411’s WWE Backstage Report 12.10.19: CM Punk Talks Lana/Rusev Angle, AJ Lee, More

-Hello and welcome once again to another episode of WWE Backstage.  Tonight sees the return of CM Punk to the show and that’s always a plus.  This show has found a nice groove the last few weeks and I have high expectations with Punk being back.  I am curious if they will touch on all the releases over the weekend.

-Renee hypes tonight’s show and throws it to CM Punk who tells us that WWE Backstage starts right now.

-Show opening!

-Renee welcomes us and she is joined by Booker T, CM Punk, and Paige. Punk says he is here to make everyone angry with his honest truth. Booker already gets in a plug for his beard products and Punk jokes that he didn’t know Booker had beard products.

-SmackDown and RAW week in review: The Revival are the number one contenders, Wyatt terrorizes The Miz, and dog food is dumped on Reigns on SmackDown. RAW sees Seth revealed as being aligned with AOP.

-Back to the panel and they discuss Seth joining with AOP. Booker is excited to see they finally pulled the trigger and is pumped to see what AOP can do with the chance they are being given. Punk is going to take a wait and see approach. He doesn’t want to see another version of The Shield. Paige thinks it will be a little different and likes Rollins in this role. Punk wants to know why there was a chair in the back of a van and everyone has fun with that. Punk thinks this is the way they have found to make Seth entertaining. He thinks he is much better in this role than as a good guy, but the ironic thing is he will start to get cheered again. Paige agrees with that as she also marked down in her notes that the fans will start cheering him again.

-The talk shifts to Roman Reigns and we go back to SmackDown when Reigns was bathed in dog food. Renee brings up that the video of Reigns being doused in dog food had the most views on Fox YouTube since Punk made his return and Punk wants to know if it got more views than him. Renee thinks it did, but is informed that it didn’t. Booker T jokes that he heard it did top Punk’s video and Punk shoots back that he is getting information about the time Booker had a feud over the letter T. Tremendous! Punk says this will shock people, but he didn’t hate it as much as people would think. He has a unique perspective and all he could think about was the movie, “Carrie.” To him pig’s blood vs dog food is not really different. Bad guys need to be bad guys and in pro-wrestling this works. Punk just wants more detail as he doesn’t know why the food was already under the ring instead of them bringing it down. That leads to Booker T talking about the small details being right and how The Boogeyman had $5000 worth of worms and they were real and it got that character over. Okay then!

-Renee says King Corbin is coming up next and we take our first break.

-We are back with King Corbin being brought out and his interaction with Punk should be interesting. Renee holds the ropes open for him as he tells everyone to bow down. Corbin says that he loves being on top as a bad guy and loves hearing that he is on top. He loves irritating people to the max and he has a natural ability to make people angry. Booker says that they haven’t had anyone since Vickie Guerrero get the kind of reaction that Corbin does and Corbin says that’s funny as Dolph told him the same thing when they were in the ring together. Punk wants to know if Corbin had ever been a good guy and Corbin says never. Punk says that when you are good at being a bad guy, the fans will start to cheer and Corbin says thankfully that hasn’t happened to him. They both agree that it is very hard to be a good guy and Corbin says it is his job to help the good guys get the reaction they need.

-Paige wants to hear a story from a specific time that a fan hated him. He says there have been moments and brings up beating Angle at Mania and when he looked over to Kurt’s family, a kid flipped him the bird. He talks about people in the front row saying something inflammatory and he looks over and they start to cower as they didn’t know he could hear them. He says triggering pro-wresting fans on the internet is easy. He says who he is, isn’t far from the character he plays on TV. He got into fights in football and in college people thought he was a jerk. He brings up how fans hated his gear and mentioned him looking like a waiter, so he decided to wear it longer just to troll them. That’s fantastic actually. Punk says Corbin has thicker skin than some of their recent guests (shot fired at Seth I think) and that you have to have thick skin. He was always in that position when he did the Straight Edge Society stuff and it was worse in the Bible Belt where grandmas would swing at him. He brings up the dog food segment and he knows Vince would want real dog food used, so wants to know if it was the real deal. Corbin says 1000% percent it was real and admits he accidentally got some in his mouth. They weren’t subtle with this as Roman is the big dog and he had to feed him.

-Booker talks about getting the rub and talks about how he had to focus in and not mark out when he wrestled Taker. He brings up Corbin being in the ring with The Rock. Corbin calls it an honor and that even if you had no clue who The Rock is, you know he is a star. He talks about taking the Rock Bottom and calls The Rock one of the best ever on the mic and Punk says thank you to include himself in that group. Corbin agrees with him and mentions the Pipe bomb promo.

-Renee thanks Corbin for joining them as they get ready for the next break.

-Back with Renee as she plugs TLC on Sunday and brings up the TLC from 2 years ago when Balor and AJ wrestled a classic.  However that’s just part of the story as she throws to a special look at the match.  We start with breaking news about Wyatt being out of the scheduled match with Balor and as a way to make up it for it, AJ Styles was given the spot.  The crazy part is that AJ was with SmackDown in South America and had to hop on a flight to get to Minnesota on very short notice.  Finn says he and AJ have had similar careers and yet, never had a match against each other.  Finn puts over that they have similar styles and meshed well.  The fans were chanting “this is awesome” before the match started.  They had a great exchange following a double count-out tease and they had the crowd rocking with them.  Finn says it was a sweet moment….a too sweet moment.  That Too Sweet at the end wasn’t planned and it was AJ’s idea as they were shaking hands.  Finn says they delivered that day without having a storyline.  It was two guys at the peak of their career doing what they can to be the best.

