The Thread Killer

So apparently the injury to Cargill screwed up the finish to the Main Event last night. I remember as I was watching the match I thought something wonky had happened, but I only had one eye on that match because I was also watching the Jays/Rays game at the same time, so it didn’t have my undivided attention. Supposedly, Stratton was always supposed to go over, but Cargill was supposed to break up a pin, which she didn’t do. Even after she got busted open, Cargill hit her finish on Jax, and then Stratton dropkicked Cargill and went for the cover herself. Cargill was supposed to break up that pin attempt, but instead she rolled out of the ring and was being checked on by the doctor. So the ref makes the count, but once the ref realizes that Cargill isn’t going to break up the pin she just stops counting at 2, and Jax doesn’t even try and kick out. Apparently the fans started booing (I didn’t notice at the time because I had the sound muted…both because I was watching the baseball game, and because the commentary team was Michael Cole and Booker T, which I’m pretty sure is the commentary team in hell.) Stratton ended up going to the top rope, hitting her Moonsault for the win, but apparently that was not the planned finish. Apparently you won’t be able to see any of this on YouTube because they have edited the clip. What a clusterfuck.

DAMN Cargill posted a couple of follow up pictures of the cut on Instagram and it’s pretty gross. I’m not even going to repost them here because they might make people sick. That’s going to leave a nasty scar, and she’s going to be out for a bit, I bet.

Nia Jax strikes again. During the main event tonight on Smackdown, she threw Jade Cargill headfirst into the steel steps, and Cargill came up bleeding badly from a cut on her forehead. It was a pretty nasty looking cut, and there’s no way she had time to do it herself. Mind you, a lot of the blame for that probably needs to go on Cargill for not protecting herself.

This situation might be part of WWE finally figuring out that they have a real problem on their hands when it comes to their developmental system. I have actually been paying more attention to NXT over the past few months, and the picture is not pretty when it comes to the women's talent. Not that they don't have enough...they have way too much. RAW and Smackdown both have about 15-20 roster spots for women. And some of those spots are rightfully taken up by women who aren't going anywhere, nor should they. RAW Here are the "top" women's names on RAW. These are all women who have either held championships or been involved in angles that required TV time over the past 6 months... Stephanie Vaquer (Women's World Champion) Becky Lynch (Women's Intercontinental Champion) Asuka Bayley Iyo Sky Lyra Valkyria (although don't ask me why) Nikki Bella (again...don't ask me why) Raquel Rodriguez Roxanne Perez and Rhea Ripley (who is not only probably the top woman in the company, she's basically one of the top stars in WWE) On top of that you have huge names like Naomi and Liv Morgan who are out right now, but will be returning to top spots. Then you have middle of the road talent like Ivy Nile, Kairi Sane, Nattie and eventually Zoey Stark. Oh yeah...and Maxxine Dupri. SmackDown Top names on SmackDown... Tiffany Stratton (WWE Women's Champion) Giulia (Women's US Champion) Charlotte Flair (1/2 of Women's Tag Team Champions) Alexa Bliss (Other 1/2 of Women's Tag Team Champions) AJ Lee Bianca Belair Chelsea Green Jade Cargill Nia Jax Zelina Vega Plus on SmackDown you have Candace LeRae, Kianna James, Michin, Alba Fyre, Nikki Cross, and eventually Piper Niven again, hopefully. Oh yeah...and B-Fab. So here is my point... Both of those women's rosters are pretty much packed to the limit with talent. Even if you wanted to, I don't think you could realistically fit any more female talent in there, unless you made cuts to the existing rosters to make room. And there are no names on those rosters which are obvious potential cuts, except for Nikki Bella and maybe Maxxine Dupri and B-Fab. When you look at NXT and Evolve, it's almost ridiculous. There are 45 women in the WWE developmental system, and they have a whopping 2 hours of network TV to fill, and a show on Tubi. So essentially, there are pretty much no available Main Roster spots for the women, and a massive group of women who are basically sitting around, waiting to fill the spots. Now on top of that, you have the TNA Knockouts who are coming in and taking up NXT TV time. This is where I question WWE's strategy when it comes to their "NIL" program. The "ID" program is dumb enough, because that's basically just WWE signing independent female talent to keep them from going to AEW. But in the case of the NIL program, they are literally going out and recruiting female athletes who aren't even in the Pro Wrestling business and then training them to wrestle, only to have them sit in Evolve or NXT because there is nowhere to go. I remember the last time WWE released a handful of developmental talent, a lot of fans started freaking out about how unfair it was, since TKO/WWE could afford to pay them. Then reports started to come out that WWE had decided who to cut based on perceived level of effort and attitude. I said it at that time, and I'll say it again...what the hell is the point of having all this talent signed up, if you're not going to use them? When it comes to Jazmyn Nyx, I guess WWE didn't release her, but they basically low-balled her on a developmental contract offer, because they probably didn't see a whole lot in her. Based on the limited amount I saw of her myself, I can't honestly say that I disagree with that assessment. When it comes to the WWE developmental system, I always end up looking at the talent as falling into one of several different categories. - Talent who just need more work, but eventually will probably have the skill to make it on the Main Roster. Somebody like Sol Ruca. In time, I can see her being good enough to get called up. Hell, Jacy Jayne and Lola Vice both proved with their segment on NXT TV this past week that while they may be ready from an in ring standpoint, they still have a long way to go once you put the spotlight on them. Watching segments like that really remind you that you're watching a developmental territory. That's the kind of thing where NXT being on national TV really doesn't do these guys any favors at all. - Talent who are pretty much ready, but there's no room for them on the Main Roster. This is basically what happened to Roxanne Perez, who ended up stagnating in NXT for ages before she finally got called up. There have been plenty of other examples of people like that, as well. I look at Fallon Henley or Kelani Jordan in this way as well. If there was room on the Main Roster, they'd probably be fine (although they might not set the world on fire) but there is no room for them. - Talent who are probably good enough to be on the Main Roster, but are basically being kept in NXT to work with those who aren't. This phenomenon seems to be a bigger problem with male talent, with guys like Ricky Saints and Ethan Page, but you could easily apply this category to Blake Monroe and Jordynne Grace. These are people who are basically as good as they're ever going to get, it's not like they're learning anything in NXT, but they stay involved in major angles on TV, to the point where you know WWE must be hanging on to them for a reason. You also have to wonder if some of these people are better off being the big fish in the small NXT pond, because they might not shine on the Main Roster. - Talent who don't seem to be ready for the Main Roster...and probably never will be. This is definitely the category I would have put Jazmyn Nyx in, sad to say for her. And quite honestly...there is quite a bit of talent in NXT right now who probably belong in this category. The interesting thing is, the imbalance is pretty amazing because NXT has WAY more potential female stars than they do men. Like, it's kind of shocking. Not to be mean, but guys like Andre Chase or Josh Briggs probably don't even belong on TV, because...damn. They might make it to the Main Roster as an extra...but that's about it. This is going to come across sounding cruel, and I don't really mean it to be, but when it comes to talent like Jazmyn Nyx, WWE should probably be doing more of that, not less. I don't want to see anybody lose their job just to be cruel, but those female roster spots are at a premium, and unless WWE is considering starting a new all female TV show or something...I really don't understand their hoarder mentality when it comes to talent. Eventually something's gotta give.

