Clash At The Castle Reaction

My thoughts on Clash at the Castle 

• Website: www.julioscorner.com
• Send us some Fan Mail
• Please donate if you’re feeling generous

Creative Commons License:

This show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This means you can share this audio, remix it, do whatever you want, just say where you got it from.

Transcript

This is Julio's Corner, my corner of the internet, where I talk about whatever is on my mind.

Usually, I'll talk about TV shows, movies, or whatever new content has taken my interest.

This episode is being recorded on Sunday, June 16th, 2024.

And today's episode will be my reactions on Clash of The Castle.

But first, well, not first, just an aside.

This has been a very sports-packed weekend for me.

You had the NBA Finals, Game 4, on Friday night, in which the Mavericks, of course, are staying alive.

They could have easily gotten swept, but instead, they put their foot down and obliterated the Celtics that night by like 30, I forget, I think it was 37 points or 27 points.

And so, they are staying alive for another game on Monday, for Game 5.

And people are, most critics are saying that it's gonna be a gentleman's weekend, sorry, not a gentleman's weekend, a gentleman's sweep, meaning, you know, they won one game, but it'll still be over in five.

And of course, the Euros opened up with the host country, Germany, playing against Scotland, in which they gave them a resounding beatdown of 5 to 1.

But again, enough about all that.

This is not about all sports talk.

This episode is about, specifically, my reactions on Clash of The Castle, which I saw a few hours ago.

And yeah, let it...

Well, I could have done the recording sooner had I not been sidetracked with chores and what have you.

But anyway, you don't need to know about all that nonsense.

You don't need to look behind the curtain, so to speak, or see how the sausage is made.

Let's get right into it.

So of course, the first match was the I Quit match with Cody Rhodes and AJ Styles.

In the last PLE, you know, premium live event, I think it was called...

Oh yeah, The King and Queen of the Ring.

They had a title match, and Cody Rhodes defeated AJ Styles.

And that wasn't enough for AJ Styles.

He wanted a rematch, and he was told that, no, you have to go to the back of the line.

You already had your shot, and you lost, and so now there's going to be other challengers in line, in front of you, because you had your chance, so you go behind those people, and then you'll wait your turn.

AJ did not seem happy with that response, but then a week goes by, and all of a sudden, he seems like he's ready to retire, and so he had this whole retirement ceremony on Monday Night Raw.

He invited Cody Rhodes to the ring, and as they were getting cheered, and getting all the flowers from the audience, because they wanted to give him a nice send-off, he then attacks Cody Rhodes, which of course upset Cody Rhodes, and Cody Rhodes decided, I'm going to have this I quit match.

So basically, the conditions of the fight was whoever loses, in order to lose, I should say, you had to say, I quit.

So unless you say, I quit, the fight goes on.

There's no disqualification, there's no count out, there's no pinning, there's no submission.

It's you have to say the words, I quit.

So the fight goes on for a while, and Cody lets himself get beat up, as always, and he lets AJ Styles dictate the brutality of it, and he took the brunt of the abuse, though Cody did get him a couple of times.

But it wasn't until towards the end where AJ Styles handcuffed Cody Rhodes to basically make him completely helpless and started beating him to a pulp.

But these handcuffs had an extra long chain in between, so he was still able to put his hands in front of him and eventually bail himself out to then handcuff AJ Styles to the ring and then bring in the top portion of the metal stairs to threaten AJ Styles with, so AJ Styles eventually in fear of his life because now he had no way of getting out of the situation that he found himself in after waking up from being stunned, he immediately yelled, I quit.

I mean, I say immediately, but the fight went for like 20 minutes or so.

So my initial thoughts on the fight, it was decent.

It wasn't too surprising.

They both were pretty evenly matched.

Cody Rhodes is a good fighter, but he always, he's like Superman in that he always lets the bad guy take the first swing, so to speak.

And he always always has to get beat up and to a point where it looks like he's not going to have a chance.

