Tommy Dreamer has broken his nose three times, which is why he spent a long stretch of his podcast explaining exactly what Raquel Rodriguez was dealing with on Monday night.
Rodriguez beat Sol Ruca for the WWE Women’s Intercontinental Championship on the July 27 edition of WWE Raw at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, suffering a legitimate broken nose early in the match and finishing it anyway. On Busted Open After Dark, Dreamer said the performance was the point.
“Raquel Rodriguez, gutted through a broken nose, had a tremendous match with Sol Ruca, and you got to really give your props to the Judgment Day and props to Raquel Rodriguez.”
He then walked through what actually happens to a wrestler in that situation.
“When you break your nose, instantly your eyes swell up. They close, and they tear up. You don’t know what’s going on. It rattles you, and it’s all pending on the break.”
“As time goes on, your body is this natural healing machine, and guess what? Your blood’s going to start coagulating because your body wants you to stop bleeding. And as you’re wrestling, you’re going to taste that blood. As you’re wrestling, you’re gonna taste clumpier blood. You want to obviously pick your nose. You want to blow your nose. You’re not supposed to blow your nose if you break your nose. You don’t want to pick your nose on national television. These are all things rushing through your brain as this is happening.”
Dreamer singled out the referee, who was seen cleaning Rodriguez up on camera.
“Jessika Carr did an amazing job wiping down her face during the commercial break, and it’s still bleeding.”
He also said the injury appeared to change Rodriguez’s demeanor rather than slow her down.
“Plus, it seemed to piss her off, because she continued to move forward. She put on one hell of an athletic performance, and if you really want to understand a champion, she gave you a championship performance.”
“I don’t want to say she earned that victory, she deserved that victory. The place felt for her in the need to win. And even though she was the bad girl in that match, she won over a lot of people’s respect and mine being one of them.”
“I broke my nose three times, and it sucks.”
Dreamer brought up Kevin Nash’s past critique of Rodriguez and said the exchange has worked out well for her.
“It was a good thing for social media because Kevin Nash critiqued her, and she took that to heart, and she admitted it, and she publicly said that, and he wasn’t being the bitter old veteran. He was trying to help somebody, and let me tell you, if anyone knows how to be a big working man, Kevin Nash was that.”
For context, Nash had this to say: “I get pissed off at her because she always works down,” Nash said on his “Kliq This” podcast. “They have to teeter to knock you off your f—ing base when you’re that much bigger than them.”
Dreamer said the title change should elevate the championship.
“I also think she could help elevate this Intercontinental title because who’s gonna stop her?”
He framed the loss as a necessary step for Ruca, who has moved quickly since arriving on the main roster.
“This is something that Sol Ruca has to go through to see if she could overcome adversity, because she came in fast-tracked, and I don’t want to say you want to slow her down, but this was the right call, and you could see it and feel it in the live audience.”
Dreamer closed on what he thinks was going through Rodriguez’s head at the three count.
“When she pinned her, everything rushes through your head, like your entire journey of where you are, the one, the two, the three. It’s like a flash, a rewind into a fast forward of your life.”
“It was a beautiful piece of artwork.”
The win is Rodriguez’s first singles championship on the WWE main roster since she debuted in April 2022. She is a six-time Women’s Tag Team Champion and a former NXT Women’s Champion, and she had come up short against Ruca in a title match on the July 6 edition of Raw. Ruca’s reign ended at 57 days. The finish came after Roxanne Perez sent Ruca into the ring post, allowing Rodriguez to hit the Tejana Bomb.
