The Thread Killer

When Anthem hired Scott D'Amore and Don Callis, I was cautiously optimistic that good things might happen for Impact after the new team was in place and got their feet under them. Then the infamous Callahan/Edwards bat incident happened, and I was discouraged. Now, I am wondering if these guys might actually be able to pull something off and make Impact compelling again. They definitely have the brains and experience to do it...I'm still not sure if they will. But stuff like this is a good sign and is the kind of stuff I was hoping to see once they got settled.

Equally sad is when Conrad brings up the fact that it took 25 seconds for Triple H to cover Booker T after the pedigree, and Bruce blows a gasket and actually pulls out and plays the "you've never worked in the business so you don't understand" card. In the realm of Pro Wrestling and Shoot Interviews, that is pretty much the equivalent of Godwin's Law as far as I'm concerned. Exactly. I wish Conrad would have brought up that the next year, two babyface champions won/retained and celebrated in the ring, together to close the damn show.

Those are my exact feelings as well. I can't stand the Young Bucks, I don't really get why other people like them, but you'd be a fool to deny that they are popular. To me, they're the Pro Wrestling equivalent of Nickelback. For the sake of Pro Wrestling as a whole, I think it is actually pretty important that this show succeeds, or at least isn't a total failure (which at this point I don't think it will be.) I doubt I'll ever live to see the day where there is actual viable competition against WWE, but it is extremely important that there are at least visible alternatives. One thing I don't understand, is the hatred of Cody Rhodes by some fans, which in many cases approaches inexplicably vitriolic levels. I've even seen some examples of it here at PWO. Why? Was he pretty bland and mediocre in WWE? Yes. Is his older brother more talented than he is? Probably. Are his in-ring skills average at best? You can make that argument. I can see saying he's passable but unexceptional. Okay. But this is a guy who wanted to be more than what he was, who wanted to honor his Dad (and imagine for a minute trying to fill those shoes) and to push himself and reach the top. Because of his Dad, he probably had a WWE midcard job for life, ala Dolph Ziggler. But he wanted more, so he walked away from guaranteed money to make a name for himself. Whether you like him or not, you have to admit that by all accounts he has succeeded, and that took serious balls. Not to mention, his bleach blond heel "American Nightmare" persona seems infinitely more interesting than anything he did in WWE. But I've seen so many fans crap all over him, because HOW DARE HE think he should be more than a WWE midcarder. I say, if he manages to overachieve, more power to him. I don't have to think he's the second coming of Ric Flair to admire him for trying, and I certainly don't want him to fail.