He's going to lose.

But then he somehow from within gets this second wind and adrenaline and this resiliency to come out in the come out on top at the end.

And this has been a typical template for his previous his last few matches from that I've seen so far from from WrestleMania 40, where he beat Roman Reigns to win the title, up until the two matches he's had with AJ Styles back to back in.

And actually, I think he fought him in in France, actually.

So no, he fought him in Lions.

Yeah, so my bad.

He fought him in backlash.

He did not fight him in the King and Queen of the of the ring.

So forgive me for that faux pas there.

It was it was backlash in France that he beat him.

And then two months later, now in in Clash of The Castle.

So AJ Styles says I quit.

So the repercussions of that we'll find out on Monday.

I'm assuming now AJ Styles does have to retire, or at least he does have to quit for a period of time.

Because in the way, the reason I say that is because the commentators were talking about the last time they had an I quit match.

It was between John Cena and what's his name?

Randy Orton.

And I think they I figured who they said who won the fight, whoever won that fight, they did not quit for good because both John Cena and Randy Orton still fight.

Well, John Cena not as much because he's in Hollywood, but he did show up for WrestleMania 40, and I think he showed up for another few matches after that.

And he did say he still has a contract with the WWE, so he will be having more matches in the future, most likely just like the big premium fights like Survivor Series and WrestleMania, and not be there on a weekly basis because he has a movie career.

So the fact is, despite having an I Quit match before, neither one really quit for good because obviously they're both still fighting.

So that just means AJ Styles might have to disappear for a bit and maybe come back in a year or two.

So we'll see about that.

The next match was a six-way tag team match between Jade Cargill, Bianca Belair, you know, that's one team, versus Shayna Baszler and Zoe Stark, and also Alba Fire and Isla Dawn.

Now, Alba Fire and Isla Dawn are both Scottish women, and of course Clash of the Castle is being held in Scotland, in Glasgow, Scotland.

And so there's a couple of title matches in this premium live event with Scottish representation.

Alba Fire and Isla Dawn in the six-way tag team match.

You have Piper Niven against Bailey, who I will speak about later.

And of course, the main event, the final fight of the marquee fight, so to speak, Drew McIntyre against Damian Priest for the heavyweight championship.

So now I know the two difference between the two men belts.

You have the heavyweight championship, which is Damian Priest's title, and then you have the undisputed universal championship, which is what Cody Rhodes has, the undisputed universal champion.

So he's the undisputed universal champion, and Damian Priest is the heavyweight champion.

But back to the six-way tag team match.

It begins with Bianca and Jade Cargill overpowering these women because they are just stronger than them and everything, you know.

And then eventually Shayna Baszler, you know, the other two teams, Shayna Baszler, Zoe Stark, Alba Fire, and Aiza Dawn, they have a little powwow outside the ring and agree to a temporary alliance.

So then, you know, four, so then they have two on two against Chade Cargill and Bianca Beller, and they start being the crap out of them.

And then eventually Shayna Baszler betrays Aiza Dawn and Alba Fire, you know, because they want the title, because obviously only one team can come out on top, because the way this match begins, the way the conditions of this match is anyone can get pinned.

And whoever pins down whoever, whoever gets the successful pin will be the new tag team champions, regardless if you're pinning the current defending champions.

You don't have to pin down the defending champions to win the titles.

This fight wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but again, this is something that I mentioned earlier in last week's episode about Jade Cargill's choreography, because either A, she overpowers everyone with strength, or she has to go out of her way to make herself a little weaker.

And another thing I noticed, especially in this match, in this six-way tag team match, I noticed the dynamics of the other tag team partners, and in that they were more synchronized with each other.

Shayna Baszler and Zoe Stark did compliment each other a lot better, as did Al Bafyre and Naisla Dawn, and it always seemed like they were more, those two were more representative of a good tag team, versus Bianca and Jade.

The only thing that Jade and Bianca have going together is that obviously they're allies, so they will have each other's back.

