, while also showing that both wrestlers have an incredibly wide range.

And in the middle was a match with a bunch of exploding barbed wire except for the last one that was a dud but hey shit happens.

It is not much of a surprise that heading into a summer that could change the company and maybe even wrestling, AEW went in with what it does best. Before you have to stop wearing white in September, the company will run three PPVs, including Forbidden Door with NJPW, will debut a new show on Saturday nights, perhaps unveil a new TV Deal, bring back CM Punk (and goddammit get Mercedes in here already!), and put on a show at Wembley Stadium in front of anywhere between 65-80,000 people. While it needs to expand its scope to fill two new hours of television — Miro and Thunder Rosa returning last night are about just that — it still needs to be anchored. Mox and Omega (and by extension, Blackpool Combat Club and The Elite) are just that, with BCC being filled with guys getting to let it all hang out after either stunted or finished-out careers in WWE (and Wheeler Yuta) while The Elite are the guys who brought NJPW and ROH styles into every fan’s home. They are the imports and the domestics, in some kind of strange fashion given that the domestics made their name in Japan, and the imports came from this country but just go with me.

Omega and Moxley, and the two factions they head, will be dancing around, and through each other for most of this enticing summer, one would have to guess. Every company, at its height, is built on one great rivalry. Hogan and Andre made WWF. Flair and Dusty made WCW and Southern wrestling in general. Rock and Austin gave the Attitude Era a base. Michaels and Hart. Everyone needs a hit song they can return to that the crowd will always eat up.

As AEW is about to rocket into whatever comes next, it made sure last night that it was well-grounded in what it does best. And whenever it gets a little wayward, it can always come back to Moxley, and Omega.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate as he wills Thunder Rosa-Jamie Hayter into existence.

How did the Milwaukee Bucks ever win a title?

April 27, 2023
Oh how the mighty have fallen

I won’t pretend to be any kind of basketball expert, and my brethren here will spend the day breaking down the Milwaukee Bucks coughing up a curd-ridden hairball in the first round to the Miami Heat. But I know a deer caught in headlights look when I see one, and Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer spent all of Game 5 with that look on his face. That’s when he didn’t have both hands wrapped around his throat.

It’s de rigueur these days to let your players play as the clock winds down, and maybe catch a defense a little scrambled. But not when your team has spent the last minutes of regulation in two games — and overtime in this one — throwing the ball around like it was on a detonator, and your star player is terrified of having it because he can’t throw it in Lake Michigan from the free throw line. The Bucks blew two huge leads in the fourth quarter of the last two games to a team they’re supposed to have completely outgunned. This is not a team that can be trusted to run on autopilot with the shot clock turned off.

No wonder their season ended with the ball in the hands of a dimwit like Grayson Allen as he Euro-stepped to nowhere, which also happens to be my favorite Ozzy song.

The Bucks can point to the banner in the rafters as proof of what they can be, but it’s a real wonder how they ever got it. Budenholzer watched along with the rest of us as Bam Adebayo was allowed to direct the offense whatever way he wanted as Brook Lopez sagged somewhere near Fon Du Lac. It happened over and over with no adjustment.

When the Bucks got the ball there didn’t appear to be any plan or anything they could call on to get a good shot. They just hoped, the play-calling consisted of, “I don’t fucking want it.” They were waiting for someone else to conjure something. They panicked. The wilted. They choked.

Having gone the route just two years ago, the Bucks should still be chock full of the confidence and swagger that comes with knowing you’d done it before and you know what it takes. The Bucks spent the past two games choking on their own boogers. They were frantic, unorganized, and weak, and their coach stood and watched. All summer we’ll hear jokes about the three timeouts he held onto that he can marvel at over the summer. He may get to do so while updating his résumé.

WWE hit with another lawsuit that it can brush off

You knew about Vince McMahon being a misogynist and an admitted physical danger to women around him in the office — he’s previously been twice accused of sexual assault, and has denied all allegations of wrongdoing — but did you know he’s likely a raging racist too? Well yes, of course you knew that. You’re not new here. But a new lawsuit fills in the blanks about the degree of that.