-Back to the panel and Booker was on commentary and says that you could feel it with the crowd.  He always talks to his students about having a moment like that.  Renee wants to talk about having moments like that and Paige talks about how she was told by The Rock that she was going to be debuting the next night against Punk’s wife.  She mentions she loves AJ and she didn’t know she was winning the title until the doors were open for the show.  She was told by Finlay and started freaking out, but AJ told her it was going to be fine.  Punk talks about a house show match against Chavo for the ECW Title and weather kept a ton of people from getting there on time.  The only ones that made it were Steamboat, Punk, Chavo, MVP, and Taker.  Steamboat asked Punk and Chavo if they could go 60 minutes to buy time and if not then it would go straight to the Main Event of Taker/MVP.  Steamboat walked down the ramp 55 minutes into their match and they knew they could go home.  Punk then jokes that AJ and Finn should have kissed as they were doing the Too Sweet.

-Renee hypes FOX NFL on Thursday with Baltimore vs New York Jets.  They throw to Brandon Williams (Ravens DT) who does a Macho Man impression.  He is a big fan of Macho (aren’t we all).  Always great to see anything Savage related.

-Back to Renee who is joined by Matt Leinart (USC Heisman Trophy Winner) and Baron Corbin.  The link between the two is that they were former teammates with the Arizona Cardinals.  Leinart says they reconnected at SmackDown’s FOX premiere and it took Leinart a minute to realize who it was.  They met after the show and they joke that Corbin looked so much different.  They show Corbin’s picture from his Arizona days and he was much bigger.  He was 335 lbs back then and is down to 270 lbs now.  Leinart is proud of Corbin for finding this career.  Corbin says he came to the team in midseason and Leinart welcomed him to the team.  He told him he had the top floor of the hotel rented and Corbin could come over anytime.  They talk about the football locker room and Corbin says it is still a competition even when you are teammates.  Corbin says he was in Indy and you were fined for fighting there, but in Arizona he got a hug from Russ Grimm (Western PA kid, Southmoreland High School) for punching someone.  Awesome!

-We take another break!

-Breaking news as we return: The Viking Raiders have issued an open challenge for TLC.

-Back to our main panel and The Pay it Off Segment.  Paige is given the chance to pay off the Bray/Miz match and she wants to see Miz’s dad, and Punk jokes about seeing IRS show up which gets a laugh out of everyone.  Paige says he is going to get people in trouble for saying that and Punk says it’s ok as he does have a dad.  She would like to see match without the red light and Punk agrees with that.

-They show the divorce segment from RAW and Punk gets to pay off the Rusev/Lashley table match.  He doesn’t think Rusev needs to be with Lana anymore.  If he was the booker they have the match and go their separate ways and Lana gets on Lashley’s nerves and we get another divorce.  Now Lana is scorned again and gets a tag team after the new buddy team of Rusev and Lashley.  This leads to a tag match at Mania where Lana is in a shark cage above the ring.  The new team is sick of Lana as well and the loser of the match gets her.  Then they can do a Saudi show and he will give his ideas for what to do with Lana in Saudi after the show.  Amazing!

-We take another break as really nothing was following that.

-Back with Renee as she says you can’t go anywhere without being reminded of the WWE and throws to an episode of Jeopardy where “WWE Slammy Awards” was a category.  They show a few of the questions and they didn’t get the one about Vince correct, but knew the one about The Rock.

-A new segment next called Smarten Up as they are going to have a WWE Trivia contest.  Booker has a suitcase full of money and our contestants are Punk, Paige and Corbin.  Punk writes “I heart AJ” on his dry erase board.  Aww, what a softy.  There will be 3 questions with each being worth more money.

-Question 1: This WWE Superstar beat Hulk Hogan at Mania VI.  Booker says this is way too easy.  Paige gets Warrior, Punk says Slaughter (what) and Corbin gets Warrior as well.  Punk says he was an NWA guy.  He was watching Starrcade, brother.

-Question 2: Which WWE Hall of Famer made his debut as the Ringmaster.  Paige: Austin, Punk: Austin, Corbin: Stone Cold.

-Question 3: Who was the first man to win the WWE Title by winning The Royal Rumble.  This is rather easy too, but Corbin has already said he doesn’t know.  They all say Flair, but Corbin admits he wrote his answer down after Paige revealed her answer.

-Heading into Question 4 Paige is in the lead:  Which former World Champion won the title in 1994 at the age of 1994: Paige says Race and loses all her money.  Punk says Flair and he is wrong.  Corbin doesn’t even given an answer, so we have no winner.  Booker gets to keep his money. The answer of course was Bob Backlund.

-That was a rather easy trivia contest and it hurts my heart that nobody could get all 4 of them.

-We take our final break!

-Back with news of the nWo going into the Hall of Fame and hearing the classic porno music again is great.  Batista is also going in and Renee brings up that he was told by those in the WCW Power Plant he would never make it in the business.  Alex McCarthy tweets that Christian should be included in this year’s class.  Punk says the Hall of Fame in baseball is not legitimate because Pete Rose isn’t in and the WWE one won’t be legitimate unless every member of the nWo gets in as well.  He wants VK Wallstreet on that stage getting a ring and Corbin says there will be 40 people up there.  Punk says more like 120.  This man is great!

-They actually have footage from twitter that someone found of Corbin’s fight as a member of the Cardinals.  Punk gets the last word as he wants Scott Norton to get a Hall of Fame ring.

-Another entertaining and fun show here.  Punk fits in wonderfully as the guy throwing out smart comments and taking shots at people.  Corbin was great here as well, which shouldn’t shock anyone who saw him on Talking Smack.  I enjoyed the trivia contest, but I am a sucker for anything trivia related even if it was rather easy.  Again, another fun show that is worth spending an hour to watch.

-Thanks for reading and look for my review of the Austin/Goldberg interview Sunday night.