But for the most part, they are very individualistic.

So when Bianca's in the ring, she lets herself take the bulk of the beating, and she doesn't really go out of her way to get Jade involved.

And then if Jade's out there, through no fault of her own, she's just overpowering everyone.

Unless someone cheats, and it's usually when it's outside the ring that they do that, and then take her out.

And then when they take her out, she takes forever to come back, resuscitate or whatever.

Whereas Bianca comes out of being knocked out or whatever, out of being stunned a lot faster, and so she gets abused a lot more than Jade.

But anyways, the match culminates to Jade and Bianca getting back in, doing their tag team move.

And then as Jade is about to finally pin down Isla, no, not Isla, Shayna Baszler, one of the Scottish women, I believe it was Alba Fire.

She, no, no, or Isla Dawn.

It was Isla Dawn.

Isla Dawn comes in, does like a suplex on Jade to stun her, and then pin down the unconscious Shayna Baszler.

And, you know, so Jade is out, and Bianca's trying to get into the ring to stop the pinning, but she's being held by her leg by Alba Fire.

So Isla Dawn pins down Shayna, and they are now the tag team champions, the new women tag team champions.

So my thoughts on the results of this match.

As I mentioned, Jade Cargill and Bianca Belair are more individualistic fighters, and they don't really gel well as a team.

Not until they start doing their tag team move, that's the only time where they do resemble a tag team.

Other than that, they rarely do a lot of combos and assist each other in the matches, whereas the other tag teams are all very much into complimenting and assisting and doing things as a team effort.

And probably part of the reason is that they have to against these two because they're too just overpowering.

So the women do have to work together to take down either Bianca or Jade.

And as I mentioned, also there's, at least it looks like they're working towards making Bianca Belair a heel because of her maybe her hidden subconscious jealousy of Jade, because Jade is now considered the next real big powerhouse.

And Bianca was the big powerhouse up until Jade joined the WWE.

And even though they were the unstoppable tag team until they weren't in this six way tag team, now they're not.

And so this might cause some kind of dissension between the two.

Regardless, as I mentioned last episode, I felt like the tag team titles tethered Jade Cargill down.

But now with them losing the titles, she can now go after individual pursuits.

And they might do that if not, if they don't want to redeem themselves from this six way tag team.

So we shall see.

But at the very least, Jade now has...

Well, they both do, but Jade specifically, because she's the new one, the new up and coming star, she has an opportunity to go after Nia Jax in an individual match, again, but this time beat her and not lose by disqualification that was caused by Nia Jax.

She can go against Jade...

not Jade, she is Jade.

She can go against Bailey for her title or go against Liv Morgan for her title.

So, and I should have done the research about what titles those are, because I did that for the guys and I didn't do that for the women, so I apologize.

So anyways, the next...

Oh yeah, so as I was bringing up Scotland, right, so you have these three cards, so to speak, with Scottish representation.

So in this six-way tag team match, you have the winners being Scottish, Alba Fire and Isla Dawn.

And considering this was like Scotland weekend, because as I mentioned earlier, in the Euros, they got a resounding beatdown by the Germans, 5 to 1.

So this was a nice win for the Scotland camp.

However, and I'm foreshadowing, there will be no more victories on Scotland side.

So anyway, moving on, you have Chad Gable versus Sami Zayn for the Intercontinental Championship.

And this is to finally end the storyline, so to speak, to just stop this rivalry, because Sami Zayn already gave Chad Gable a title shot and Chad Gable lost.

And since then, he's just been doing cheap shots and sneaking against, you know, having sneak attacks on Sami Zayn, also using the Alpha Academy to help him.

And this match proved no different, as he brought over Otis Smith and Maxine Dupree to Scotland to assist from outside.

But of course, Maxine Dupree, and Maxine Dupree is wearing a boot because she has a hurt ankle.

So they say, who knows if it's real or not, but that's the story they're going with.

