The Thread Killer

I honestly thought they were really onto something when Power first debuted on YouTube. But then a whole bunch of things converged all at once, to pretty much ruin it. Firstly the booking was terrible. I will never forget that first run of shows leading up to their first pay-per-view Into The Fire was great, it looked like they were going to go with Tim Storm vs Nick Aldis for the World Championship when all of a sudden they pivoted at the last minute and gave the shot to James Storm with no buildup at all. Then there was the whole fiasco with Cornette and the fried chicken joke. And then right on the heels of that, Dave Lagana gets fired because of the whole “Speaking Out” movement. Then the pandemic hits, and they lose Eli Drake, Eddie Kingston, Ricky Starks, Thunder Rosa, Nick Aldis…and end up replacing them with people like Tyrus and EC3. On top of that, they have been bouncing from platform to platform, they go from YouTube to Triller back to YouTube to Twitter. The “Lightning One” era actually started out well, but it ended up becoming a total shit show. I wouldn’t be able to pick 99% of their current roster out of a police lineup.

Hukuleo apparently finally made his debut before SmackDown went on the air tonight. I guess the match will probably air on Main Event or something. I assume he will be showing up on SmackDown next week when Solo and Jacob Fatu have their big face-to-face confrontation.

I really hope they manage to get to 20,000 tickets before July, if not higher.

One thing that seems especially odd to me, is the fact that AAA/WWE was promoting the Triplemania Regia show during the Worlds Collide broadcast, and they also apparently promoted it on NXT last night, but as of now, there is no way to legally see the show in North America. Not on PPV, or YouTube or even Triller. Why promote a show people can’t see?

Sadly, I remember that. Not the first couple of run ins, I think those were dark matches. But I remember when he jumped Earthquake. There was another time he saved Valentine from getting squashed by Earthquake. By that point, I remember thinking it was pretty obvious it was Beefcake. But then they just dropped the whole gimmick.

Yeah, to think…a week ago he was on the outs, now he’s changing his gimmick and cutting off his hair on live TV.

That was a surprisingly good episode of RAW. One cannot help but notice that the episodes where Seth Rollins gets zero mic time inevitably end up being overall better TV, as opposed to the episodes where he has one of his endless blathering segments, and the entire show somehow ends up being a chore to sit through. Once again this week, very little Rollins mysteriously = good episode. And I actually really enjoyed the Main Event, much more than their match at WM.

I’ll do you one better, Mark Shapiro is such an idiot, he doesn’t even understand MMA either. As you probably know, the UFC runs their monthly PPV’s in the same kind of arenas that WWE runs their shows in. They also run regular “Fight Night” shows in arenas internationally. But at least once or twice a month, UFC runs TV shows in a small little complex in Las Vegas called the UFC Apex. The Apex is essentially the same as the WWE Performance Center. It’s a tiny little industrial workspace, which maybe fits a couple hundred fans, if that. It literally doubles as a training center, and gym. The shows that UFC run from the Apex are traditionally pretty horrible with absolutely no atmosphere because there is barely anybody in the room and the acoustics are terrible. I can honestly say that I don’t ever remember seeing a good UFC show from the Apex. The only good thing about that place is that it’s where they film their reality show, The Ultimate Fighter. But otherwise it’s basically like if AEW or WWE filmed their weekly TV show in a gym or a warehouse. Mark Shapiro has gone on record in public as saying he doesn’t understand why TKO/UFC doesn’t run ALL of their shows at the Apex, since they are essentially a TV product and the cameras can only show what is happening in the Octagon. Since they already have a TV studio at the Apex, he thinks they should run every single show there, including the PPV shows, because it would save them money. He literally can’t understand the difference in atmosphere between running a show in a packed arena in front of 20,000 fans, and filming it in a TV studio in a warehouse. He’s a total moron. He has no product knowledge on either side of the TKO portfolio, and I won’t be one little bit surprised if he eventually ends up getting fired. All he cares about is the bottom line and making as much profit as he can, but he is so damn stupid. He’s eventually going to do something that’s going to cost him his job. Hopefully.

Ironically, the Brock Lesnar thing was a holdover from his UFC days. Those were sponsors that he had from his time fighting in MMA and he kept them when he came back to WWE, which apparently Vince was not happy with because WWE did not get any of the money. That was back in the pre-Endeavor/TKO days where the fighters were allowed to set up their own sponsorships. Now it’s entirely up to TKO, and the sponsors pay the company directly, with the fighters only getting a fraction of the profit.

I saw someone mention on Twitter/X that they look forward to the inevitable moment when you tune in to WWE programming to see Michael Cole with some sort of corporate logo boldly tattooed right across the middle of his forehead.

Not to be a deliberate contrarian, but I always slightly preferred 05/21/94 over 06/09/95. But obviously, both are all timers.

If I recall correctly, that might be the best Midnights vs. Rock n Rolls match that made tape, even if it’s years after the heart of their feud.