Britney Abrahams, who wrote for the company at the beginning of the decade, is suing the company, Vince McMahon, and other execs for racial discrimination, claiming that she was fired because she spoke up against some pretty horrific storylines that were proposed for various wrestlers. The company’s claim is that she was fired for keeping a Wrestlemania-adorned folding chair, the kind in the first few rows of the show. Abrahams says plenty of other employees kept a chair and that was merely used as a smokescreen to cover for firing her over her objections in the writers’ room. WWE has not commented on the lawsuit.

In Abrahams’s suit, she claims that senior writer Chris Dunn proposed a promo where Bianca Belair would say, “Uh-uh! Don’t make me take off my earrings and beat your ass!” This was obviously stereotypical and Belair said, according to Abrahams, that she had repeatedly told the writing staff she wouldn’t say that line.

In another heinous story laid out in the suit, Abrahams describes a storyline where a Muslim wrestler, Monsoor, would claim responsibility for 9/11. In another, a Black wrestler Reggie would be caged while being hunted by a white wrestler. Or he would dress in drag to team with Carmella. If true, these are insensitive at best, ugly at medium, and totally gross at worst. Given what we know about WWE and Vince McMahon, they also are hardly out of the realm of possibility.

And as you might expect, Abrahams’s attempts to be an actual adult in the room and to try and install a conscience anywhere within Titan Towers’ walls were met with being thrown out of said walls, according to her suit. Which also scans.

But none of this matters, at least not to WWE. They were just sold for $9 billion. Even if Abrahams and the company don’t come to a settlement, whatever the verdict isn’t going to cancel out their TV contracts. Vince McMahon couldn’t be completely removed after his payments to women he had allegedly mistreated, or assaulted, came to light, and five minutes later Endeavor were forking over billions. WWE and their sycophants will point out that none of these storylines actually made it onto TV, so everything is fine. They’re too big to fail, no matter how hard they try.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate.

How did the Milwaukee Bucks ever win a title?

April 27, 2023
Oh how the mighty have fallen

I won’t pretend to be any kind of basketball expert, and my brethren here will spend the day breaking down the Milwaukee Bucks coughing up a curd-ridden hairball in the first round to the Miami Heat. But I know a deer caught in headlights look when I see one, and Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer spent all of Game 5 with that look on his face. That’s when he didn’t have both hands wrapped around his throat.

It’s de rigueur these days to let your players play as the clock winds down, and maybe catch a defense a little scrambled. But not when your team has spent the last minutes of regulation in two games — and overtime in this one — throwing the ball around like it was on a detonator, and your star player is terrified of having it because he can’t throw it in Lake Michigan from the free throw line. The Bucks blew two huge leads in the fourth quarter of the last two games to a team they’re supposed to have completely outgunned. This is not a team that can be trusted to run on autopilot with the shot clock turned off.

No wonder their season ended with the ball in the hands of a dimwit like Grayson Allen as he Euro-stepped to nowhere, which also happens to be my favorite Ozzy song.

The Bucks can point to the banner in the rafters as proof of what they can be, but it’s a real wonder how they ever got it. Budenholzer watched along with the rest of us as Bam Adebayo was allowed to direct the offense whatever way he wanted as Brook Lopez sagged somewhere near Fon Du Lac. It happened over and over with no adjustment.

When the Bucks got the ball there didn’t appear to be any plan or anything they could call on to get a good shot. They just hoped, the play-calling consisted of, “I don’t fucking want it.” They were waiting for someone else to conjure something. They panicked. The wilted. They choked.

Having gone the route just two years ago, the Bucks should still be chock full of the confidence and swagger that comes with knowing you’d done it before and you know what it takes. The Bucks spent the past two games choking on their own boogers. They were frantic, unorganized, and weak, and their coach stood and watched. All summer we’ll hear jokes about the three timeouts he held onto that he can marvel at over the summer. He may get to do so while updating his résumé.