Not gonna lie, since her return, WWE did a great job of slowing building Asuka’s heel turn, finally culminating with what happened during and after the Main Event on RAW tonight. Of course everybody saw it coming from a million miles away, but it was still really effective. It helps that Asuka is able to straddle that fine line between corny overacting and coming across like a complete psycho. I am very interested to see Rhea & Iyo vs. Asuka & Kairi now.

Maybe, but you combine that with the insane amount of muscle he has packed on, his apparent lack of cardio (how could you have decent cardio at that size?) and his advancing age, and it all adds up to a recipe for…yikes. As a friend of mine was saying, I don’t even know why the hell at his age and this stage in his life, Lesnar would even do that to himself? It’s not like he’s going to be wrestling enough to justify “getting into that kind of shape” and he reportedly doesn’t really care about the business anyhow. Aside from vanity, I can’t imagine why a person would put their body through that kind of abuse.

I also couldn’t help but notice that after about 90 seconds of physical exertion, Lesnar’s face turned red, he was sweating profusely, and he looked as if his blood pressure had skyrocketed to the point that steam was about to start blasting from his ears. For the people who hate Brock Lesnar and don’t want him around, you may be in luck, because he looked like his heart is about to explode. Seriously, there were some eerie similarities between how Lesnar looked last night and how the Warrior looked the night of his Hall of Fame induction…and we all know how that worked out.

I don’t know if anybody has seen the clip going around Twitter and YouTube, but Jey Uso managed to almost knock himself out and busted himself open with a chairshot.

Good Lord, Lesnar is massive. He’s definitely exempt from the Wellness Policy, or he got himself a Testosterone exemption like Orton and Styles.

No

Did not expect that finish in the MJF/Briscoe match.

I felt that FTR vs Copeland & Christian match was kind of underwhelming and didn’t really deliver the way I was hoping it would. I felt it was just starting to build some steam when the whole Stokely/Beth stuff happened and kind of wrecked the flow of the match. It was also shorter than I was expecting. I assume based on what happened afterwards that there is going to be a continuation, but I didn’t much enjoy that.

