Block 1:
Taz opens today’s show by sending congratulations to his friend, A.J. Styles who captured the WWE Title on Smackdown Live last night. He says that Styles is the hardest worker in the business and he hasn’t missed a beat during his nearly 20 year career. He adds that much like calling Eddie Guerrero’s matches, calling a match featuring Styles was a pleasure and a breeze.
He does point out that since the show was filmed overseas, there were plenty of spoilers online regarding the big Title change. WWE even tweeted out a spoiler, saying that a Title had changed hands at the taping. Taz was dissapointed to see that because he was looking forward to watching the match, and he knows a lot of fans were feeling the same way.
He understands that WWE did this because the announcement would certainly motivate fans to watch Smackdown Live to see the Title change, and this would help the ratings. Nonetheless, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for WWE to be spoiling their own results hours before the show airs because this can anger fans.
Block 2:
Taz says he was shocked to see inter-gender physicality between James Ellsworth and Becky Lynch last night. He has alluded in the past that we’d never see this type of thing on WWE programming again but he was obviously wrong about that. It’s been an awfully long time since we’ve seen an inter-gender match on WWE programming and he didn’t think we’d ever see it again. He’s personally not a fan of these matches, but everyone has their own opinions on that.
Taz watched the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on Ric Flair last night and he thought it was, “…just absolutely spectacular”. He thought the film took viewers on an emotional journey with comedy, action and emotional moments throughout. Unfortunately, the film was also quite sad in a number of areas, but that’s life.
He points out that it was great to see the old-school approach to professional wrestling highlighted throughout the film. We saw a lot of the tough love that Flair was shown by Verne Gagne early in his career and Taz also experienced a lot of that when he first broke into the business.
When Taz started training wrestlers himself he utilized that old school approach as well, but that would never be approved in the business today. He says that anything he did to his trainees was out of love because nothing made him prouder than his trainees having success in the business. He’s sure Gagne’s training techniques were inspired by love as well.
Blocks 3 & 4:
Taz says it was great seeing Sting on the documentary, sharing his thoughts on the iconic matches he had with Flair back in the day. Ricky Steamboat also spoke about how hard he used to chop Flair, and hearing Hulk Hogan’s opinion of Flair was great as well.
He points out that it was a lot easier to ‘live the gimmick’ back in those days, and Flair certainly lived his gimmick. Taz did the same thing and he was knocked for that at times, still, he wouldn’t change a thing if he had to do it all over again.
A listener calls into the show and asks Taz what he thought about The Usos’ promo last night, as well as their match against Shelton Benjamin and Chad Gable. Taz says he’s glad The Usos are still the Champions heading into Survivor Series, because he’s really looking forward to the match between them and Sheamus/Cesaro.
Taz is unsure if Chad Gable’s chopblock on the outside of the ring resulted in a legitimate injury to one of The Usos, but he points out that taking that type of move is very dangerous. There are ways to take it which limits risk, but it’s not something you want to be taking regularly.
That sums up today’s episode of The Taz Show. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!