WWE hit with another lawsuit that it can brush off

You knew about Vince McMahon being a misogynist and an admitted physical danger to women around him in the office — he’s previously been twice accused of sexual assault, and has denied all allegations of wrongdoing — but did you know he’s likely a raging racist too? Well yes, of course you knew that. You’re not new here. But a new lawsuit fills in the blanks about the degree of that.

Britney Abrahams, who wrote for the company at the beginning of the decade, is suing the company, Vince McMahon, and other execs for racial discrimination, claiming that she was fired because she spoke up against some pretty horrific storylines that were proposed for various wrestlers. The company’s claim is that she was fired for keeping a Wrestlemania-adorned folding chair, the kind in the first few rows of the show. Abrahams says plenty of other employees kept a chair and that was merely used as a smokescreen to cover for firing her over her objections in the writers’ room. WWE has not commented on the lawsuit.

In Abrahams’s suit, she claims that senior writer Chris Dunn proposed a promo where Bianca Belair would say, “Uh-uh! Don’t make me take off my earrings and beat your ass!” This was obviously stereotypical and Belair said, according to Abrahams, that she had repeatedly told the writing staff she wouldn’t say that line.

In another heinous story laid out in the suit, Abrahams describes a storyline where a Muslim wrestler, Monsoor, would claim responsibility for 9/11. In another, a Black wrestler Reggie would be caged while being hunted by a white wrestler. Or he would dress in drag to team with Carmella. If true, these are insensitive at best, ugly at medium, and totally gross at worst. Given what we know about WWE and Vince McMahon, they also are hardly out of the realm of possibility.

And as you might expect, Abrahams’s attempts to be an actual adult in the room and to try and install a conscience anywhere within Titan Towers’ walls were met with being thrown out of said walls, according to her suit. Which also scans.

But none of this matters, at least not to WWE. They were just sold for $9 billion. Even if Abrahams and the company don’t come to a settlement, whatever the verdict isn’t going to cancel out their TV contracts. Vince McMahon couldn’t be completely removed after his payments to women he had allegedly mistreated, or assaulted, came to light, and five minutes later Endeavor were forking over billions. WWE and their sycophants will point out that none of these storylines actually made it onto TV, so everything is fine. They’re too big to fail, no matter how hard they try.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate.

WWE invents new title that Cody Rhodes can win

April 26, 2023
Adrenaline in my soul, a new belt for Cody Rhodes

Just imagine the heartwarming scene, the one fans have been clamoring for. It’s 2 in the afternoon, U.S. time, as thousands of miles away Cody Rhodes caresses the belt that was introduced to WWE a month prior, at a show drenched in blood money that has an incredible wrestling history of…Goldberg nearly killing an aged Undertaker. Cody, with fireworks going off and somehow with a straight face, will look into the sea of fans in Saudi Arabia and tell us that his “story is completed!” And every WWE fan will be expected to just go along with the fact that Rhodes’s “journey” really was about a title that had the gestation time of a cockroach and is certainly the junior to the title he didn’t win at Wrestlemania.

For those of us who aren’t exactly Cody fans, it’s a delightful image.

WWE invents a new ‘top’ title

In case you didn’t see the news, WWE is inventing a new “top” title that will be the highest spot on one of their shows after they reorganize their roster between Raw and Smackdown through a “draft.” The new title’s home will almost certainly be Raw, because it’s highly unlikely that Fox is going to just let Roman Reigns walk over to Raw, even if he only shows up five times a year.

Of course, having two top titles devalues both. Triple H came out on Monday on Raw to unveil the new belt, which looks like it was stuck in the microwave for 20 seconds too long, and in his promo somehow managed to run down both the current title that Reigns has and this new one.

Raw and Smackdown had separate titles for years, after the last brand split in 2016. Reigns united them in Vince McMahon’s last attempt to make a Reigns-Brock Lesnar match feel like anything other than his own personal vanity project (just missed!) at Mania 38. Because Reigns lords over the company to such a degree that he was able to get himself a part-time schedule — more power to him for that — and almost never appeared on Raw, the Monday night show felt pretty centerless without the anchor of a champion to main event most weeks.

