The Thread Killer

The opener was good, but it wasn't great. I didn't hate it or anything, but there appeared to be some sloppiness.

This match is pretty good, but unfortunately Booker thinks he's being paid by the word, apparently.

FUCK! I really don't know how this is going to work. I'm sure Byron Saxton's input will be even more integral to the product than it usually is.

I'm here. Nice to be noticed! Glad you made it brother.

Oh wait a minute...is there going to be a FIVE man broadcast team?

Will the refs on this show be orange too, or is that just an NXT thing?

Where's Mad Dog, C.S., CM Funk, Ricky Jackson, WingedEagle and MoS? DAMMIT I'M NOT WATCHING THIS CRAP BY MYSELF. At least TG is here. EDIT: Oh, hammerva is here too. And FMKK. Good. We need the PWO WWE PPV thread crew for this show.

Those Raw/Shield shirts are ridiculous.

This is the first WWE PPV that I have watched with no buildup at all. I stopped watching Raw and Smackdown during the buildup to TLC, I just couldn't take it anymore. I read the wrestling news, I've seen a couple of highlights on YouTube, and I've had the pre-show on in the background this afternoon, but I've seen zero of the television leading up to this show. And based on the clips of that Stephanie promo I just saw, I made a very wise choice. Damn she's terrible. And I may actually tap out during this show. I have very little motivation to watch this. I guess I want to see The Shield vs. The New Day, The Bar vs. The Usos and I am mildly curious about AJ vs. Brock, but I don't think AJ has a prayer. The rest I couldn't care less about. I'm basically watching it because it's on.

He's never addressed that rumor that I'm aware, and I highly doubt that rumor was true. You should check out the documentary "Jim & Andy" that just came out on Netflix this past Friday. The basic idea is that Jim Carrey was doing the whole "method acting" deal while filming that movie and thought he actually was Andy Kaufman. There is a ton of backstage footage of Carrey harassing and taunting Lawler during the filming. (Ironically, that wouldn't be what Andy actually would have done, since he and Lawler were actually friends.) Of course, the whole thing could all be a work. Who knows. The only certain thing you can say after seeing that film is that Jim Carrey needs to be seeing an entire team of psychiatrists.

I think Mauro is getting worse. I swear, during War Games he was screaming so much I thought he was either on speed or off his medication and going into a manic cycle live on the air. He's fucking terrible.

As opposed to the method WCW used in 1999, which was telling people there was a PPV, but not bothering to mention any of the matches that were going to be on the show. Or in a couple of hilarious cases...advertising the show after it had already happened.

I think they were kind of forced into the live commentary format because Tony has proven he doesn't have the ability to do recap style "looking back" shows like Conrad does with Bruce. From where I sit, this can be attributed to the following reasons: 1 ) As a commentator, Tony didn't have the same level of involvement backstage in WCW that Prichard did in his role in the WWF. Prichard can provide way more details about the backstage machinations and creative processes due to the difference in their roles. 2 ) Tony appears to have a pretty terrible memory and seems to be unable to recall a lot of things. (Unlike Bruce, who at times is unwilling to recall a lot of things.) If you look back, I think it was the Steve Austin episode where Conrad pretty much lost his shit because he was basically reading results and Tony couldn't remember a damn thing or add anything to the episode. (I'm not going back to find out which show it was, because it was brutal if not slightly humorous.) I think Tony's memory might be attributable to the fact that... 3) Tony didn't give a shit a lot of the time in WCW. Say what you want about him, but working for Vince and the wrestling business in general was Bruce Prichard's life, pretty much 24/7 from what it sounds like. As a result, he generally remembers a lot of details and has a lot of interesting stories. But even he has a lot of times where he has to admit he can't remember stuff. JCP and to a much greater extent WCW was a job for Tony. It wasn't his passion (I think that was baseball) and especially in the last few years of WCW I think Tony really didn't give a crap what the hell was going on around him, so he just didn't pay attention. (And I am not saying I blame him for that,) If Conrad tries to use the "Something to Wrestle" format with this show in the long term, it's going to tank. It's just not viable. I don't think anybody could have predicted how successful Something to Wrestle was going to be, (including Bruce and Conrad) and I don't think anybody could expect Tony and Conrad to duplicate that kind of success, but even on a smaller scale, that format isn't going to work for them. I think these commentary shows are going to be what you get from this point forward from this show. I know Conrad is getting a lot of positive feedback about them on Twitter etc., but of course he isn't going to re-tweet all the negative feedback either.

