Episode 77: The TakeOver: Philadelphia and Royal Rumble Special

Episode notes

NXT TakeOver: Philadelphia

NXT’s hot streak of quality events continues!

Champion Andrade “Cien” Almas and Johnny Gargano tore the house down in the NXT Title match. They both seem destined for big stories in the coming months before the next TakeOver but, for now, we can just bask in the afterglow of how special this match was.

Plus Ember Moon retained her woman’s title against Shayna Baszler in a hard-hitting match. But will Moon lose that title to Baszler in the coming months to head to the main roster or should she stick around NXT a bit longer?

Not to be outdone, Undisputed Era’s Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly retained their tag titles over The Authors of Pain while their leader Adam Cole came up short against Aleister Black. Where does this trio go next to keep their footing in NXT?

All that… and we’ll even discuss the return of the XFL, the latest rifts in Bullet Club and why Kenny Omega’s reunion with Kota Ibushi brought tears to our eyes.

Royal Rumble

Oh, what a Royal Rumble it was!

It’s great to finally have a Big 4 weekend that everyone’s given rave reviews too. We had not one, but TWO great Royal Rumble matches, including the first-ever women’s event. Shinsuke Nakamura and Asuka have been near-unanimously praised as the right winners of the contests and there were tons of legends who returned to keep the crowd engaged.

But significantly, UFC star Ronda Rousey made her debut after Asuka’s big win. With reports coming out that she’s a full-time wrestler now, how optimistic are we that we’ll enjoy what she brings to the table?

And now that we’re pretty sure Nakamura will face AJ Styles for the WWE championship, where does that leave best friends Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens? And how does Roman Reigns get his long-expected match with Brock?

Welcome to the Road to WrestleMania!

Hosted by Hal Lublin, Danielle Radford, Mike Eagle and Lindsey Kelk

Produced by Julian Burrell for Maximum Fun.

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