The Thread Killer

Especially since it turns out she had so many health challenges in that area, she had an ovary removed, and polyps in her uterus. Apparently they thought they weren’t going to be able to have children, so it’s hard not to be happy for them.

I never ever thought I’d see the day that a WWE wrestler would pay tribute to New Jack on RAW, including dressing like him and pushing a shopping cart full of weapons…but there you go. And that bump Breakker took over the top rope into the shopping cart was sick.

Thanks for the info. Aside from Bob Barnett’s AAA collection and the original Worlds Collide, Lucha is a real blind spot for me. We don’t have any TV channels or even streamers in Canada that broadcast current Lucha, so I’ve never been able to follow the product. I don’t even know a reliable way of seeing it by less than legal means. I’m not going to lie, I have actually enjoyed both WWE/AAA shows so far, so I hope WWE gets AAA a TV or streaming deal.

I guess that depends on your perspective. I am not a regular Lucha viewer, not because I don't care for Lucha, but more because I really don't know where/how to watch the weekly AAA and CMLL TV shows, or the PPV's. I used to have Bob Barnett's awesome Best of AAA DVD set from the early 90's (actually, I guess I still do have it somewhere) but obviously the scene has changed massively since those days. I have two friends online who are both quite into Lucha. One of them actually only watches Lucha Libre and he doesn't watch any American stuff at all. The other is one of those guys who somehow finds the time to watch pretty much everything, (don't ask me how...I'm retired and I don't even watch all 3 WWE shows and 2 AEW shows plus TNA, and NJPW, MLW and NWA and then Lucha on top of that. There aren't enough hours in the day, especially when you follow others sports and TV shows.) The friend who watches everything, saw the show yesterday, and was instantly bemoaning how WWE ruined AAA, how this isn't "real" Lucha, WWE is Americanizing Lucha, bringing a bunch of their castoff workers to AAA and are diluting it, and it's basically another example of how WWE ruins everything, up to and including the world. My other buddy who only watches Lucha pointed out that fair enough...WWE has changed AAA since buying in. But he counter-argued that the increased production values are great, there are way more fans into AAA since WWE bought a stake in the company and (and this this was the important thing to him) he claims (and I have no way of knowing if this is true or not) that AAA has basically been hot garbage for years now, so no matter what WWE does to AAA it's going to be a lateral move, at worst. I watched the show this afternoon. I didn't see it live because I watched UFC 319 last night (and I thought WWE choosing to run AAA's supposed biggest show of the year against one of UFC's most anticipated shows of the year was an odd choice. I know they love to counter-program AEW but now TKO is basically counter-programming themselves.) I actually liked this show. Then again, I liked the new "Worlds Collide" show a couple of months ago. Let me be clear, there were no "great" matches on this show (unlike Gable/Vikingo from Worlds Collide) but I still thought it was fun. Firstly, the crowd was super hot, and very into the event, which definitely helped. Plus, the thing about Lucha (at least the AAA/WWE brand of Lucha) is that even if it's goofy, or sloppy, or even phony and fake looking...it's too fast paced to be boring. I have read that previous years Triplemania went on far too long, but this was a fast paced, easy to watch show that clocked in at around 3 hours. So even if it wasn't great, at least it wasn't padded out and needlessly dramatic and boring. It's Lucha, so I kind of go into it expecting plenty of botches. It didn't bother me. -> The "Copa Bardahl" match was first, and it was fun. I got to see La Parka (not the real, chair swinging, middle aged, psychotic L.A. Park, sadly.) Abismo Negro and Taurus are both built like bulldozers, are did some nice power stuff. I really liked seeing Mecha Wolf and Cibernetico. I guess they treat these matches like The Royal Rumble, where pretty much anybody can show up. Speaking of which, Otis made his return in this match. In WWE the guy was basically a midcard comedy act going nowhere, but I'll say this much...he was crazy popular with these AAA fans. Like, they were chanting his name and were so enthusiastic that the announcers even mentioned it. There was plenty of comedy with Pimpenela and Otis working together. And of course what everybody is talking about is the return of Omos, and his "confrontation" with Microman. That certainly was an amazing visual. My friend told me later that AAA did the same thing last year with Microman and Satnam Singh from AEW, but I never saw it. Anyhow, this was harmless fun. -> El Mesias vs. El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. was fine. The crowd was very hot for this match, and it was decent. Pretty much like a TV match. It only went 10 minutes. There certainly was lots of backstory behind this, because the announcers kept talking about the history between Mesias and Wagner's father, who was at ringside and ended up getting involved. This was a nice contrast to the comedy aspects of the opener. -> The Judgement Day vs. Lola Vice, Nino Hamburguesa and Mr. Iguana was basically a comedy match. Nino did the face-in-peril routine, until he finally made the hot tag to Iguana, and the crowd went nuts. Iguana did his comeback, and then Finn pulled out his own Demon puppet, who got into it with the stuffed Iguana, but they both got distracted when Hamburguesa gave them both hamburgers. This was what it was. Obviously, I don't know how this kind of stuff would go over with a normal WWE crowd, but I got the impression that the AAA fans in Mexico City are used to this kind of thing and enjoy it, based on the crowd reaction. It only