This could have been avoided

WWE, as it always does, missed a chance to enhance one of its shows and get people excited about whoever was carrying the belt that Reigns wasn’t. Anyone taking one-half of Reigns’s collection of belts would have felt like a huge star and given the new title luster. It would have felt important because of who it was taken off of.

Instead, WWE has been so focused on making sure that Reigns never loses that they’ve smooshed anyone who ever came up against him into an unrecognizable mess. Now whoever claims this new title will be seen as being given some consolation, something lesser, something that Reigns can’t even be bothered to put at risk.

Simultaneously, as HHH pointed out that Reigns is only part-time now, he made his reign seem like something the company has to deal with instead of one it’s banked pretty much its entire present upon. “Roman isn’t here much, so we have invented…this thing!” If it hurts the company so much that the champion isn’t around to defend the title that they felt the need to make up a new one, then here’s an idea…HAVE HIM LOSE!

Booking themselves into a corner

WWE had multiple chances for someone to take the title off Roman, who then could have lost half of it down the road to get to where they are now, just in a lot better shape. Be it Sami or Cody or KO, there were triggers to be pulled. Maybe I’m the only one who still thinks so, but coming out of the 2022 Royal Rumble there was still an excellent story to tell with Seth Rollins.

But because WWE kept taking the safe road, the easy one, the predictable one, they’re left with two titles that seem definitively trinket-like. One make-believe title to make up for the problem of the other one.

This is what WWE does, try and assuage fans and wrestlers after cocking up the big moment. They had Sami and KO come out on top in a post-match beatdown with the rest of the Bloodline after they whiffed on putting the strap on Sami in Montreal as a make-good to the fans who were so disappointed after being so ravenous for a Zayn win. Then they put the tag titles on the two at Mania as another one, and though it was fulfilling to see the two get there, it was still below what could have, and should have, been.

While I may not have bought it, WWE certainly sold Cody Rhodes as a viable hero at Mania and fans were certainly eating it up, and then punted him overboard, and any fan’s ability to actually buy into this kind of story for a long time. So again as a consolation, at least likely, they’ll hand this concoction to him and try to tell you it’s just as meaningful. Reigns will continue to carry the other one, the one they’ve taken down a peg or two because no one is going to buy that they can actually pump a challenger up to the point of believing he’ll beat Roman, or that they’ll ever pull the trigger on doing so. It’s not so much a title Roman carries now, but a weight. No wonder he only wants to do it a handful of times per year.

But hey, Cody will get those tears going again, don’t you worry.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate to see which wrestler this week is using him to forward a storyline.

Stone Cold wrestles with where gimmick ends, Steve Austin begins

April 21, 2023
Gimme a hell yeah!

He’s synonymous with World Wrestling Entertainment if not all of professional wrestling as one of the most popular performers in the theatrical sports’ history. Stone Cold Steve Austin can still garner a crowd reaction like few ever have with the simple sound of glass shattering to start his entrance theme. And the now-58-year-old Texas Rattlesnake is going on a new adventure outside the squared circle for Stone Cold Takes on America, which premieres April 30 on A&E at 10 p.m. Eastern, with new episodes airing weekly in the same television block.

The premise of the show is to see Stone Cold doing the activities he missed out on while traveling the world as professional wrestling’s top guy. What activities? As he puts it in the promo for the show, he’ll take on any challenge that’s tough enough to take on him. And while Stone Cold is primarily known for his time in the WWE, very little wrestling is involved in the show. Stone Cold told Deadspin that there are plenty of flashbacks to his career throughout the series and a segment filmed with former WWE wrestler Mason Ryan. However, the show doesn’t focus on the action between the ropes and turnbuckles at all. Because of that, Stone Cold journeyed in part to find who he is outside of his beer-drinking, middle-finger flipping, stompin’-a-mudhole-and-walkin’-it-dry persona.

