Tossing Salt Presents:
Ultimate Wrestling Q&A
Jamie Hayter, Jungle Boy, Leva Bates & More
May 20, 2023
DougMaynard.com

You have the questions and I have the answers. It’s the Ultimate Wrestling Q&A. Let’s do this.

Why did Tony Khan make Jamie Hayter champion if he’s just going to sideline her and cut her TV time?

Why does Tony do anything that he does? Short-sighted booking and title switches without any long-range plans or ideas for where things are going next. He’s done this before with Scorpio Sky and the TNT Championship, with Wardlow and that same title, and with the tag team belts and The Gunns. It’s as if Tony books a title change but then forgets there’s a new champion or the reason for a new champion and the champion immediately loses all credibility. Hopefully, Tony will remember Jamie Hayter before long and give her the proper opportunities to prove herself and have a strong reign as the Women’s Champion. I say hopefully, but I truly doubt it will happen. Too bad for Jamie though because she deserves better.

Bray Wyatt is not currently listed in any fashion internally on the WWE roster. Thoughts?

I’m hoping that this is an intentional oversight by Triple H and he’s just waiting for the right time to relaunch Bray on WWE Television with a big storyline and feud. It’s either that or the WWE has lost all interest and faith in Bray and they’re just riding the clock until he’s removed entirely from the company. I’m hoping for the first and we get a debut by Bray and the Wyatt 6, reaping havoc all across the company, but we won’t know for sure until something happens.

So it’s Mustafa Ali versus Gunther at Night of Champions. Thoughts?

It’ll be almost a homecoming for Mustafa Ali in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a great opportunity for Ali to test his mettle against the Ring General which is Gunther. This is an interesting match and although I don’t have any doubts about who will come out on top in this battle, it’s a great way to light a fire under Ali and give the man a strong and well-deserved push. He deserves it.

John Cena says his body can’t handle wrestling anymore. Do you think we’ll get one more match from Cena for a retirement match? And if so, who should his opponent be?

His Hollywood career seems to be on fire right now with a Season 2 of Peacemaker, the new Barbie movie, and the most recent Fast & Furious movie all taking up more and more of his time, but I hope that WWE and Cena can figure out a way to give the fans one final match with all the smoke and whistles that he deserves. As for who, why not Cena versus Kevin Owens? Their rivalry was always a good one and their matches were solid, plus KO has a rep for keeping his opponents safe. With their history, Owens seems to me to be the perfect choice.

Jungle Boy recently said that he doesn’t like and isn’t comfortable doing promos and they’re “not his favorite thing”. Thoughts?

If Jungle Boy ever wants to truly make it in professional wrestling and move on to the World Championship in AEW or any kind of role in WWE, he needs to work on that and at least be able to comfortably cut a decent promo. He’s got a unique look and a great story, but he needs that extra something to ever get him over and past the mid-card, and being able to talk is part of the deal. Brock Lesnar doesn’t need to talk, but he’s a physically imposing monster and had Paul Heyman to speak for him. Bobby Eaton didn’t talk, but his in-ring skills were beyond compare, plus he had Jim Cornette. Jungle Boy is not a Brock or Bobby Eaton and he’s not even close, plus he doesn’t have a Cornette or Heyman in his corner to handle the promos. The bottom line is that Jungle Boy either learns to talk efficiently or he’ll never be any more than he is right now, a mid-card Indy darling for life.

Leva Bates found out that she was no longer part of AEW while at the dentist’s office. No one from AEW bothered to let her know that her contract was expiring. Thoughts?

This seems to be a common problem with AEW in that they have all these people signed up, but don’t have any system in place to provide communication with the office. Chavo Guerrero went through the same thing when his contract expired and no one noticed or bothered to inform him until he called to check. And now, it’s the same deal with Bates. Khan needs to get an experienced hand in talent relations, such as Jim Ross, to handle these matters and keep the lines of communication between the office and the workers open and flowing. Situations like this make AEW look like amateur hour and very unprofessional. They need to do better.

Saraya says that she didn’t expect to wrestle when she signed with AEW. Thoughts?

Maybe it’s just me, but I would think that her role in the company would be a part of her contract negotiations when she signed up with AEW. Saraya was the one tweeting and bragging about her deal and she was the first one to get physical when she made her AEW debut, but now she’s saying that she didn’t expect to be wrestling. Then why did AEW sign her in the first place? For some reason, this claim sounds a little fishy to me. She hasn’t been impressive since her return to the ring and seems to have lost several steps due to her time away from the ring. I think she’s just making excuses now to attempt to justify the poor performance thus far. AEW is a wrestling company and Saraya is a well-known wrestler. If she wasn’t expected to wrestle, they wouldn’t have hired her. It’s just that simple.

Agree or disagree. Ken Shamrock belongs in the WWE Hall of Fame.

I can agree with that statement. Shamrock had a great career and was a strong part of the WWE for many years. I would say that he’s very worthy.

When you watched wrestling in the seventies and eighties who did you know was always gonna lose a match before the match even began?

There were several regular jobbers that you knew were going to take a beating and get whooped. If the Mulkey Brothers, Rocky King, Jeff Sword, Italian Stallion were on the card, or even older wrestlers like Swede Hansen, Brute Benard, Bill White, or Abe Jacobs, who were once top guys but were approaching the twilight of their careers were there, you knew that they’d be taking the falls and putting over the “stars” of the company.

When people talk about favorite/greatest tag teams why doesn’t the Nasty Boys get mentioned?

The Nasty Boys were a solid team and won gold in almost every territory or company they wrestled for, but they just didn’t, at least not to me, come across as big stars or top guys. They were brawlers and good for a fight, but they weren’t the attractions or draws that other teams like The Hart Foundation, The Road Warriors, The Midnight Express, or Demolition were. The Nasty Boys were big names, but they weren’t perceived as stars. Does that make sense? At least that’s how I see it.

And there you go. My thanks for reading. Comments, thoughts, and any questions are welcome and appreciated. And with that, let’s wrap things up for now. Take care and be well, my friends. Watch out for foreign objects and I’ll see you at the matches.

Ubuntu!