I don't have a huge issue with the ads on Prichard's podcast, honestly. The have the right to make money from this thing, and it's not like listening to the show is costing me money. It's free entertainment, and if I have to listen to a couple ads then so be it. As a fan of the show, the past few weeks have been rough for me for different reasons. I actually forced myself to listen to the entire Shawn Michaels in 1993 episode, and by the end I wished I hadn't. The first problem is mine, I suppose. I don't get Shawn Michaels. I am not for one minute saying he wasn't talented, you'd be a fool to say that. However, I do think he is vastly overrated. Yet for some reason, there are those people (and Bruce Prichard is one of them) that think this guy is actually the greatest Pro Wrestler of all time. As a result, we get almost 6 hours worth of Prichard's show based on only three damn years of Shawn Michaels' career - and you can make an argument that 93, 94 and 95 weren't even his best years. I think that much content would be overkill if he was talking about just about anybody, never mind somebody I don't like and don't want to hear about. I ended up tapping out, I couldn't listen to the second half of the show, the 94/95 episode, I just don't have the stomach for it. I can put up with a hell of a lot of Prichard's spin doctoring, but not that much and especially not for Shawn Freaking Michaels. The SNME watch-along was just okay. There were some repeated technical issues which I found annoying, but it was inoffensive if not unremarkable. Even if you didn't like it, what it lost in quality it made up for with expediency. I don't think it was even 2 hours long, which for that show is a sprint. However... If you want a good laugh, you have to listen to this week's episode on Wrestlemania 19. During the show, Conrad Thompson questions Bruce Prichard on the now infamous build-up to the Triple H vs. Booker T match at Wrestlemania 19. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Booker T won a Battle Royal for the right to challenge Triple H for the World Championship at Wrestlemania. Triple H then cut a promo on Raw where he claimed that nappy headed people like Booker T were only good for dancing, and "people like him" (wink wink) were beneath being WWF Champion. A couple weeks later, Flair tells Booker T to put on a chauffeur cap and carry Triple H's bags, and Triple H throws a dollar at him. This (justifiably) caused a huge backlash online, so much so that WWF.com had a columnist (under a pen name I assume) write a column defending the WWF for delicately tackling such a controversial subject as racism. The WWF.com article noted the long history of racist angles in wrestling history, and pointed out that Triple H was a "bad guy" and was going to do that kind of stuff...but it didn't matter because of course he would get his in the end. Which, of course he didn't. Quite the opposite. WWF.com later pulled down the column defending the angle. I had a copy saved on my Hard Drive for years, along with my response in what ended up being the very last wrestling column I ever wrote, back when I wrote at 411. I lost that too, when my portable Hard Drive died. But the WWF.com column existed, even though they erased it. Point is, the angle happened and it was unquestionably racist. There really is no way any sane, sensible person could have seen the build for that match and think the story wasn't race related. On this week's show, Conrad Thompson brings this angle up and even reads Triple H's infamous promo word-for-word. Guess how Bruce Prichard responds? a ) Claims the quotes are "taken out of context" (even though Conrad read the promo in it's entirety) b ) Claims people didn't understand the angle. See Triple H was talking about former WCW wrestlers, not black people. (All WCW wrestlers were "nappy headed?") c ) Totally ignores the fact that the WWF admitted at the time that originally the angle was definitely written with racist overtones. d ) Claims wrestlers like Booker T were perfectly fine with these kinds of angles, and may have even suggested them or contributed lines. e ) Claims Booker T couldn't beat Triple H and get revenge for any of this - because Lesnar was going over on this show, and they're both faces. f ) Dances around the issue like a motherfucker, refusing to admit it was awful. g ) All of the above. If you picked "G" you win. I was mildly surprised to see Prichard go into full blown WWF apologist mode for this, simply because he has admitted on this show that he hated when Bischoff simply handed Triple H his own World Championship months before, and he was quite detailed in his description of how he didn't care for the Katie Vick storyline which had happened not that long before this either. I figured if he's willing to admit that Triple H shouldn't have been handed World Titles for no reason, and that the Vick angle was repulsive, maybe he'd admit how horrible this was...but nope! You really have to hear Prichard try and argue with Conrad about this. I'm half convinced the whole thing was staged, because he can't possibly be that clueless.

There were theories about heat between Conrad and Flair?! Those guys love each other...and Conrad is marrying Flair's daughter for gawd's sake!

I had literally never heard of this before reading about it here.

Yes, I just recently watched the Kayfabe Commentaries "Supercard" shoot interview about Wrestlemania 2, featuring King Kong Bundy. In that interview he mentioned casually that they contacted him about going into the Hall of Fame and he gave the impression that he has no interest in it at all. I got the impression it was a while ago that they asked him, as well. The two things that come across loud and clear in that interview is that Bundy has some serious issues with Vince McMahon still, and that he really doesn't care about Pro Wrestling in general. He mentioned how he felt McMahon lied to and took advantage of the wrestlers back in the 80's, paying them only a fraction of the money they were earning for the WWF. Bundy has a list of financial grievances with McMahon where he feels he was prevented from earning all the money he could have, and claimed McMahon did it out of spite. He also talked about how he got into wrestling because he had wrestled as an amateur and because he was big, but he never followed the sport growing up and didn't love it like a lot of other guys did. He gives the impression he basically got into the sport to make money and that was it. He's an interesting interview, but his memory is pretty bad. He couldn't remember details about a lot of things you'd have thought he'd be able to remember since he was involved. I think it was because he honestly didn't pay that close attention because he didn't really care. Also, he is one of the prototypical "you have to be over 6 feet tall and weigh over 300 pounds to be a wrestler" guys, so he shits all over people who are smaller than he is like Chris Jericho and Randy Savage, for example. He's a funny guy, but you can tell he gives exactly zero fucks about Pro Wrestling or getting into the WWE Hall of Fame. I'm sure if they wrote him a big enough paycheck he'd show up, but I doubt they would.