They are now up to over 16,000 tickets sold for All In: Texas. I guess that’s a decent number for them, but I kind of hope they get up to at least 20,000 by July. Even though that’s a respectable amount of tickets sold, this is pretty much their tentpole event this year, and in a big stadium, even that many people might look a little bit sparse, depending on how they have a place configured. I remember those stadium shows that World Class and the AWA used to run, especially the ones in baseball stadiums, and they always looked kind of sad to me. Not to mention you have to worry about the acoustics with an outdoor show.

Apparently they settled their beef at a convention a while back, and shook hands. If you are to believe Haley. Which come to think of it, you probably shouldn’t.

As long as the belt isn’t on Moxley, I really don’t care who ends up with it. Hangman, Swerve, Ospreay, whoever. Just get it the hell off Moxley and end this interminable Deathriders angle.

I believe he is credited as Mike “Cash Flo” Walden. The character he plays is named Bigfoot. Not for nothing, but Tulsa King is actually a pretty good show, FWIW. It’s one of those shows produced by that guy Taylor Sheridan, who is in charge of the whole Yellowstone franchise. I went in not expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised at how good the show is. It kind of reminds me of The Sopranos, a bit.

Well, he is kind of breaking through in acting, at least. He made a couple of appearances on Tulsa King with Sylvester Stallone last season and he’s actually been added to the cast for next season.

Yeah, true enough, it wasn’t bad.

The sad thing is that apparently WWE actually gives these guys input into what they want their new names to be. It’s goofy that WWE insists on changing the names of a lot of the people coming in, but it’s almost sadder that some of the names that the new talent end up getting saddled with are self-inflicted, to a degree. Damien Priest and Aleister Black are a couple of the rare occasions where I think the new names were actually an improvement (because “Tommy End” … really?) but a lot of times, yeesh.

It’s never going to end. This is the new normal. It’s always going to be about squeezing every dollar out of every possible situation for TKO. They are going to milk every possible potential revenue stream (apparently they are now going to be putting ads on the tables) while at the same time slashing every expense they can to maximize profits. It’s always going to be about the quarterly earnings for them.