And Otis Smith is like this beat down, Stockholm Syndrome, walking time bomb that always attacks Sami Zayn unprovoked, but he thinks he's being provoked, or he thinks it's initiated by Sami Zayn, and it never is.

So anyway, they're having the match, and it's pretty even.

Chad Gable gets a couple submission moves, Sami Zayn fights him back, and he goes back and forth, back and forth.

And then finally, towards the end, Chad Gable tries to get Otis Smith and Maxine Dupreev involved.

So he goes out the ring when Zayn is stunned.

He goes out the ring to look at the Intercontinental Championship belts, or what's the word I'm looking for?

Wantonly, I guess, is the word I'm looking for.

Not really wantonly, but he wants it, desirably.

He's Greenwood Envy, he wants that title, and he's ogling it and caressing it and just fantasizing about him with this title as his own.

And of course referees say, hey, you haven't won the match yet, you can't just be grabbing it.

He's like, no, no, no, I'm not taking it, whatever.

And then he gives it to Maxine.

And the plan is, of course, he's going to put Sami Zayn within striking distance from them and then distract the referee so that they can then hit him across the face with the belt, you know, to help him win the match, basically cheat.

And so he sets up that scenario.

He has Sami Zayn leaning on the ropes, the middle rope, and distracts the referee.

And Maxine Dupree makes to strike Sami Zayn, but Sami Zayn is looking at her with like pleading stunned eyes.

And of course, you know, she has a bit of a conscience, and she doesn't do it.

And so she stops herself.

And then, of course, Chad Gable tells her to come up the stairs to the ring so he can give her a good talking to, because he abuses them.

That's the whole storyline.

And he's screaming at her or whatever in the corner.

And Sami Zayn tries to take advantage of this situation to do his his running kick move that he does.

I forget what it's called, because it's very similar to the one that Drew McIntyre does.

And they both have different names for the same move, essentially.

But as he's about to kick her, sorry, kick Chad, him, he moves out the way, and it looks like he's about to kick her, Maxine Dupree, but he immediately, you know, he somehow stops himself and is like, oh, sorry, I didn't get you.

Are you okay?

You know, whatever.

And as he's trying to like awkwardly get out of that situation, of course, Chad Gable from, you know, tries to sneak from behind and get him and attack him.

But nothing comes of it.

He doesn't pin him down.

And then the fight continues, and at some point they get, they're outside the ring, and they're going at it.

Otis Smith got involved somehow, and he's like somewhat stunned, and he's on the floor.

And so in the scuffle, similar to what happened in one of the shows, I forget if they're in Monday Night Raw or SmackDown, we either won.

In one of those matches, Chad Gable had pushed Sami Zayn into Otis Smith, which then knocked Maxine Dupree and the Japanese guy off the ring, and that's how Maxine Dupree hurt her leg.

And Otis takes that as Sami Zayn is the one who did this purposefully, not that Sami Zayn was pushed into him by Chad Gable, so he attacked Sami Zayn in that instance.

So similar scenario, but this time it's Sami Zayn knocks Chad Gable into Maxine Dupree, and so that's what Otis Smith sees, not noticing, not knowing that it was the same scenario, but this time it was Sami Zayn who was, and not purposefully, but they were having a scuffle, and in that scuffle, Chad Gable was pushed forward and into Maxine Dupree on her, into her injured leg.

And Otis Smith gets riled up by that, and he's about to attack Chad Gable, but this is his quote unquote father figure who abuses him, and he has a Stockholm Syndrome scenario, and it looks like he's about to finally snap out of it and in this bit of rage go and beat the crap out of Chad for hurting Maxine, but instead he somehow calms himself down and instead carries Maxine out of the area, which causes Chad Gable to get up and say, hey, what about me?

You should be here helping me, not walking away.

What's wrong with you?

How could you do this?

And while he's doing that, screaming at Otis Smith for being disappointing and leaving the whole premise instead of being happy that he didn't get attacked by Otis.