“I’m Steve Austin. And that’s how I live my life. All my buddies that I know here in the region of Nevada that I live in, man, I’m considered a local. So I don’t live my life as Stone Cold,” the six-time WWE Champion recently told Deadspin. “And that was almost an issue that I had in the first few episodes because it’s Stone Cold Takes on America. I kind of had an identity crisis because I could go to Stone Cold now if I wanted to. But I didn’t and I never did during the show. There’s a couple of times where I said ‘Give me a hell yeah!’ But for a while there, I actually struggled with who do the people want to see? Do they want to see me as a human being?”

Austin continued: “And I asked one of the guys who was up at the network ‘Is being Steve Austin enough?’ Because it says Stone Cold. And I wrestled with that, no pun intended, during part of the filming of that show. And I think finally, maybe about the halfway mark, I kind of found out who and what I was. … Sometimes I don’t know where Stone Cold starts and Steve Austin comes in. I found out that in filming the show, Stone Cold is pretty specific to the world of wrestling or competitive endeavors. And going through life myself, I exist as a guy named Steve Austin. Personality is still there but I’m a way different cat.”

Stone Cold Steve Austin on the road

Filming of Austin’s new show started in November and didn’t wrap until the last week of March with a sabbatical of around a month in the middle. Per Austin, the WWE was approached to take part in the show but it didn’t come to fruition because of the company’s focus on its biggest yearly event, WrestleMania. Some of the tasks Austin “takes on” are more common than being a professional wrestler during the series. He’ll go bowling with some competitive seniors, try to become an attentive waiter and do a live weather forecast — green screen and all. And in Austin’s prime days in the WWE, he didn’t see much of the towns he traveled to outside of the arena, hotel and airport.

“It wasn’t about really going to different towns and stuff like that, but just really doing the things that I wanted to do or just doing things that anybody in America would do,” Austin told Deadspin. “Being on the road is being on a road and having a steering wheel on your hand, some of those drives, all you’re doing is driving.

“… I’ve been out of the wrestling business for 19 years now. And my wife and I like to travel a lot in our RV and go camping and stuff like that. But we’ve kind of not been as active in that regard as we have been in the past. So to go out on the road and film the show, there was a little bit of a stop down, with some internal things that were going on. And then we picked back up. And we stopped down, I missed my crew. And I was like ‘Man, I’m not doing anything because where’s my crew?’ And we finally started back and finished up and it was a little bittersweet because we’ve kind of grown to be a big family. And I think we did some really good stuff, and I hope the really good stuff outweighs the bad stuff.”

He (allegedly) tried to live the gimmick

April 20, 2023
Ted DiBiase Jr. (l.) has been charged in connection to the Mississippi welfare scandal.

Former WWE superstar Ted DiBiase Jr. has been charged in connection with the now-infamous Mississippi welfare scandal. As revealed in an unsealed federal indictment from the Department of Justice, the 40-year-old DiBiase Jr. was charged with the misappropriation of millions diverted from families in need in Mississippi. If that sounds familiar to you, it’s the same scandal that Brett Favre is alleged to be part of. (Favre has denied any wrongdoing.)

DiBiase’s alleged misdeeds revolve around awarding “sham contracts to various individuals and entities purportedly for the delivery of social services, including at least five sham contracts that were awarded to DiBiase’s companies, Priceless Ventures LLC and Familiae Orientem LLC,” per the DoJ release. DiBiase has not responded to the charges — one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, six counts of wire fraud, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, and four counts of money laundering — and has not tweeted in over a month.

According to the release, DiBiase allegedly used federal funds to put a down payment on a house as well as buy a car and a boat. With 13 counts against DiBiase, a conviction would likely lead to a long jail sentence. There’s a maximum of 20 years in prison for each of the six wire fraud counts, as well as 10 years for six other counts involving money laundering and theft of federal funds. DiBiase’s conspiracy charge comes with a five-year maximum sentence.

Last month, his brother, Brett DiBiase, pleaded guilty to a federal charge related to misspending of welfare money.

Members of DiBiase’s family have previously denied the allegations and asked for a similar civil lawsuit to be dismissed.