In the latest episode of You’re Welcome with Chael Sonnen, “The American Gangster” spoke with both the new TNA World Heavyweight Champion Kurt Angle and former WWE writer John Piermarini. Pro wrestling, amateur wrestling, and mixed martial arts all got discussed, so there should be something for everyone.
– Chael tells Kurt the story of the Oregon wrestling coach offering a 60 percent scholarship, which is apparently unheard of for wrestlers, to a guy who lasted four minutes with Kurt Angle based on the fact that he managed to last four minutes with Kurt.
– Chael says that Seth Rollins losing early in the night to Randy Orton and then coming in at the end of the main-event to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase is “a swerve you’re never gonna see.” Angle says the loss to Orton made him believe Seth was going to cash in, which I guess is the difference between a mark like Sonnen and someone with experience in pro wrestling like Kurt.
– Chael says it’s weird for Triple H to wrestle one time a year and give the biggest, most elaborate and expensive entrance to himself. He adds it must be hard for a shareholder to watch, “You just spent $80,000 on your walkout?” I kind of get his point here, but part of me strongly believes that Rusev’s TANK ENTRANCE might have cost a little more.
– Chael says The Rock’s appearance fell flat, Rock didn’t have the same reaction he used to get, and Ronda Rousey basically saved the whole thing. Chael says the problem is Rock didn’t hit all his big catchphrases, which is all people want out of him. Kurt agrees that Rock has the best catchphrases.
– Kurt reveals that he never cut weight in wrestling, which both he and Chael believe helped him prolong his career. His gold medal in the Olympics had a 220-pound upper limit, but Kurt said he wrestled between 207 and 211 pounds to keep his body fresh.
– During a prolonged conversation with Angle about amateur wrestling, Chael says, “I’m putting more viewers to sleep than Bill Cosby did,” which is terrible.
– Kurt and Chael talk about wrestling with and for Dave and Mark Schultz. Kurt trained a lot with Dave at Foxcatcher, and Dave, despite being about 30 pounds smaller than Angle, used to out wrestle him constantly. Chael says that Mark hatched a plan to kill John DuPont to avenge Dave. Mark’s plan was to break into prison because “prisons are designed to keep people from breaking out, not to keep people from breaking in,” so Mark believed he could sneak in with the right disguise and get revenge.
– Kurt says he likes TNA’s move to Destination America because there’s more promotion there compared to Spike, even though there are fewer viewers. He likes that TNA programming is on pretty much every day, and instead of using Impact to promote other shows, like Spike did, there are ads for TNA on other Destination America shows.
– Chael says he’s disappointed that Bray lost to the Undertaker clean at WrestleMania because he feels that Bray is the single best talent on the roster. I’m not saying he’s wrong because when Bray has solid material to work with, he’s good on the microphone and a decent hand in the ring, but I didn’t expect Sonnen to have that opinion.
– Piermarini is disappointed that Cena won because so much time was spent building up Rusev, only to have him fed to Cena like everyone else.
– Piermarini says he didn’t like the circumstance of Seth becoming champion, but he likes that Seth has the title. Chael is completely against Rollins, saying, “When you come out with a hairdo looking like a skunk, I got a problem with that right out of the gate.”
– Chael continues to air his grievances with Seth, adding, “First of all, you have a girl’s hairdo, trim your hair if you’re a guy.” Sonnen also takes issue with Rollins because “he tried his hardest to work an angle with Jon Stewart.”
– Piermarini asks Chael about WWE wrestlers with the potential to cross over into MMA, and Sonnen thinks Randy Orton is athletic enough to make the jump. John offers up amateur wrestlers like Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler.
– During a discussion about fighters pulling out of fights due to injuries, Piermarini says that the injured fighter should suffer a disqualification loss. For example, T.J. Dillashaw, who is out of UFC 186 with a broken rib, should lose the bantamweight title to Renan Barão, and when he’s healthy, get a rematch. That’s insane, right? I’m not the only person that thinks Piermarini is a lunatic?
– Piermarini says Daniel Bryan is the most over guy in the company, but Chael disagrees. He says if the fans got what the wanted, which is Bryan holding the world title, they wouldn’t like it. He says they only chant “YES!” because Bryan is so obviously being held back. He says that he’ll never buy “5-foot nothing” Daniel Bryan as world champ, and nobody in wrestling would either, “no matter how much they want to chant the word ‘YES!’.”
– Chael thought that WrestleMania would go down like this: Heyman turns on Brock, aligns with Reigns, leading to Roman winning the title. That would solve the issue of Roman being terrible at promos and take the belt off Brock. To be fair, this was his guess before Brock re-signed.
– Chael finishes by saying Seth Rollins will be a worse drawing champion than Diesel.
There were a lot of crazy opinions in this podcast, both from Chael and Piermarini. It’s pretty bad when Kurt Angle is the most sane person in a 90-minute podcast.