went 12 minutes, and it wasn't boring, so I have no complaints. -> Los Garza vs. Pagano & Psycho Clown was okay. Quite honestly, it was like any other garbage match you would expect to see in AEW or WWE these days, except it was a lot shorter at around 13 minutes. Once again, they did a decent job alternating between comedy in the previous match, and the more serious stuff like this. Los Garza dropped the titles, but I don't think it will hurt them any. If anything, it will probably help their credibility if they go back to the main WWE roster. -> Rey Mysterio inducted Konnan into the AAA Hall of Fame. I fast forwarded through most of this, although I did catch the part where Konnan chewed out somebody in the crowd for heckling him and not letting him talk. -> I have to be honest, I skipped most of the Women's Title Match. Nattie has always been average at best, and when I saw that she was fighting a pudgy woman in a native headdress, I figured I'd skip to the last few minutes. This went around 10 minutes and based on what I did see, I didn't miss much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. -> So the Main Event... Here's the thing. When I saw Worlds Collide, the AAA fans seemed perfectly happy with Vikingo. Well let me tell you, they aren't now. They booed the SHIT out of this dude. You could tell AAA knew it was coming, and tried to head it off by having Rey Mysterio and Vikingo's Dad embrace him backstage before he went to the ring...but it didn't help, not one little bit. These people do NOT like this dude anymore. So I texted my buddy to ask him why, and what he told me is kind of creepy, if it's true. As we all know, Alberto Del Rio is pretty much on everybody's blacklist because in addition to being a general pain in the ass to deal with backstage, he has a well documented drug problem, plus there have been serious allegations made against him of domestic abuse, assault, and even kidnapping, and rape. Despite that, AAA didn't seem to have a problem with him working there. When WWE took over, they got the belt off ADR right away, and transitioned it onto Vikingo. Then, they recently had ADR lose a "loser-leaves-town" match. (How legitimate that match was is apparently up for debate.) Even though he's a heel, apparently a large (and apparently very vocal) segment of the AAA fanbase still love Alberto Del Rio, and they're pissed off that he lost the belt, and that Vikingo has usurped him. So they have decided to show their displeasure by booing the shit out of Vikingo. Supposedly it's not because Vikingo isn't a good wrestler, it's just that a large segment of the AAA fans want Alberto Del Rio. I suppose you could compare this situation to the pop that Brock Lesnar got when he returned at SummerSlam, although what Lesnar has been accused of is pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to Del Rio. The upshot was...El Grande Americano came to the ring, and received a surprisingly positive reaction. I assume his gimmick was/is intended to insult or offend Lucha fans, but considering the fact that they sang along with his theme song, and cheered him louder than Vikingo, that plan doesn't seem to be working. Dragon Lee got a decent reaction, and Dom Mysterio was received like the second coming of El Santo. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'm not lying when I say that Dom was by far and away the most popular guy in this match, and Vikingo was definitely the least popular, and you could tell that was not the reaction they had been hoping for, even if they knew it might be coming. Vikingo is still carrying himself as a babyface and these fans are not buying what he's selling. The match was what it was. All four guys were in there at the same time doing Lucha stuff, so it was pretty much total chaos. There were some good spots, one of the highlights was when Dom and Americano put Vikingo through the English announcers table so hard it looked like they almost killed him. Highlights included Corey Graves pointing out that the English announcers were the ones who had to look out on this show, because they were on the other side of the border, and the sound clearly picking up Konnan saying about Vikingo: "He's okay. He's working." As you would expect, there were a bunch of run-ins, The Judgement Day, the LWO, and the two fake El Grande Americanos (who some people speculate are Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate.) The end came when AJ Styles interfered, and even though the crowd wanted Dom to win, they were so excited to see AJ Styles that they blew the roof off the place anyhow. Except when Vikingo got the pin...because they were not happy about that. But overall, in my opinion, this was the best match on the show, which as the Main Event, it should have been. Today, I have seen a bunch of people on Twitter claiming that the way the fans reacted to this match, and all the run-ins proved that WWE is ruining AAA. The only problem with that theory is, they were in Mexico City, and it was sold out, and I saw plenty of crowd shots, and I didn't see a whole lot of American fans there. If the AAA fans really did turn on Vikingo over Alberto Del Rio, I think that's a AAA thing, I don't think you can blame WWE. And from what I am told, multiple run-ins were hardly a rarity in AAA before WWE showed up. But obviously I can't speak to that either way, because I didn't watch AAA before this. So in answer to your original question @WingedEagle, the show was okay. Let's be honest...it was a free show on YouTube. If I had been expected to pay for it or if I was a die hard Lucha fan, I might feel differently, but like I said earlier, it was fast paced, and goofy fun. From what I have been told, business in Mexico is red hot all around right now, but apparently if you want "serious" Lucha Libre you need to watch CMLL because the WWE version of AAA is certainly not serious, but in my opinion that doesn't necessarily make it bad.

