The Phantom Rant: COPE into 2025

Happy New Year to everyone as it’s time for yet another edition of The Phantom Rant. I am Joe Davis coming to you as always from New York City and the new year has me feeling slightly optimistic about things. The WWE continues to be on fire as they march towards their impending debut on Netflix. Seth Rollins vs. CM Punk is going to be a hell of a main event for the first episode of RAW in the streaming era for the show. Never mind they have Roman vs. Solo to determine who is the rightful tribal chief…which is a main event in of it self. So I can’t wait for the debut of RAW on Netflix this coming Monday night.

Even AEW has some sparks of life coming off the World’s End pay per view. Granted the wrong person won the World title match at the PPV. I stand by my last column where I said Orange Cassidy should have won the World title. But after the events of the pay per view, I see where they are going. Adam Copeland…now just COPE came out with FTR to make the save when The Death Riders were about to beatdown everyone once again. He cut a promo on Moxley and it’s now setting up a feud with Moxley vs. COPE. I have nothing against this feud. I mean it should be a good feud from a wrestling standpoint. Moxley needs something to light a fire under him since he still is phoning it in. According to COPE during the media scrum thing after the pay per view he wants to have a gritty and grinding NWA Title match with Moxley. I am all for something like that.

COPE would make a good AEW Champion. But the guy is injury prone at fifty one years of age. Now assuming he doesn’t do any ill advised dives off the top of the AEW steel cage…he might just be fine. I as a fan do worry about him. He does have a surgically repaired neck and that has to take a toll on the body. I believe the term wrestlers use is the “bump card”. Again he’s fifty one so that card might be pretty damn full right now. Assuming all does go well and he doesn’t get hurt again, I do think he would make a good champion. Of course we could come full circle with him and Christian Cage since Christian holds that title shot at any time contract and COPE could win the title only to lose it to his “former” friend in an instant. I would find that funny if it happens like that.

Speaking of funny, I got a lot of heat on the official NoDQ Facebook group the last week in the post about Ricochet getting toilet papered at the pay per view. I simply said in a comment “This is how you bury someone”. As of this writing it got over 84 reactions and numerous people tagged me in their responses. If you had seen him the week before get punked out by The Hurt Syndicate, you could understand why I thought he was being buried. Well, I can admit I was wrong. Ricochet got his manhood back and than some when he bludgeoned Swerve Strickland with a pair of scissors and left him a bloody mess. It was one of the best revenge moment’s I’ve seen in wrestling in a long time. Usually it’s the good guy who does this sort of thing to the bad guy. But here it worked brilliantly to turn Ricochet heel. I didn’t think he had it in him. Of course the revenge that Swerve will have to get on Ricochet will be tenfold. But good on Ricochet for pulling that off.

Circling back to the AEW World Championship, there are still a lot of people vying for the title. MJF has made it known he wants his Triple B back. Assuming COPE wins the AEW Title, I think a COPE vs. MJF feud would be very good for AEW. I just can’t see Moxley vs. MJF working out since it would be a heel vs. heel dynamic. AEW like I said last week desperately needs a good guy to be World Champion. Can COPE be that guy? I don’t know. With MJF and Christian Cage still in the mix, he would certainly make a good champion to be chased. Of course all of this is a moot point if the title stays with Jon Moxley.

I still like The Death Riders. But they are starting to fall flat. Hopefully this new feud with Rated FTR will be something to rejuvenate them. It’s like I said, it’s all about dynamics and for a heel faction to really be good they need equally good people to fight with them. Rated FTR might be that group to finally give The Death Riders their comeuppances. On Collision tonight, part of the Death Riders showed up to issue a warning to Rated FTR. They also tried to send a message by duck taping the Rock N’ Roll Express to some scaffolding…but that just looked stupid. Rated FTR eventually made the save as The Death Riders ran away to fight another day. The Death Riders…especially Moxley came off looking very lame. I mean if you want to get some heat especially with legends like the Rock N’ Roll Express, you gotta leave them laying in a heap or something.

So yeah, The Death Riders are in desperate need of something interesting happening and Rated FTR might be it. In the mean time there’s gonna be a Casino Gauntlet match on Dynamite this coming week and the winner gets a shot at Jon Moxley and the AEW World title the following week in Mox’s hometown of Cincinnati. The Casino Gauntlet match is an odd match because you don’t know who’s in it (aside from Jay White who won the number one spot) and in theory you could end up never making it into the match because it can end at any time even before you’re called to go in.

There’s compelling stories for a lot of people potentially in the match. Jeff Jarrett is doing his old man wants one more piece gold story. Hangman Page is teetering on the brink of insanity because he wants the title. There’s the aforementioned Jay White looking for it as well. Honestly they could go with someone not even in the discussion to get the shot at Moxley. I’ll be interested in seeing who wins this match. I don’t expect them to actually beat Jon Moxley for the title, but stranger things have happened.

Well that’s it for this week. We’ll see how RAW on Netflix goes (hopefully with no snafus or buffering). Until next time take care and as always you can leave feedback down below, on twitter or email me at phantomlordnyc@gmail.com