I'm still only about halfway through the NAO episode, and I haven't really found it all that great so far. I want to finish listening to that one before I tackle the Bret Hart episode. That one might take a while to get through, it looks like it is almost 5 hours long. Not sure what to expect when it comes to Bruce's perspective on Bret either, based on past history I don't get the impression that Prichard cared all that much for Bret Hart, whereas he seemed to be a big Shawn Michaels fan. I know they covered the Screwjob in depth during an earlier episode, and Bruce didn't seem to have any sympathy for Bret's position at all. (Not that I do either, really.)

I think it's become evident that if Brock likes you and thinks you have something (whatever that might be to him) he'll sell for you and make you look good, even if he beats you in the end. If you look at the way he let Goldberg and even Samoa Joe get the upper hand on him at times when they worked together, it's seems pretty clear. Conversely, if he doesn't like you or thinks you're beneath him, he pulls a Bruiser Brody and doesn't give you shit. There are matches to support this theory, but the biggest proof of this theory is that Dean Ambrose whined about it on Steve Austin's podcast, when he complained Brock was lazy and didn't want to do anything interesting in their match. (Aside from beat him, apparently.) I didn't see Jinder Mahal being the kind of guy Brock Lesnar would be particularly anxious to make look good, if for no other reason than the fact that up until recently, Mahal was viewed as a scrub. I figured that Brock might think if he gave Mahal too much, it might make him look bad. As a result, I was perversely looking forward to seeing Lesnar no-sell and basically beat the crap out of Jinder Mahal. The problem is, this would have totally reinforced the Raw>Smackdown narrative. You probably shouldn't have one brand looking clearly superior to the other by having one champion destroy his "equal" from the other brand. With AJ Styles holding the title now, there is a much greater chance we get a competitive and compelling match. At least a million times more likely than it was with Mahal involved. Any chance they took the belt off Jinder temporarily because Brock didn't want to give him a competitive match, or am I overthinking this?

I agree with you. I've never seen Corgan as a money mark. I always considered a money mark to be somebody who had a lot of cash to pour into a (usually ill conceived and poorly run) wrestling organization and then got conned out of their money by people a lot wiser to the business than they are. (See: Carter, Dixie.) Like him or not, Corgan is no dummy and he came into this process of getting involved with wrestling with his eyes wide open. And even if he didn't originally, he ran his own indie for a good while, and his experiences with Panda Energy should have awoken him to the rampant lies and unbelievable con-man level bullshit in this line of work. On top of that, he has spent years dealing with people in the music/entertainment industry, which actually gives Pro Wrestling a run for it's money when it comes to the number of lying con-men per square foot.

Way for Impact to put the statement "You couldn't pay me to watch this crap" to the actual test. I find it hard to believe Anthem is teetering on the brink of insolvency when they make fiscally sound decisions like this one.

Absolutely. If I was in Vince McMahon's position I wouldn't care what New Japan was doing, regardless of who they signed. If those Long Beach shows were any indicator of what New Japan considers as putting their best foot forward in order to make a dent in the American market, WWE has nothing to worry about.