I was morbidly curious regarding when Mark Shapiro's colossal stupidity was going to start to affect WWE, and it seems last week was a prime example of what is to come. Firstly, the moron gives that interview where he basically says that WWE needs to raise their ticket prices, because when Vince McMahon was in charge, WWE was catering their live event ticket prices to families, and TKO wants to see WWE ticket prices brought more in line with UFC prices. Lets ignore that clip that went viral last week of a fan complaining to Nick Khan that ticket prices were getting too high. On it's face, that interview was ridiculous for two reasons. Firstly, we all know that the only thing TKO cares about is maximizing profits above all else. They have demonstrated that repeatedly since the takeover. But even somebody with a Business Diploma from a Community College could tell you...you don't actually SAY THAT IN INTERVIEWS, not if you want to be seen as a fan friendly organization. All major corporations want to maximize their profits (especially those that have shareholders) but 99.9% of them aren't stupid enough to basically announce that they don't plan on being affordable for families. It's bad enough when you're a money hungry, greedy blood sucking corporation, you should at least do the fans the service of pretending that you care about your customer base. This leads to my second point, which I've said previously here at PWO... Mark Shapiro is so stupid that he literally doesn't differentiate between the UFC and WWE fanbase. Apparently either TKO is either the only major live event business that doesn't do market research (highly unlikely) or Mark Shapiro doesn't read the research, or even worse, he doesn't understand it. (Much more likely.) Just look at the crowd shots during WWE TV and PLE's. It's packed full of families, and kids. Then look at the crowd at your average UFC show. Dudebros. Lots and lots of single men (or men with girlfriends/wives but no kids, who presumably have lots of disposable income.) You can't assume that just because dudebros will fork out literally thousands of dollars for a UFC PPV ticket, that some poor middle or working class family is going to be willing to do the same thing. Especially when the families spend a ton of money on merchandise at these shows. So we had barely gotten past that ridiculous nonsense, when TKO announces they are doing Wrestlemania in Saudi Arabia. Like everybody else, I have read all the speculation that the Saudis are paying $100 Million to TKO to make this happen. Which makes sense, because when you factor in moving the entire dog-and-pony show over there for Wrestlemania week, it's crazy. They're doing the Friday SmackDown, both nights of Wrestlemania, and the RAW after Wrestlemania, all in Saudi Arabia. The expense of all that alone must be enormous. Today, a couple of sites reported that the figure TKO is getting is closer to $250 Million, and as insane as that sounds...I totally believe it. The Saudis have the money, and I can see TKO insisting on a price this high to make it happen. Never mind the optics from a political standpoint of doing a show with the Saudis. That point has been made and remade and beaten to death, and lets be honest, that horse has left the barn. WWE and the Saudis are in bed together now, with both legs under the covers, and that's not going to change. My main interest is how this decision is going to come across to the WWE fanbase. As we all know, WWE has pretty much trained their hardcore fans to eat whatever shit they serve up, and act like it tastes like chocolate cake. But this decision, coming right on the heels of the announcement about ticket prices going up could start to upset even the most apologetic of hardcore WWE marks. Over the past couple of days I saw footage on Twitter of some fans vocally booing this announcement at the actual press conference, and when it was recapped at the AAA show on Friday night, there were audible "You Sold Out" chants. Between jacking up ticket prices in the least diplomatic way possible, and moving their flagship event to Saudi Arabia, TKO/WWE is basically giving even their most ardent fans the middle finger. I'm legitimately curious about how the fans are going to take it. Add to that all the stories that are circulating that the Saudis actually tried to buy WWE before the Endeavor deal, and that they are still interested in acquiring them even after the formation of TKO? Yeesh.

Yeah, but Penta is actually kind of doing better as a solo act right now. With the way WWE treats their tag team divisions (at least the RAW tag division) Penta teaming up with Fenix would unfortunately kind of seem like a bit of a step down from where he is right now. I would definitely like to see the Lucha Brothers reunited at some point, but when it will actually mean something. Although this whole angle with Penta kind of feuding with The New Day could be heading in that direction.

I have also since read that the rumour is it was supposed to be Fenix and Andrade getting the Tag Title shot at the Paris PLE (which makes sense when you consider the winning streak they were on) but after SummerSlam Andrade got suspended and basically went home and went radio silent, so they fired him. There’s also some weird story about him being escorted out of the arena when he got suspended, and another story that he was asked to appear in AAA but refused. I don’t know how much stock I put in any of these stories at this point. Sucks for Fenix though, because that team was great, they were really on a roll, and it finally felt like he was getting some momentum.