That was even more frustrating in Canada, because when I did see a good match on an NWA show we never got to see the end because WE'RE OUT OF TIME FANS! And they didn't run house shows here, so I didn't see my first NWA show until 1990.

I'd like to think most fans with half a brain now see that Reigns is damn good. As has been discussed (at great length) most of the fans who boo him now don't even really have a legit reason to do it. Sure, I can see booing Cena, who is stale, formulaic, stale, wooden, and quite lame. And also stale. But at this point, I think people who are still booing Reigns are just doing it out of stubbornness. I don't think they're going to stop booing him, no matter what. Unless WWE starts booking him correctly. Which they won't. That promo last Monday was pretty damn good, and he did turn a portion of the crowd, no doubt. But I don't think WWE has finally figured out how to book Reigns as a face, because I really don't think they know how to book a babyface anymore, at all.

If I plunked down $30.00 for a house show ticket and got a 30 second Main Event, I'd be pissed. I don't care what the justification might be or if it's part of the some planned "booking." It's bad business, plain and simple. If people paid money to see Brock Lesnar wrestle live, and got a 30 second match they got ripped off and you shouldn't rip off your customers. It's very possible this was for some cutesy reason that WWE intends to work into their new "Brock is lazy and is just here for a paycheck" narrative to get Roman Reigns over. But what message does that send to the fans who bought tickets for that show? WWE can get away with doing stuff like this because they have no competition and a core fanbase that will put up with stuff like this no matter what, and come back for more. But that doesn't make it right. Then again, the other side of the argument is that if you paid your hard earned money to see Brock Lesnar fight Kane and you were expecting to see anything even remotely entertaining, you may have brain damage and you deserved to get ripped off...but still.

Exactly. You have to appreciate it in context. I only started watching WWF TV in the early 80's and even then, the shows were pretty much nothing but the big names against enhancement talent and lots of interviews with the occasional good match thrown in. And even in those cases, it was usually done to start or advance a feud or story of some kind. I never watched the weekly shows on Saturday morning expecting to see good matches. But those shows did sell me on going to Maple Leaf Gardens every three weeks, for years. It's actually quite interesting how the whole business model of wrestling has changed over the years, where the main purpose of TV used to be to get people to go to house shows, where they could see the real matches. Now they give away practically everything for free on TV or for a minimal charge on the Network. I'm amazed they get any house show business at all.

I think his post is actually an improperly formatted haiku.

It's not just Loss that pushes this idea, though. The one thing that has cemented me on the "Vince McMahon is behind everything" theory, is listening to Something to Wrestle with...Bruce Prichard. Nobody has had more experience working with Vince, nobody has had more exposure to the WWF/WWE creative process and nobody has told more of the secrets about what goes on behind the scenes than Prichard has. If I've learned anything about the way that organization works (aside from the fact that Hogan Must Pose) it's that what Loss says is true. Nothing makes it on TV unless it has Vince McMahon's fingerprints on it somewhere. Sometimes it's minimal, sometimes it's total, but it's always true. Just last night I was listening to Jim Cornette's Drive-Thru, and Cornette (another person who has experienced Vince's management style up close) was talking about the three month period in 1995 that Bill Watts worked in the WWF. Cornette claims that everybody was told that Watts was brought in to run the "wrestling" end of business to free up time for Vince to run the business end. Apparently this is not the first time Vince has been convinced to try this, in order to avoid spreading himself too thin. Vince supposedly just couldn't resist micro-managing Watts to death, to the point they both agreed to get the hell away from each other ASAP. Loss is 100% correct on this theory. There are too many former talents and agents/producers who have confirmed this theory for it not to be true, in my opinion.

Oh my brother...