Really? I would imagine that Vince couldn't care less. I can't imagine that he sees New Japan as any kind of competition. In his mind I am betting he thinks they're a professional wrestling promotion which caters to a very selective niche audience, whereas he's in the Sports Entertainment business and "makes movies." He's never cared about what happens in Japan before, has he? I know NJPW is trying to make inroads into the U.S. market, but realistically speaking even if Jericho makes a huge impact there, I doubt it will move the needle much in North America for NJPW. One thing that has really come across from listening to all those Prichard shows is that (if Bruce is to believed, which is a big "if") Vince usually had no clue what was going on in other promotions, nor did he care when he found out. I doubt he's changed his opinion as he's aged. If anything, all signs appear to point to him being even more out of the loop with what goes on outside his bubble.

It's not the tweet that bothers me, it's the mentality that produced the tweet to begin with. What kind of guy actually manages to get signed by WWE, and then decides that it's a good idea to make any kind of joke about somebody (who has been with the company much longer) losing their job? That just demonstrates an almost astounding lack of common sense. There is a good stand-up comedy special out there by Craig Ferguson called "Does This Need To Be Said." Ferguson does a routine where he suggests that before saying something to your wife that could potentially blow up in your face, you ask yourself the following three questions... - Does this need to be said? - Does this need to be said right now? - Does this need to be said by me? If only poor Lio had this dialogue internally before tweeting, all of this could have been avoided. It's pretty much a well known fact outside the wrestling industry, never mind by people who work in the industry, that WWE is fraught with unspoken internal "rules" and political landmines. Knowing that, how could Lio Rush not think making any kind of comment beyond "sorry to hear you got released, all the best" was going to do anything than make him look like Enzo A'more 2.0? Top that off with the fact that his apology wasn't even really an apology, and throw in the fact that poor Lio appears to be borderline functionally illiterate (as humorously pointed out by Jack Gallagher.) I have no sympathy for Lio Rush. Let's dismiss the multitude of stories about his backstage attitude and stupid behavior which are already floating around online as "rumor and innuendo" that cannot be proven. This is the same guy that no sold being powerbombed off a ladder through a table in one of his last independent wrestling appearances, just because he could. The fans didn't like it, his fellow wrestlers didn't like it, but he knew he was going to NXT so he didn't give a shit. The guy is clearly a moron. The actual evidence to prove that fact is piling up.

Yeah, they show some interview clips of him talking about it during the Monday Night War episode that covers Hogan's debut in WCW and his first match with Flair. He basically claims he doesn't know why he and Flair never faced off in the WWF or why the Main Event of WM8 was changed. As I recall, he says something about hearing "rumors" about the reason but claims he doesn't know for sure. Shockingly, I think he might be lying.

I didn't see Raw. Is it true that Finn Balor (who beat AJ Styles at the PPV on Sunday) jobbed to Kane?!

I don't think Jarrett ever went into rehab. Rumor has it that Anthem put the brakes on the Impact/Global Force merger after Jarrett showed up at Triplemania in the proverbial "no condition to perform." The hope was that he'd get his shit together and come back, but he apparently doesn't think he has a problem. After he showed up at that Canadian Indy show this past weekend drunk, and then burned the promoters and skipped out on them, Anthem decided to cut bait and let him go altogether, totally giving up on Jarrett and the whole idea of the Global Force merger. Jarrett has apparently been telling people since that Anthem is broke, which is why they killed the merger and let him go. I think Anthem does have some serious money problems, but I think that just means they are going to relocate Impact to Canada and run the company very frugally under the Fight Network umbrella. Anthem reportedly still wants to use Impact as a means of providing original content for the Fight Network, and they still have the deal with Pop TV. The problem is, they generate next to no revenue. But I think the issue with Jeff Jarrett is that he is having some serious personal issues wrestling with the all too familiar "demons." I think people are starting to become seriously concerned about his behavior lately.

That's a good guess Matt, but for the match to be truly Russoesque, something would have to be suspended on a pole as well.

Booker T just compared Alicia Fox to The Missing Link. Wow. And Gulak only had 277 slides! It wouldn't have been too long!