I couldn’t figure out why they would even do that, but I just watched Triplemania and now I get it.

Last night's episode of SmackDown was shockingly good. They seem to have decided to focus a lot more attention of their Tag Team division lately. I don't know why they're doing it...but I'm all in favor. The SD Tag division is ridiculously stacked, especially in comparison to the RAW Tag Division. Fraxiom vs. The Miz and Carmelo Hayes was a lot of fun, although it's obvious where they're going with the Miz/Melo deal. DIY vs. The Street Profits was also fun. And now it looks like "MFT" is going to be throwing their hats into the ring as well, although considering the overall talent level in that stable, I'm a lot less excited about that idea. I also hope they don't drop the Andrade & Fenix team, because those guys are great.

I do not require professional athletes to undergo an intelligence or a moral purity test before I allow myself to watch sports. Call me cynical, but I suspect most pro athletes would fail such tests. Have you ever heard of William Hayes? He was a player in the NFL who was quite vocal about the fact that he didn't believe that dinosaurs ever existed, and that fossils had been planted by archeologists. Then consider the case of NBA superstar Kyrie Irving, who was one of many pro athletes who believe the earth is flat. I'd go on with other examples of famous athletes from all sorts of other professional sports, because there are countless examples to cite, but my main point is... Professional athletes are, for the most part, morons. I could not possibly care less that Dricus du Plessis is Afrikaner, or is a Trump supporter. This is the UFC, pretty much everybody that works there is a Trump guy. I don't care. I don't care that Khamzat Chimaev is Chechen and is buddies with the Chechen leader. That has absolutely zero to do with why I will be watching them fight tonight. I know next to nothing about their personal beliefs, and I don't want to know, because once again...I don't care. These are two guys who are going to be locked inside a cage, and are going to beat on each other until one them is knocked unconscious, or quits. Lets just assume they both already have brain damage and take it from there. Chimaev is a Freestyle Wrestler, and has never lost a fight in the UFC. Du Plessis is a Kickboxer, who is also undefeated in the UFC, and he is also the UFC Middleweight Champion. As a fan of combat sports, I want to see who is the better fighter, how the two opposing styles match up against each other, and who is going to be the Middleweight Champion after tonight. I'm not going to lie, I was seriously considering unplugging my TV, and sitting alone in the dark with only a single candle burning, while I listened to folk music and wept about the state of the planet and the rise of fascism everywhere, while I rocked back and forth, terrified about how any minute now, Donald Trump is going to come crashing through my door and deport me to Florida with tariffs. But on second thought, I'll just watch the fight instead.

