The Uncrowned Wrestling Show | McMahon dismissal denied, WrestleDream thoughts, Zach Gowen retires

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Jason Solomon (0:55)

Welcome to The Uncrowned Wrestling Show, Solomonster, here with you for Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 If you want to know how scummy wrestling can be, check this out. No more than two weeks ago, in Mexico, Elijo De Fishman killed a 75-year-old referee after grabbing him and giving him a packaged piledriver. And he suffered a traumatic brain injury. He died in the ring. Fishman was arrested on suspicion of negligent homicide. He paid a settlement to the family and he got off. Well, he was back in the ring this weekend, playing off that referee's death by trying to grab another referee to give him a piledriver too. Hilarious. Whatever money he paid to the family, he'll just make it back doing spots like that every weekend. Within a month, he'll be made whole again. I got a bunch of stories for you this week, including the retirement of a former WWE star and technically AEW star as well, thoughts coming out of last night's Raw and a terrible Smackdown from Friday, and some AEW WrestleDream thoughts. Although I admit, I don't know if I could top MJF's synopsis of the show. Fake World Champion defends fake world championship in a match with opponents who are way better than him and cheats to win. Russian slash German loser debuts by pretending he's a composer. Nick Wayne beat Jericho twice.

Man, I missed that guy. We need him back on TV ASAP. Preferably in the ring with that Russian slash German loser. Make sure you're subscribed to the Uncrowned Wrestling Show feed. Leave a review if you would, or you can sub to the main Ariel Helwani Show feed. The shows are uploaded there too. You should already be subscribed to that feed anyway.

I got one, no two, no three legal updates for you, as they pertain to WWE. So let's knock this out first. Per post-wrestling yesterday, there was a story that went up. Judge denies WWE and McMahon's effort to throw out the Ring Boy Lawsuit on US Constitutional Challenge to the Maryland Child Victims Act. A federal judge on Monday rejected an effort by WWE, its parent company TKO Vince McMahon, and current US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to have the Ring Boy Lawsuit dismissed because of the argument that a Maryland law the case was brought under violates the US Constitution. US District Judge James Bredar ruled that the Maryland Child Victims Act is constitutional as applied to the case. The lawsuit may now move forward towards the discovery phase, where depositions are conducted and evidence is exchanged. A teleconference is set for November 17th to schedule future deadlines. The case would still be at least several months away from a potential trial. Monday's ruling does not address whether the alleged abuse happened or whether the defendants are responsible for it. The plaintiffs in the case are seven men who were minors when they say they were sexually abused in the 1980s and 90s while setting up WWE, then WWF rings or running other errands. All seven allege abuse by former ring announcer Mel Phillips. One also alleges abuse by former WWE executive Pat Patterson and another alleges sexual harassment against former executive Terry Garvin. Phillips, Patterson and Garvin all died years before the lawsuit was brought to court. The plaintiffs allege that the McMahons and the company they formerly led were negligent in allowing the abuse to happen. And the defendants have denied the central claims of the case. In 2023, Maryland passed the Child Victims Act, which eliminated any time limits for filing civil lawsuits related to child sexual abuse. If not for the new law, the statute of limitations on the claims would have expired years ago. So that is where things stand. A big hurdle to overcome now moves on to the discovery phase. Anytime you hear the word discovery, that's when things get interesting.

And the other side is probably looking to shut this down before it goes any further. That's what happened with the antitrust lawsuit that MLW brought against WWE years ago. They were either just moving to or about to move to the discovery phase. And then everything got resolved. Everything got settled. MLW walked away with $20 million because that is not something WWE wanted to get into was the discovery phase. So this will be interesting. My assumption here is that we will end up seeing something similar unless, again, the plaintiffs really want to push this and pursue this. And look, I hope they do. The whole like ring boy scandal of the late 80s, early 90s has been talked about for a long time and has been a blight on that company. And if you really look into it and kind of dig into who Mel Phillips was and Terry Garvin, I mean, these were just disgusting individuals. Mel Phillips was a freak, Terry Garvin, I mean, he's no better. Pat Patterson had various accusations lobbed against him over the years. The thing with Mel Phillips, though, Mel Phillips wasn't just a ring announcer. And you could still see him. I mean, you go back, even stuff they upload on the Vault channel on YouTube, and some of those like old live events from the Boston Garden, and Maple Leaf Gardens in different places. And there he is, he's on the mic. But he also led the ring crew in many of these places. So he was responsible for bringing in a lot of these boys, and a lot of these young men to come in and help set up the ring, and do various other tasks, and you read some of the stories, and it just makes your skin crawl. And the foot fetish he had, and I won't get into all the details here. But the thing that always struck me, and it just was so blatant, was when they let Mel Phillips go, when all of these things were kind of brought to the forefront the first time, and this would have been, I guess, very early 90s, or maybe very end of the 80s. They had let Mel Phillips go, I think they had fired him, and it wasn't maybe six weeks, and they brought him back. And this is at a time where Phil Mushnick was covering a lot of this wrestling stuff in the New York Post, and he's no fan of Vince McMahon, even back then. He was kind of a thorn in their side too for many years. But he was writing about this, and he would have the occasion to talk to Vince, and I think it was a quote directly from Vince, but he had said, well, we brought him back, and made it very clear to him that he was to stay away from Little Boys. It's like, but you brought him back. You brought a known predator back to your company. And again, nothing like that would fly now. Him making a comment like that, him doing that. Are you kidding me? Forget about it. That company would be burned to the ground. But back then, very few people batted an eyelash. So it's not like, oh, we had no idea this was happening, and we got rid of these terrible people. It's like, yeah, but you brought back this guy within a matter of weeks. Was he really that valuable to the company that you felt like you had to bring him back knowing what he was accused of doing? But they did it anyway. So there is negligence there. What you can prove in court is very different. But the idea that Vince and Linda had no idea what was going on here, give me a break. They're guilty of sin.