The whole "availability of the WWE Network in Canada" issue was quite a debacle for a while. We discussed this back here if you check that post and read onward, you will see that as a Canadian WWE Network subscriber, I too thought that I was limited to just the TV channel, (which for a long time, I was.) Then WWE finally got off their asses and made the full Network available to all Canadian customers just like they do for everybody else, with the added bonus that the live stream is available as a TV channel via your cable provider. So I get the normal network through my laptop, the stream as part of my TV service, and some (very) limited On Demand content via my cable box. I never even knew they upgraded the service for Canadians until a fellow PWO member (The Duke) let me know in that thread. Now I watch whatever is on the live stream live on my TV when it happens, but for most of the On Demand content or to do a watch-along with a podcast or whatever, I use my laptop.

Did you hate it so much that you're doing a live blog about it over at Segundo Caruda?

I am pretty sure Meltzer also made a specific quote in 1994 that Sabu was better than Bret Hart (at that time) which I remember upsetting a lot of people.

Thanks. I don't mind a watch along once in a while. One of my favourite thus far, because it was one of the funniest to me, was actually the XFL. If you say it is good El-P, I will go back and check that one out. I am still slowly working my way through the archives, and I tend to shy away from the earlier episodes. I have listened to a lot of the older episodes, but not all. The XFL is one I have not yet heard. If you say it was funny, I am going to check it out.

You know what, you may be right. I assumed that I ended up seeing it on Coliseum Video (as I did with a lot of big shows back then if I couldn't see it on Closed Circuit we had to wait for the video) but in retrospect, thinking back I'm pretty sure I remember what happened. Of course, this is 30 years ago now. Damn, I'm old. I remember reading in the newspaper (no online news back in 88) about the Royal Rumble being in Hamilton, plus they talked about it on the syndicated weekly WWF TV shows, but we couldn't see it in Canada, and I specifically remember myself and my friends in the time bitching that we couldn't see it. I had a friend in High School who had a Satellite Dish, which was crazy rare back in 1988. This was back when having a dish took up half your backyard, seriously. He was a fellow wrestling fan (we met because he came up to talk to me when he saw me wearing a Jake The Snake t-shirt) and told me that because his family had a satellite dish, he could get wrestling from all over the United States. He used to lend me tapes of World Class and Mid-South (UWF) which was amazing at the time, because the only exposure I had to them was through the Apter mages. I remember how awesome it was to see the Von Erichs live for the first time, World Class was so different from the 80's WWF. You're right, I'm pretty sure the way I ended up seeing the first Royal Rumble was through him lending me a tape of the USA broadcast, not from Coliseum Video. I do know for sure there was no way to see it on television here in the Toronto area.

This is embarrassing. Turns out it was a Firefox problem. There was an automatic update, after which I could no longer view art19, and (as it turns out) the WWE Network for some reason. Wasn't even my ad blocker either, I already had those disabled on those sites. I'm not even sure what extension or add-on is doing it, but when I checked art19 using a different browser, it worked fine.

I disagree with your opinion that the show hasn't changed, and I disagree that 205 Live was as good as the CWC, but I concede your point regarding Neville. His reign was not only a high point for 205 Live and the Cruiserweight Division, it was a high point for all of WWE. I agree his matches with Gallagher and Aries were outstanding, but I guess I kind of lumped them in as WWE PPV matches in my mind, not 205 Live. One of my issues with 205 Live was Gran Metalik's pointless banishment, and the overuse of Noam Dar, Tony Nese and the other Daivari. The division did badly need an influx of new blood, and it appears to be getting it - starting with Itami, and it appears to be growing on a weekly business with this tournament. If Gargano ends up here, he could easily carry this show on his back like Neville and Enzo did. I do wish they'd tape the show at Full Sail or somewhere else, but I understand why they do it after Smackdown logistically.

I don't always buy everything I read online for obvious reasons, but this story about a change of control and a in direction is making sense, especially if you watch the show. I tuned into 205 Live the week Enzo was fired, and was very surprised about the quality of the matches. It was a marked improvement over the last time I had seen the show. The matches (with the exception of Itami/Gallagher) seemed different somehow. Faster paced and more action, I couldn't figure it out. Now they are saying that there has been a change in creative and the CW's are being told to just go out and do their thing unencumbered - the timing lines up and it makes sense. If you don't believe the theory, go back and watch an older episode of 205 Live (if you dare) and then watch one from the past couple of weeks, and you tell me if you don't notice a significant difference. My complaint with 205 Live was always that it existed because of the CWC but seemed nothing like the CWC. That first show after Enzo and the shows since seem much more in the spirit and style of the CWC. If it really is true, thank goodness. I will see that there have been more high quality "must see" matches on 205 Live in the past three weeks than I can remember in the entire run of the show so far. Maybe it will finally end up being the wrestling focused alternative I always hoped it would be, rather than bland generic matches with plenty of restholds, and pointless backstage skits. I'd love to see this brand succeed. I don't know if there is a big enough audience for it, but I hope there is.

