Talk is Jericho Recap w/ Jinder Mahal – Becoming Number One Contender, Relationship with Great Khali, Origins of 3MB, More!

Jericho welcomes Jinder Mahal to the show.

Jericho mentions that Mahal appeared to come out of nowhere to become the new number one contender for the WWE Championship. He says he was told the day before winning the 6-pack challenge on Smackdown Live that he was going to become the number one contender. Concerning his run as an enhancement talent prior to this, Vince McMahon told him that WWE’s audience has a short memory and Mahal says, “I guess we’ll all find out about that”.

Mahal says he got pretty down on himself emotionally after being released from WWE a couple of years ago. He was drinking a lot and his weight ballooned to 260 lbs. He realized that he needed to change his lifestyle, so he began dieting and getting into shape, and soon enough WWE came calling. He says that Impact Wrestling actually called him about coming to work for them as well, but he chose to come back to WWE.

He says that during those two years he was very negative and was working the indie scene and just didn’t care. As soon as he started to care about himself and his wrestling again, everything changed and opportunities started to arise again. He says he’s remaining very positive now, and he keeps a daily planner of his goals. One of his goals is to have the best body in WWE, and another is to win the WWE Championship.

Reason Summer Rae Hasn’t Returned to WWE Television Yet

Summer Rae has been out of action since August after suffering an injury and is finally ready to return to action.

Dave Meltzer reported on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Radio that Summer is ready to return and was backstage at television last week. It’s being said that the reason she hasn’t returned on television is because the company needs to find a spot to place her.

The feeling is right now that both RAW and SmackDown have enough active females so they need to find a place to write her in on television. It’s unknown which brand she will end up on. We will keep you updated.

Backstage Update on Paige’s WWE Status

Dave Metlzer discussed Paige’s status with WWE following her suspension and neck injury on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Radio.

Meltzer mentioned that she is still under contract with the company and is still recovering from her recent neck surgery. He noted that she would not be used again if not for the WWE Studios production, Fighting With My Family.

Meltzer did not indicate exactly when the company plans to bring her back. If we hear anything new, we will keep you updated.

Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Pitching A New ‘Attitude Era’ Show to the WWE Network, Indie Workers Shortening Their Careers, More!

Russo opens today’s show speaking about the notion that WWE’s stockholders wouldn’t want WWE to return to attitude era-like programming. WWE consistently uses the excuse that they’re a publicly traded company now, so they can’t produce that type of programming. Russo doesn’t understand that at all, because wouldn’t their stockholders want WWE to produce whatever type of programming that makes them the most money?

Russo says that he’s bored with all the political correctness on WWE’s programming today, and he wonders what happened to all the sexiness. It’s not like they were showing women strip naked during the attitude era, they just embraced their beautiful female roster. He doesn’t understand why WWE can’t continue to do that type of thing today.

Russo says that everything old is new again, and some of the biggest sitcoms from the 90s are making a return such as Full House and Rosanne. The attitude era is 20 years old now, and he knows for a fact that there are a lot of fans who enjoyed that era. He has heard from numerous fans that they only subscribe to the WWE Network to watch the old attitude era programming.

Bray Wyatt Does Jury Duty In Full “Bray Wyatt” Character

Bray Wyatt revealed in the new book, “NXT: The Future Is Now”, that he once went and did jury duty in full character. Here is a transcript of what Wyatt said:

“Bray began with my real-life lunacy, I’ve always been an against-all-authority kind of child. I was a big fan of Rage Against the Machine, they were a big influence on my life as a child, so when I started working with Dusty Rhodes, I began losing my mind on a very real level. I became obsessed with this character.”

“I was going to jury duty in my hometown, and Dusty made me go to jury duty as Bray. Dusty told me, ‘This is the perfect exercise, become Bray.’ I literally went to jury duty as Bray Wyatt. I was so immersed in the character that I didn’t break once. Obviously, I didn’t get picked for jury duty, but I had the white pants, Hawaiian shirt, the whole nine yards. There were no fragments of Husky Harris, Husky Harris was dead and he was to stay dead. I was Bray Wyatt, we were one.”

The Taz Show Recap – Camera Work in Wrestling, Were Orton’s Tweets A Work? Which NXT Star Impressed Taz? More!

Block 1:

A listener calls into the show and asks Taz about the importance of camera work in professional wrestling programming. Taz says that the camera work is vitally important to producing quality wrestling programming. WWE’s ‘shaky’ camera style was inspired by ECW’s camera work in Taz’s opinion. Paul Heyman originally got the idea to implement this type of camera work from watching ‘Cops’.

WWE is too heavy with the camera shaking at some points in Taz’s opinion, and he points out that Lucha Underground has their camera work down to a science. He believes that this is a result of Lucha Underground’s camera men working a ‘Hollywood’ style of filming, where they film the backstage segments as if it was a movie.

Taz says that sometimes fans complain about the long backstage promos in WWE, but you rarely hear criticisms of Lucha Underground’s backstage promos. Taz says that fans only complain about long promos when they’re poorly done. Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes cut awfully long promos but they were terrific so they didn’t feel long.