As that is going on, Samuiting finally does the running kick move on Chad, gets him, go in the face, stuns him, wins the match.

As he's leaving the stage, he looks back to the ring at Chad Gable, and he does the we're done motion with his hands, as in like we, this is the end of our whole storyline, move on.

Your matches with me are no more.

This was your last shot, you blew it, get over yourself, it's done.

And Chad is just glaring at him.

So we'll see what will come of this upcoming week, either at Monday Night Raw or SmackDown.

Again, I forget which one he's part of.

And of course, now we are, oh, wait, I forgot there is one more fight before the main event.

And I don't have it in my show notes, which is why I almost forgot it.

And that is the match between Bayley and Niven.

So Niven, of course, Piper Niven comes in with her partner, her tag team partner, Chelsea Green, as Samantha Irving likes to pronounce her name when she comes in with a nice extension on her last name Green in a very Valley Girl way.

But anyways, that aside, they have their fight.

And for the most part in the match, Piper Niven overpowers Bayley because she's bigger, stronger, and I think she's younger too.

And even though Piper Niven is supposedly the bad guy, she doesn't do anything dirty.

She just overpowers her fairly, fair and square.

But in the end, Bayley pulls through and wins because she catches her off guard in one of their moves.

And I don't know how to describe it, but she was able to do some kind of reverse DDT on her when Piper was about to lift her somehow, to slam her.

Instead, it got countered into a DDT kind of thing.

And then she did another...

Oh, she did some move to pin her in some weird way that caught her off guard.

And that's how she won the match, even though she was completely beaten up by it.

So now, the main event.

Because there really isn't much to say about the Piper, the Bailey-Nivin fight.

That was one of the better ones.

Yet at the same time, somehow I almost forgot about it.

So was it memorable?

I don't know.

I didn't really...

I don't know.

Somehow I forgot about it.

It was a good fight though.

I mean, Chelsea tried to get involved here and there, but then she eventually got kicked out because she kept poking the referee to get him to see it her way.

But she was actually disrespectful.

Poking and touching the ref is not what you want to do.

So the ref kicked her out of the area.

So she tried to come back in with a luchalibra, with a luchador, Spanish-Mexican luchador mask.

But obviously it was her because her clothes were the same and her voice is the same.

So it wasn't really fooling anyone.

But Bailey knocks her out and then finishes the job with Niven.

Finally, back to the main event.

Drew McIntyre, Great Scott against Damian Priest for the Heavyweight Championship.

The title that McIntyre had won in WrestleMania 40 and held on to for like five minutes plus until Damian Priest came in with the Money in the Bag suitcase to get his guaranteed title bout and then took advantage of Drew being stunned by CM Punk to win the title and since then has been the Heavyweight Champion.

So yeah, this was...

This was...

what's the word I'm looking for?

A much needed fight in Drew McIntyre's eyes.

And...

oh, right, because...

right.

Because the king...

wow, I can't say it.

The last premium live event, King and Queen of the Ring matches were to establish who would be the title contender for SummerSlam.

So Drew McIntyre wanted to get involved in the King of the Ring tournament to get his title shot, but because of an elbow injury that was caused by CM Punk, he was not able to get into the King and Queen of the Ring tournament.

However, he was...

he got, I guess, a second opinion from a doctor, and he got the clear even though...

I mean, so he didn't...

he wasn't...

It was too late for him to do the King and Queen of the Ring...

wow...

King and Queen of the Ring tournament, so he was given this opportunity ahead of SummerSlam.

So that's the situation.

So he was glad that he got it.

He was able to jump the line and get an earlier title bout against Damian Priest in Clash of the Castle in Scotland, in Glasgow, Scotland, versus SummerSlam that he didn't get to get because he was disqualified from the King of the Ring.

And I forget who won that.

Oh yeah, it was Gunther.

He beat Randy Orton.

And I think he's going to go after...

