The Thread Killer

Smackdown is only 2 hours now, and since it’s on traditional TV, you have to subtract 30 minutes of commercial time, so in reality it’s only a 90 minute show. I’m not saying last night wasn’t a talk heavy episode…it definitely was…but not quite as bad as 3 matches in 3 hours.

Sooner, apparently. All Out will be on HBO MAX and for only $40.

AEW just announced they are moving the start time for All Out from 8:00 PM to 3:00 PM.

So the ticket sales for All Out in Toronto were actually moving really well up to this point. The Scotiabank Arena seats around 18,000 but initially AEW only opened up 8,000 tickets for sale, and based on the map, it looked like they were blocking off the rest of the arena with the stage and ramp. Surprisingly, they sold the 8000 tickets pretty quickly, so they opened more seats. As of now, they have opened up around 11,400 seats and have sold around 9,700 so they only need to sell another 1,700 for a sellout the way the arena is configured now. And keep in mind, this was all before it was officially announced on Dynamite last week that Copeland & Christian are fighting FTR. I expect the fan interest in that match to be especially high in the Toronto area, so I would not be surprised at all if they sell out all 11,400 seats, and maybe even have to open up a few more, although I don’t know how many more seats they could open up considering I know the stage and ramp take up a huge amount of space in those big arena shows. The only possible monkey wrench is that of course WWE is now running the Wrestlepalooza PLE directly opposite All Out. Toronto has always been a hardcore WWE town, so it’s conceivable that some fans may choose to skip this show in favour of the WWE show, but at this point, the two audiences are so divergent, I don’t know that it will really be an issue.

That crowd was crazy and that show massively over-delivered. Cena vs Paul was miles better than I expected.

Well, Roman certainly gave Reed a lot. That was a really good match, and I can only assume from the post match beat down that Reigns is going on another extended break. Reed definitely got his heat back. The tag title match was decent. Looks like they are finally going to pull the trigger on breaking up the Street Profits, which is long overdue if you ask me. Not to be mean spirited but Dawkins is clearly the Jannetty of that team.

Clash in Paris time. Bronson Reed rockin the Pimp Fur Coat. Nice. Reed should probably go over here, but he probably won’t. I just hope Roman gives him a lot, and it’s a good match.

Booker T might not have been a good promo in the classic sense of the word, but he connected with fans. He had charisma. He had personality, and in the immortal words of Jules Winfield…personality goes a long way.

In Kelly’s defense, her Father just died so there is a valid argument to be made that the “too soon” rule applies to Becky’s promo. On the other hand, Kelly Osbourne is not exactly blessed in the self-awareness (or general intelligence) departments. My personal favourite highlight from her was after Trump got elected the first time, and in a show of solidarity with Latino people she righteously asked on The View: “If you kick the Latino people out of the country, who is going to clean your toilet, Donald Trump?”

They tried with New Jack a couple of times, but it never stuck.

If the Benoit tragedy didn’t result in any real long term change in the industry (which it really didn’t) then I can’t see this incident causing any long term effects. I suppose you could argue that the Benoit murders brought about a heightened awareness of CTE, but the wind was already blowing in that direction anyways from the NFL. Sadly, this will probably blow over and the people who are shrieking about it will move on to the next outrage of the day. It takes real will and determination to create change, and I don’t think anybody will stay angry about this incident long enough to allow change to happen. Sadly, the Pro Wrestling industry seems to attract damaged and psychologically maladjusted people. This is probably just the latest example. Raja Jackson deserves to be criminally charged for assault at the very least, but who knows if even that will happen. Of course, if the victim ends up dying or something, that’s a whole different story.

If nothing else, that NXT Title Match with Oba Femi vs. Je’Von Evans was pretty damn good. And I am all for a Femi vs. Ricky Saints match.

Ugh, I’m trying to watch NXT Heatwave, but I forgot Corey Graves was in the UK for Raw so it’s just Vic Joseph and Booker T. Booker T is the worst commentator I have ever heard in my 42 years as a Pro Wrestling fan. He literally just screams nonsensical gibberish. Plus he lusts after the women which is creepy. And I think he’s on speed or something tonight on top of all that. He just screamed: “Shucky Ducky Quack Quack, dawg!” WTF?!

Yeah, that match certainly doesn’t do anything to dispel that rumour does it? And for the record, that match kind of stunk. Not only was it ridiculously booked with the stipulations changing, the finish was botched. Lame.

And now…they started off by saying this match was going to be under Tornado Rules with everybody in the ring all at once, but now people are tagging in and out, and even the announcers are asking why they are doing that?

Wait a minute…Excalibur just said that the titles could change hands in this match without The Hurt Syndicate figuring into the decision, but I thought this was an elimination match? Also, I assume no MVP is because he can’t get a Visa due to his criminal record?

As if there weren’t already enough reasons to hate Excalibur, he just called Oasis “The Greatest Rock & Roll Band of All Time.” I don’t even mind Oasis, but WTAF.

Oh man, tonight’s Smackdown was pretty much hot garbage. You could tell a lot of the roster didn’t make the trip to Ireland. The only funny thing was the crowd chanting “You Can’t Wrestle” at JC Mateo. That whole show was painful to watch.

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.