Tama Tonga has officially responded after Dave Meltzer questioned the timing of his recent Ilja Dragunov post. The WWE star says there wasn’t some old-school wrestling playbook behind it — he simply thought it was a good clip to post.
The whole thing started when Tonga recently uploaded footage from Dragunov’s WWE run showing him no-selling Dragunov’s chops on SmackDown. The timing immediately got people talking because the post came only days after Dragunov made his AEW debut.
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Meltzer noticed that timing as well. He wondered whether Tonga was taking a deliberate shot at the former WWE star, although he made it clear he didn’t actually know what motivated the post.
“He did a post of Ilja, and he showed Jey chopping him and basically no-selling him. I don’t know if he was trying to get brownie points or someone told him to do it — I couldn’t tell you.”
Meltzer found the whole thing interesting because it reminded him of an old-school promotional tactic. He compared it to something promoters such as Bill Watts and Ole Anderson would do when wrestlers left their territories for WWE.
“But I saw that post and was like, ‘That’s an interesting shot.’ It’s like I haven’t seen that one used — that’s like out of the Bill Watts, Ole Anderson playbook of the ’80s.”
According to Meltzer, those promoters would sometimes dig up footage of departing wrestlers getting beaten up and put it back in front of fans. He saw at least some similarity between that tactic and Tonga suddenly posting the Dragunov clip.
“They would take stars of WWE who used to work in their territory and show clips of them getting beaten up.”
It didn’t take long for Meltzer’s comments to reach Tonga. The WWE star jumped on social media and acknowledged that his Dragunov post had apparently stirred up a lot more discussion than he expected.
“Hey, I seen Dave Meltzer talk about my post yesterday. I put out a post on Dragunov. Boy, it started stirring some s***.”
Tonga then questioned why everyone was reading so much into the clip in the first place. As far as he’s concerned, it was simply a good post.
“Am I not the only one who thought it was a good post?”
Then came Tonga’s response to Meltzer comparing the move to an old wrestling playbook. He jokingly dubbed Meltzer “Great Uncle Dave” before making it clear he wasn’t following anybody’s blueprint.
“Great Uncle Dave over here said I took it from a playbook. I don’t even read a playbook, bruh.”
So Tonga isn’t admitting to any carefully planned shot at Dragunov or AEW. The timing certainly got people talking, but according to Tonga himself, Meltzer might be giving him a little too much credit for how much thought went into the post.
What do you think about Tama Tonga’s response after Dave Meltzer questioned the timing of his Ilja Dragunov post? Let us know in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