Some kind of interesting points for discussion coming out of the departure of R-Truth. -> A lot of people were initially reporting this as a release, which it isn't...apparently his contract was up, and he was told that they aren't going to re-sign him. Same thing with Carlito. I guess this pretty much confirms the "TKO is cutting costs" story that came out recently. Office staff have had their wages frozen, apparently the wrestlers either aren't receiving complimentary tickets for friends/family to the shows anymore, and then they recently purged a bunch of talent who were labelled as either being lazy, or having a bad attitude. The next phase seems to be keeping talent who aren't a problem but are designated as not being particularly useful, but then letting their contracts expire with no efforts made to re-sign them. Ron Killings has been with WWE for 17 years. I would imagine that each new contract he signed involved some sort of pay raise. After 17 years, I'm guessing this situation was getting to the point where they asked themselves why they were paying that much money for a comedy act who was over 50 years old. -> One thing I find really strange about this situation, is that it looks like a "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" type of deal between the creative and financial departments in WWE. Or if it isn't, the whole thing is really bizarre otherwise. R-Truth has been heavily featured on TV over the past month or so. They set his angle with Cena up in a highly publicized incident at the Backlash press conference. They give him primo valuable TV time (during which he cuts one of the best promos he has cut in...a very long time.) They even give him a new T-Shirt, which is just bizarre for a guy on his way out. Then they give him a match on Saturday Night's Main Event. Even though he basically got squashed, that is still some prime TV real estate. And then...he's gone. I've seen the arguments made online that Cena basically made that happen because he wanted to work with Killings one last time. I've seen the argument made that they did it as some sort of farewell gift to Killings because they knew he was going. It still seems like a really weird thing to do, to me. Why invest all that time and creative energy into a guy when you know he'll be gone in a couple of weeks? It's basically saying to the audience: "Hey, see how popular this guy is? See how good his promos are? You should buy his new T-Shirt! Oh yeah by the way...he's gone now." They did the same thing on a much smaller scale with Braun Strowman. He's in a feud with Jacob Fatu, one of the most popular guys on the roster. He actually has a pretty high profile match with Fatu on both Saturday Night's Main Event, and then that excellent Last Man Standing match on Smackdown...and then they fire him. I guess you could make the argument that they were squeezing every last bit of value out of those guys to use them to put guys over on their way out the door, but it still seems like a strange decision to me, to feature people in such high profile spots, when you know they are on the way out. -> I talked about this somewhere else at PWO, but the more time goes by, the more WWE fans are seeing how TKO/UFC does business. There are some parallels to the way UFC handled Chuck Liddell and the Ron Killings situation. Dana White had long declared that Chuck Liddell had a job for life with the UFC because of everything he had done for the organization...and one of the first things Endeavor did when they took over was unceremoniously dump Liddell and a bunch of office staff. -> Some people are saying that yet again, this release proves that Triple H is racist, because it was his decision. Other people are saying that financial decisions in WWE are under the purview of Mark Shapiro and Nick Khan. Basically they decide who gets paid how much. -> One thing that has been really interesting is the public outpouring of support for Ron Killings from the WWE roster. I had no doubt that this wouldn't be a popular decision, but the fact that so many of the wrestlers are willing to go on the record and talk about it publicly is noteworthy. I guess there is a difference between people talking about how much they love the guy, and the people who make thinly veiled complaints about it. Hell...Road Dogg of all people actually tweeted about it, grousing about "Bean Counters." Which is kind of amazing, considering the fact that Brian James may be one of the all time greatest corporate ass kissers/stooges in Pro Wrestling history. -> I have seen rumors on Pro Wrestling Newz sites, Twitter, Reddit etc. about a supposed change in creative direction for WWE this summer. Apparently (if you believe rumors) there is about to be a house cleaning on the Main Roster because Netflix isn't thrilled about the numbers WWE is getting, considering the insane amount Netflix is giving them. This ties into the fact that the WWE Main Roster is definitely getting older, quickly. - AJ Styles is 48 - CM Punk is 46 - Finn Balor is 43 - Kofi Kingston is 43 - Rey Mysterio is 50 - Sheamus is 47 - Kevin Owens is 41 - LA Knight is 42 - The Miz is 44 - Randy Orton is 45 - Nakamura is 45 On top of those guys, there are a ton of guys like Cody, Roman, Rollins, McIntyre etc. who are in their late 30's or about to turn 40. When you consider that, WWE deciding not to renew the contracts of guys like Killings and Carlito, who are both well north of 40, makes sense to a degree. WWE really is due for a youth movement at some point, if they want to invest in their future. Over the past few weeks, we've already started to see a lot of NXT talent showing up on the Main Roster. Roxanne Perez, Giulia, and Stephanie Vaquer have all finally debuted. Rumor has it that Ricky Saints is about to debut imminently. We saw Je'Von Evans last week, and you have to think Trick Williams is soon to follow, as soon as this angle with TNA is done. All I'm saying is...if this is true, if I was over 40 and my contract was about to come up in WWE, I'd be nervous. -> When it comes to Ron Killings, he has reportedly been smart with his money, so hopefully for his sake he can just do the whole autograph show circuit and make a decent living from that. Of course there were immediately some people clamoring for him to show up in AEW, but I can't see that happening for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the LAST thing Tony Khan needs is to hire a guy who has spent the past 10 years as a comedy act. I honestly don't see what that guy could possibly bring to AEW that they need...the negatives would far outweigh the positives at this point. Secondly, Ron Killings was/is personal friends with Vince McMahon...which is supposedly the reason he lasted as long as he did in WWE. Vince apparently just loved having the guy around, and once Vince was gone, that protection was no longer in place. I haven't seen it myself personally, but apparently Killings has publicly made statements supportive of Vince McMahon since Vince was ousted from WWE, (much like Undertaker and John Cena.) If I was Tony Khan, I wouldn't touch a guy like that with a ten foot pole...but hey...that's just me. Besides, the one thing that a lot of people seem to be dancing around with this whole thing is that, quite honestly...Ron Killings is not that good. It's great that he was the most popular guy backstage and everybody loved him, but seriously? Considering how long the guy was in WWE, can you even name five matches he had in all that were classics? Because I can't. He was a comedy act, with stuff like Little Jimmy, showing up in the wrong matches, trying to tag in during a Battle Royal, getting people's names wrong, and stuff like that. I laughed at a lot of the stuff he did, but the way some people are carrying on about this release online is kind of hysterical, in my opinion. As I've said before, I never want to see anybody lose their job...but considering the level of talent, his age and his performance history, Ron Killings had a hell of a run.

That kid is crazy talented, though. I think he has a ton of potential. I really liked the Main Event of Stand and Deliver between he, Trick Williams and Oba Femi. But I agree with you, C.S. in that Evans (and a lot of younger talent in both companies) really need to learn to stop saying everything that comes into their heads and posting it on Twitter. It’s bad enough that there is so much tribalism between the fans, the talent in the competing companies probably don’t need to contribute to it.

Having Je’Von Evans debut on SmackDown and then eat a pin from Los Garza doesn’t exactly bode well for his chances on the Main Roster. Unless this isn’t really a call up, they were just featuring him because he’s going to be competing at World’s Collide next week. Either way, it seems like an odd choice.

Coming out of the show about OVW on Netflix “Wrestlers” a lot of people figured Hollywood Haley J (who was heavily featured) would end up signing with WWE or AEW sooner rather than later. She got tryout matches with both organizations, but for whatever reason she never caught on. It’s been two years now, and it was just announced that she is going to be competing for… Dana White’s Power Slap. I guess her career won’t be working out the way we thought it might.

Apparently some intrepid fans have viewed the footage in slow motion and replayed it on Twitter, to discover that Cole’s head actually did not make contact with the apron, it just looked like it did.