Oh yeah, he's going to go fight...

He's going to fight Damian Priest in SummerSlam because he wants the heavyweight championship, not the undisputed universal championship.

So anyways, moving on.

Where was I?

So yeah, Drew McIntyre, for the most part, was dominating the match.

And then there were times where Damian Priest was able to change the balance in his favor.

And of course he did not have the accompaniment of Judgment Day because he lost a match with Drew McIntyre in...

Was it SmackDown?

I always get those...

I can't get them...

Yeah, I think it was SmackDown.

He lost to Drew McIntyre on SmackDown.

So the...

Well, no, not Damian Priest.

It's one of Judgment Day's...

something-bailer, Finn Bailer.

Drew McIntyre beat Finn Bailer to basically...

Same thing as WrestleMania, right?

About the bloodline rules.

In this case, it's Judgment Day rules.

So by beating Finn Bailer, Judgment Day could not accompany Damian Priest to Clash of the Castle.

So Drew McIntyre did not have to worry about Judgment Day interfering with his match against Damian Priest.

And everything looked like it was in his favor.

And lo and behold, towards the end, the referee gets knocked out.

Drew McIntyre doesn't see this because he was stunned when it happened, but he manages to do his running kick against Damian Priest to knock him out.

And he's holding him trying to get the three count, and the audience is counting up to like 10 seconds.

So he's been holding him for like 10 seconds, and still there's no referee.

And then a referee shows up, and he does the count one, he does the count two, and then he stops.

And he just looks over Drew, just waiting.

And then Drew looks up, and the referee is CM Punk.

So CM Punk intervenes, and kicks Drew in the nuts, and then Damian Priest doesn't see this, but he finally comes to and he does his chokehold slam, a la in honor of Undertaker.

And then he does, and then the referee at that moment, is roused up and counts out McIntyre.

And so once again, CM Punk intervened like he did in WrestleMania.

In this case, it was Clash of The Castle, and he intervenes and stops Drew McIntyre from winning the title from Damian Priest.

Now, this was predictable, because there's already been a storyline since WrestleMania that Drew wants to get his revenge on CM Punk for being his folly in his success.

And for weeks, Drew kept trying to challenge CM Punk, especially now that CM Punk is no longer...

He is apparently clear to fight now.

He's no longer wearing a cast on his arm, and it seems like he is ready to fight.

But he keeps missing him.

But then the last two weeks, CM Punk has been incognito.

He's been nowhere to be found.

And I found that suspicious.

And so I was figuring that the reason why he's been quiet and, you know, mum's the word or whatever, is that he was going to play a pivotal role in this match.

And he did.

It wasn't a surprise to me and it wasn't shocking at all.

And he got his way, so we shall see come Monday Night Raw or Friday Night SmackDown, what will come of that.

Most likely, McIntyre is finally going to get his premium live event match against CM Punk, even though there won't be any title involved, but he'll be able to give CM Punk his comeuppance.

Now, a lot of people seem to love CM Punk.

Apparently, he's the babyface between him and Drew McIntyre, but he seems to live up to his name in my eyes.

He's a punk.

Drew McIntyre hasn't really done anything dirty.

He wanted an honest title bout, and CM Punk keeps getting in the way.

So I don't know the full backstory between them, but so far, it's looking to me like punk is the heel between them in their dynamic.

He's the heel.

He's the one who's always getting in the way of Drew, not the other way around.

So yeah, that was Clash of The Castle, and we're way past 30 minutes, so I think I'll leave it at that, and go from there.

And that wraps the show.

If you have any questions, comments, or any thoughts you'd like to share, you can email me at email at julioscorner.com or you can send me a text message by clicking on the send us a text message link in the show notes below.

Standard text message rates do apply.

If you're feeling extra generous, you can click the donate link in the show notes and send some dollars my way.

This show is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This means you can share this audio, remix it, do whatever you want, just say where you got it from.

And as always, thanks for listening.