You said it. Tomorrow night is UFC 319 which has a kickass lineup. The Main Event is for the Middleweight Championship, between two guys who are undefeated in the UFC. All of the undercard fights are between ranked contenders, so the results of those fights will have definite ramifications on the rankings, and who might get title shots next. On top of all that the prelims feature the finals of this past season of The Ultimate Fighter. But it’s $70.00 and I don’t want to pay $70.00. If this card was taking place in 2026, I would get it as part of my Paramount+ subscription. A lot of the well-informed MMA press are reporting that this deal is basically Dana White and TKO throwing in the towel and waving the white flag against illegal streaming, because they know there are a ton of people out there who love the UFC product, but either can’t or won’t pay for the monthly numbered PPV’s. I for one will not miss pay-per-view.

Welp…so much for my “TKO isn’t going to get what they want in their next rights deal” theory. As of 2026, all UFC content moves to Paramount+ including their ridiculously priced monthly PPV’s. That means instead of having to shell out $70 - $80 for monthly PPV events, UFC fans will now get the big “numbered” shows as part of the $12.00 monthly subscription to Paramount+, probably around the time UFC 325 happens. Not to mention, as part of this deal, UFC will be airing select events on CBS Network television, which is crazy. A lot of the MMA press are speculating that this might spell the end for PPV events in general, because even Boxing is moving to streaming now. Between WWE moving their American PLE’s to ESPN for a huge bump up from the Peacock deal, and now UFC moving to Paramount for 7 years at 7.7 Billion, it looks like TKO is literally too big to fail at this point. This company is a monster.

Ugh, didn’t we already beat this topic to death in the Cornette Podcast thread, and the “Cancellation of Jim Cornette” thread, and the NWA Power thread?

Don’t know if it’s true, but the prevailing rumor right now regarding why Naomi was pulled from her match with Iyo last night is because she’s pregnant.

I love Steiner math. “You’re 47! And you’re 40! You’re like 100 years old combined!”

I wouldn't necessarily say that Endeavor ruined MMA as a watchable product. A lot of the issues MMA fans have with the UFC were in place when Zuffa still owned the company. The problem is, TKO are using the same blueprint now with WWE, and I don't think a lot of those things translate over from MMA to Pro Wrestling as well as some of the suits in TKO (namely Mark Shapiro) think they do. MMA fans were already used to the canvas in the Octagon (and the Octagon itself) being plastered with ads. They were used to the fight clock and replays being "brought to you by" different sponsors. MMA fans were used to huge delays between the fights, because of prolonged entrances and backstage interviews and promo packages for different fighters, not to mention movie ads and stuff like that. A lot of these traditions carried over from Boxing to MMA, to be honest. I think one of the reasons I haven't found the adjustment to the TKO takeover as jarring, is because I watch a lot of UFC shows and I was already used to all that stuff. I'm not saying I like it (I don't) but I'm used to it. Having said that, I think TKO assumes that there is a lot more crossover between the UFC and WWE fanbase than there actually is. Hardcore MMA fans tend to be men, aged 18-49 (every advertiser's wet dream demographic) and they are pretty much bloodthirsty jock goons. Look at your average WWE crowd. There are a ton of families and kids there. Not to mention, hardcore MMA fans tend to look down their noses at Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling fans. MMA fans are nowhere near as emotionally invested in the fighters, either. Sure, some fighters are more popular than others, but if a guy gets cut from UFC, then he's cut. UFC is much more of a heartless, cutthroat environment than WWE traditionally has been. The fans don't relate to the athletes the same way at all. I think TKO is going to have to realize at some point (if they want this to work) that the fanbases need to be treated differently...but Mark Shapiro is a total moron, so that may very well not happen.

Not that anybody here at PWO will care, but apparently this deal will only affect customers in the United States. Here in Canada, we never got Peacock to begin with, and I don’t think we’ll be getting this new ESPN stuff either. For International viewers, everything WWE is all bundled on Netflix: RAW, NXT, SmackDown, all PLE’s and the PLE/PPV archives. So I suppose, in theory if you wanted to see a PLE you could just use a VPN to log into Netflix. Apparently a lot of people have been doing that already because there are fewer ads as opposed to Peacock.

I was surprised somebody didn't end up bleeding in that match as well. They proved the night before with Gunther that they're not squeamish about blood anymore, although maybe they didn't want to do it two nights in a row, in both Main Event matches. Plus, Cena has a legitimate acting career, he probably doesn't need to be cutting up his forehead at this point, especially with only 9 appearances left.