AEW’s Billy Gunn has accomplished plenty in his career, including winning the 1999 King of the Ring tournament during a time WWE was at its zenith in popularity. Unfortunately for Gunn, he was one of the few King of the Ring winners to never rise above his level at the time, leading to him becoming one of the more forgotten winners in the history of WWE’s long-running tournament.

Over the years, some have attributed Gunn’s failure to move forward due to his feud with The Rock, where Rock’s insults towards Gunn in certain promos were thought to have made Gunn look weak. But while speaking at a “Monopoly Events” Q&A, Gunn seemed uncertain that was the cause of him losing momentum, instead suggesting it was because he wasn’t supposed to be in that spot to begin with.

“I don’t know, I honestly don’t know,” Gunn said. “I don’t even think I was supposed to win King of the Ring in 1999. I think somebody got in trouble, and it was just like ‘Who do we put it on? Oh, there’s Billy. Let’s put it on him.’ I wish I could answer that, I just don’t know. I mean, every time Rock jumps on you, especially me. If you’ve followed my career, I ain’t really a talker. That’s why I had Brian, cause he could do all the talking. 

“So when you have someone that’s really good at cutting promos, and you can’t really answer at that level, I’m just being for real right now, is I just wasn’t at that level. So did it halt my momentum? I don’t think so. I think I got in my own way. It’s what it is. Like I said before, I don’t have any regrets. It’s what I did. They put it on me, I did what they asked me to do, so they can never say that I didn’t do business. I did what I could do, and that was it.”

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The war of the streaming platforms outbidding and expanding their services is at an all-time high, especially when Netflix and Paramount went tit for tat in their bids to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, with Paramount outbidding its competitor. That said, AEW’s broadcasting partner merging with Paramount would allow WWE’s biggest rival to keep its assets together, as Paramount plans on picking up more television stations, including TBS and TNT, where AEW’s flagship programming of “AEW Dynamite” and “AEW Collision” broadcast on, respectively. Like AEW President and CEO Tony Khan, Jeff Jarrett sees the pros of this upcoming merger, which he discusses in a recent episode of his “My World” podcast.

“Some think Netflix let them do it, so that Paramount falls on their face. They’ll buy it for chump change. Now, I don’t think that…I don’t think Netflix let them do it,” the two-time Hall of Famer began. “I think they looked at it very clearly and what they wanted was the studios. They’re not the TV business. They are a hell of a successful, the biggest streamer in the world. And I think when the price got where it was at, those folks said, ‘Keep the main thing.’ And they tapped and their stock went up…I have a few folks…they always kind of thought Paramount was the way it was headed. Everything is consolidating…It’s going to build strength for every brand.”

As mentioned, Khan is indeed thrilled for this transition, as it would expand and feature his weekly programming in around 116 million homes in the United States alone, the most out of any US wrestling show, as predicted in a previous report. However, with every upside, there’s a potential downside. With David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, interested in putting the UFC on TV, specifically on Saturday nights during the same timeslot that  “Collision” occupies on TNT, it might change the day in which AEW airs its two-hour weekend show, or worse, the show being dropped. Oppositely, “Collision” could be shown before or after any UFC programming, creating a massive boost in viewership. More will be revealed soon.

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While it may have taken time for some fans to warm up to Orange Cassidy, the AEW star has proven to most of the promotion’s audience that he’s fully capable of holding his own in the ring against the industry’s heavy-hitters. However, that doesn’t mean that Cassidy loves long matches, as he revealed during an interview with Monopoly Events that he’d rather get in and out having exerted a minimum amount of effort.

“Special guest referee. I’m the referee,” Cassidy said when asked to name his favorite match type.

Later on in the session, Cassidy was asked to specify his favorite match, and his answer was along similar lines.

“My favorite is when I wrestled Will Hobbs on ‘AEW Dark’ and I beat him in 13 seconds,” Cassidy stated. “It’s my favorite because it was the shortest.”

Despite his personal preference for spending less time in the ring, Cassidy has wrestled more than 280 matches in AEW since the promotion’s very first show, nearly seven years ago. The aforementioned “Dark” match against Hobbs took place early in his tenure, and he’d later go on to face the future Royce Keys several more times, including in a 2021 “AEW Rampage” match.

Cassidy and his fellow members of The Conglomeration have been dealing with a new threat in AEW as of late: The Dogs. They’ve had some help against the new stable, however, joining forces with Darby Allin earlier this month.

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On June 24, 2007, Chris Benoit no-showed WWE’s Vengeance: Night of Champions pay-per-view, where he’d been scheduled to wrestle CM Punk and win the ECW World Championship. Benoit was replaced that night by Johnny Nitro – now known as Johnny TV, who real name is John Hennigan – before the world later heard that Benoit was not only dead, but had murdered his wife and son before ending his own life.

Now, 19 years later, Johnny TV opened up about that night, his success following the PPV, and the guilt that came after during an interview on “Insight with Chris Van Vliet.” “Around 3, I hear Chris Benoit hasn’t shown up, and if he doesn’t show up, I might need to fill in or something,” Hennigan recalled. 

At the time, Hennigan thought it was unlikely that Benoit would miss a show, let alone a PPV, but by 5 p.m., he and fellow WWE star Mordecai were told to be ready as possible replacements, and that one of them would be winning the title. “I spend the next two hours pacing, hoping that Chris Benoit does not show up.”

As history notes, Hennigan wound up beating Punk and winning the title. Though it was a milestone moment for him, it also led to deep feelings of guilt. “The next day, we get the news about Benoit and what happened,” Hennigan said. “I felt like crap. I felt so guilty just for being happy with something that came to be because of the tragedy.” Even today, it’s a difficult moment for Hennigan to look back on, and something he still feels confused about benefiting from.

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