Sure El-P, if you have time I would do the watch-along for the Royal Rumble 1988. It's fun. It's not their best episode (I personally think Episode 46 on WWECW might get that nod) but it's entertaining enough. I would NOT recommend the Survivor Series 1987 watch-along episode. There is nothing all that interesting revealed, Bruce and Conrad do a fair bit of bickering (and not in an entertaining way either, just annoying) and at times there are actually periods of silence where they obviously can't find anything to say. And having watched SS87 along with them, I can say honestly that sumbitch was BORING. When Bruce and Conrad are talking about how bad the show is, (not the PPV but their podcast) you know it's bad.

I did the watch-along episode for Royal Rumble 1988 last night. I was reluctant at first because the Survivor Series 87 episode was pretty awful. I am not all that big on the watch-along shows in general, since I like to listen to shows when I am doing other things and don't like to be stuck sitting watching a monitor while I listen. I understand why Conrad pretty much has to go that route with Tony on What Happened When, but I wasn't thrilled when they did it on Something To Wrestle. Hell, even Conrad said during the watch-along for Survivor Series that it was the worst show they had done since "Austin Walks Out." I found this episode a lot more entertaining. Firstly because the entire show wasn't a watch-along, just the Rumble itself was. Secondly, they seemed to be a lot more funny and relaxed the second time around. There was a couple of things I found surprising about this episode. Firstly, the fact that Bruce openly and freely admitted that the main reason they even had the Royal Rumble 1988 was to counter-program JCP and the Bunkhouse Stampede. Everybody knows it is true, but that is the kind of thing that in the past Bruce has tried to deny or downplay. The way he made it sound, USA wanted them to do a show, they wanted to have a televised contract signing between Hogan and Andre, and this seemed to be a great way to do that, and screw with JCP at the same time. I agree with Cox when he says the actual Rumble almost seems like an afterthought. The second thing I found amusing upon seeing the Rumble again, was how little was made of The Ultimate Warrior. He had just barely joined the company I guess? He appears in the match, exchanges some pretty lame looking chops with some guys, and gets eliminated. He's pretty much a non-factor. You could tell that they didn't know what they had at that point. Funny sidenote, by the way. I live in the Toronto area. This show was filmed in Hamilton, which is pretty close to Toronto (within easy driving distance.) It was shown live in the United States on the USA Network, but even though it was shot in Canada...we couldn't watch it. The USA Network wasn't available in Canada at that time. The WWF was red hot in the Toronto area (remember, 74,000 fans had gone to see "The Big Event" when Hogan fought Orndorff just a couple of years prior) so it was a bit of a slap in the face that the WWF would film a major show like that in the area but not make it available for viewing until it came out in VHS.

I have a question... I use the site https://art19.com/ to keep track of most of my favorite podcasts and access the archives. They had homepages for Something to Wrestle, E & C's Pod of Awesomeness, Jim Cornette's Drive Thru, and What Happened When. Basically, I think they had archives for anybody who was hosted by MLW and not Podcast One. I found this site really convenient because the archives were listed and you didn't have to be a member to get to them. Also, I don't use iTunes so for me, this was pretty much the best way to get to all my favorite podcasts. I know the individual shows must be okay with this site, because in Conrad Thompson's case, the URL for SomethingToWrestle.com actually redirected to art19. The site is still up, but all the individual pages and archives appear to have vanished since the weekend. I checked art19's Twitter feed and there doesn't appear to be a mention of any problems. Does anybody here have any idea what is up? If art19 is no longer an option, does anybody have a suggestion regarding a good way to access podcast archives? Most of my favorite shows have YouTube Channels so I may end up going that route. Just wondering if anybody knew anything...