Tossing Salt Presents:
Ultimate Wrestling Q&A
Ric Flair, ROH, The Elite & More
DougMaynard.com
Doug Maynard

It’s the Ultimate Wrestling Q&A. Let’s roll.

Ricky Steamboat & Paul Jones versus Baron Corbin & Bron Breakker. Who wins?

Jones and Steamboat, for those of you who might not know, held the NWA Mid-Atlantic Tag Team Titles three times and the NWA World Tag Team Championship once between 1975 and 78 before Steamboat turned on Jones at the end of a two-ring Battle Royal. The veteran and the rookie together as a formidable tag team. Breakker and Corbin are similar in that Corbin is more experienced and Breakker is rapidly rising as a star. This would be a damn good match. Corbin and Breakker have the power and size advantage while Jones has the experience and Steamboat was arguably one of the best technical wrestlers of all time. I’ll go with the youth on this one. Corbin and Breakker win.

Didn’t Ric Flair have a podcast with his son-in-law Conrad Thompson? Woo Nation or something like that? Whatever happened to it? Does it still air?

Ric has had three podcasts that I’m aware of. Woo Nation, the one with Mark Madden, and then the most recent attempt, To Be The Man, with son-in-law Conrad Thompson. The most recent, with Conrad, ended last year after 80-plus episodes. Flair tends to get bored easily and the podcasts were extremely hard to listen to with Flair often drinking heavily while recording, having to have answers dragged out of him by Conrad, and talking over/laughing over any guests who might try to talk. They were bad. Bad. It’s probably for the best that they stopped production because it’s obvious that Ric didn’t want to do them and didn’t care.

Thoughts on Sabu not showing up at the Indie Hall of Fame because he didn’t want to ride an elevator to the event?

Sabu did return his deposit so it’s not all bad. This is just a perfect Sabu thing to do. If it was anyone else, it’d be messed up, but since it’s Sabu, it kind of makes sense in a warped sort of way.

I will argue only one man can save AEW – The Boogeyman. What say you?

No, you are wrong. The Boogeyman would be great to the land of All Elite, but his presence would just be a band-aid on the many wounds this company endures. To truly save AEW and make it into the success we all were hoping for when it was formed, there is only one true answer. Her name is Eva Marie.

Do you think there will ever be nostalgia for WCW the way there was for ECW?

While there will always be a strong nostalgia for WCW, it’s not like ECW. ECW was a special place and time and the fans were more like a cult than wrestling fans. WCW had a great run and things like the nWo, The Horsemen, the Nitro Girls, the Wolfpac, etc., will always have their spots in the hearts of wrestling fans, ECW was unique. There was nothing like it before nor will there ever be again.

I’ve been watching videos of Sean O’Haire and I’ve started to regret not appreciating him when he was around and feel like he may be getting forgotten. Which wrestler from the past do you feel isn’t talked about enough?

The names that come to my mind that were far better than they’re given credit for and are far unappreciated include Chris Kanyon, Mark Starr, Disco Inferno, The Gambler, and Chris Candido.

What if when the “Bloodline” shenanigans are done, Tama Tonga decides to backstab the Bloodline and join his old buddies from Bullet Club, AJ Styles, Karl Anderson, and Luke Gallows to bring the band back but this time dominating WWE?

You’re looking ahead for possible stories for the future and that’s pretty cool. This idea has merit and could be a strong possibility. I like it.

How do you think AEW will respond to the Elite’s attack on Tony Kahn? Past real-life incidents backstage have included suspension, titles being stripped, and termination. How do they react to a kayfabe attack?

Real-life incidents and precedents don’t matter and should be ignored, just as AEW will most likely do. I suspect we’ll get the remaining EVP, Kenny Omega get involved. Tony will most likely strip The Young Bucks of their tag team titles, thus setting up a future story where the Bucks can go after the “titles we never lost!”. We may get a kayfabe stripping of the EVP titles although I suspect that The Bucks have an iron-clad contract where they “can’t be fired” to prevent that from happening. Most likely, this will all result in some matches for the next PPV and then it will all be quickly forgotten as AEW moves on to something else.

Tony throws you the keys to Ring of Honor and says “Up the viewership!” What do you do?

The first thing would be to try and secure a television deal where fans can see the product. The next thing would be to go over the roster, decide who to focus on and feature, and the final step would be to work on creating compelling and interesting stories that will draw the fans back to the product and generate interest. All of this, plus keeping ROH and AEW as two different companies, should help to get the numbers and viewership up.

Given how WWE goes to B&W when someone gets busted open, should AEW have Toni Storm bleed during a match or angle and the opposite happens because she LITERALLY “gets color”?

That would be different. I can’t see it happening, but it would be an interesting take on things.

And there you go. My thanks for reading. Comments, thoughts, and any questions are welcome and appreciated. Be sure to like, share, and subscribe. And with that, let’s wrap things up. Take care and be well, my friends. Watch out for Dom & Liv in the broom closet and I’ll see you at the matches.

Ubuntu!