The Thread Killer

Yeah, I am loving that decision. I have grown to really like Aussie Open. Now let’s just hope that they defend the belts in normal Tag Team matches not these ridiculous multiteam clusterfucks. That match was so samey.

Yeah, but I’m kind of liking the whole “You do your flips and dives and never-ending melodramas with The Dark Order on Dynamite…and we’ll have all time classic matches over on Collision” division of labour thing the Bucks and FTR have going now. No need whatsoever for them to have any interaction from this point on.

NO. NO NO NO. LEAVE FTR ALONE MATT.

I don’t disagree with you, but I think part of the problem is that Tony Khan only really seems to book ongoing storylines or angles/feuds for Tag Teams when the Tag Team Titles are involved. I can’t think of the last Tag Team feud that wasn’t centred around the Titles? I don’t know that FTR would oppose being involved in a good long blood feud, but I don’t know that we’ve ever seen one of those in the tag division in AEW?

Between Mike “MiCasa” Samuda getting busted and going up the river, and then Hyatte, DEAN and now “The Rick” all passing away…what the hell is happening to all the OG’s of the IWC?

He sure didn’t seem to be in a rush to get down the ramp and literally get into the ring last night. There is a clip circulating right now online of Ibushi rubbing tacks on himself and then taking a deliberate bump in the thumbtacks by himself last night, after the show went off the air. And then he did a little dance…because of course he did.

So PAC gets the ROH World Title Shot against Claudio at the PPV on Friday. Could be an interesting matchup, I suppose. I’m still not sure I am going to bother ordering the show, it feels so slapped together.

Yeah…I was just expecting that to be lame, and it was even dumber than I was expecting. My favourite part was when it was finally Ibushi’s time to enter. He casually wanders down the ramp with ZERO intensity and proceeds to “unload” some of the weakest, softest and lamest punches I have ever seen. That whole thing was just stupid and went on WAY too long. Ugh.

Ring of Honor were doing tapings at Universal Studios at the start, and it was great for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, they had the place laid out really well. The crowds were very small, probably only a few hundred people…but the soundstage was really well designed and had a great unique look with the ROH specific graphics and signs and everything. The tapings had a really unique look, they did not look just like the AEW shows with a couple of ROH signs slapped up. It made the ROH show distinctly different from the AEW product. Secondly, because the tapings were announced well in advance, the crowd was actually there to see ROH specifically. They were very loud, very vocal crowds. They weren’t just AEW fans that were just there because it was something to watch before or after AEW. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, they were taping TV four weeks at a time. That was forcing the notoriously scatter brained Tony Khan to actually book his show out in advance. You could tell what direction they were going, what they were building towards at the next PPV from week one, because they did not have any choice. As soon as they started doing the tapings in conjunction with the AEW shows, they lost all sense of uniqueness, and you could tell he just started slapping together whatever matches he thought up on the spot. Not to mention, when they stopped doing ROH specific tapings, they really cut back on bringing in original ROH talent, and they started relying on the total nobodies that they had on the AEW roster who had just been kicking around doing nothing and were not good enough or popular enough to appear on AEW TV. It might make sense from a financial standpoint, but it still sucks to see Tony Khan have basically given up on trying to present ROH as a unique brand and original product. He had a real chance to do something interesting for a while there. And for a very brief time he did it, but then he blew it.

Apparently that’s because the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FTC) has regulations in place that mandate Canadian channels have show a predetermined percentage of “Canadian Content.” That explains why although TSN has 5 different channels, they still show some bizarre and obscure Canadian sports programming rather than more popular American sports or events. It turns out they have to, in order to keep their broadcasting license. For the past month, both Collision and Rampage have qualified as Canadian because they have originated from Canadian locations and have featured Canadian talent. That is apparently one of the reasons that the shows have prominently featured talents like Ethan Page and Shawn Spears. That was the trade-off for getting them on the air in Canada. Now that the Canadian tour is over, that no longer applies and Collision and Rampage both go back to being exclusive to the TSN+ app. AEW apparently has some sort of deal in place already to keep Dynamite on the air, so that stays the same. At first, I was super pissed off about this whole situation, but having looked into it a bit further I am not quite as angry. When Collision was first announced, I had a Smart TV but it was a pretty old model. OK, it was a very old model. I had some apps on it, but I could not download new ones. There was no way to do it. I didn’t even have Disney+ on my TV because it was not a thing at the time my TV was manufactured. I had YouTube and Netflix and a couple of other apps, but there were so many apps that I did not have on that TV and I could not add any. I have since purchased a brand new TV (not because of this) and in settling it up I discovered a couple of things. Firstly, if you are already a subscriber to TSN as part of your normal cable package, it turns out you do not have to pay extra for the TSN+ app and secondly, on the newer model Smart TV’s you can easily add the TSN+ app to your actual channel lineup. This was not the case with my old TV, so I had no way of watching TSN+ on my TV. I don’t know why, but with the newer model Smart TV’s, you can add pretty much any app to your TV. I now have the FITE, ROH and New Japan World apps downloaded and available to watch on my beautiful new 65 inch Smart TV, which makes things much easier. It means I don’t have to watch stuff on my tablet or phone, because I really don’t like watching TV that way. The upshot is, if you have a fairly modern model Smart TV and you get TSN as part of your cable package, then you can still easily watch Collision and Rampage on TSN+ on your TV. And it is commercial free, which is even better. They do not go to picture-in-picture during the breaks. The bad news is, shows cannot be recorded on your PVR from an app, so if you can’t watch it live, you are going to miss it. The other thing I have discovered is that you can easily download a VPN on the newer model Smart TVs. In that case, you can easily use the VPN to change your geographic location, and then use the FITE app to order AEW Plus. You just have to change your location to Australia, or certain parts of the UK and you can watch all of the AEW programming with no commercials, live as it happens. So while it does suck that Collision is not available on broadcast television in Canada live as it happens, it’s not as bad as I thought. I actually watched Collision live using TSN+ the past two weeks, rather than waiting for the broadcast version at midnight, and it worked out pretty well for me. But in the bigger picture, it’s pretty stupid that AEW does not have a broadcast television deal in Canada, especially since they seem so intent on running so many shows here. It’s a small wonder they had a hard time selling tickets to some of those shows.

That would be great if Tony Khan actually gave a shit about ROH. They got off to a great start for the first six weeks but Ring of Honor has really gone downhill now. I know I already bitched about this elsewhere, but the fact they have a quarterly PPV this Friday, and have barely booked any matches (and the matches they have booked are pretty pointless) makes it obvious he just doesn’t care about this anymore. It’s bad enough they are taping the show before and after Collision now, and not in front of an exclusive audience with their own dedicated TV tapings now. But the show is just crap now, the creative is total garbage and ROH has basically taken the place of Dark/Elevation. Riccaboni is wasted there.

You’re not wrong. Riccaboni and Nigel were outstanding as a team last night. Much better than Kevin Kelly and Nigel and definitely miles ahead of Excalibur, Taz and Schiavone. That seems to be the general consensus across the so-called “IWC” today, as well.

I thought that the referee told Dax and Cash that he wasn’t going to count the submission if both teams were in the ring simultaneously, he kept waving his arms indicating that he wanted only the legal men in the ring, and it sounded like he was saying that one pair of them needed to leave. Plus, Juice and Switchblade grabbed each other’s arms to prevent themselves from tapping, so I thought FTR just gave up trying to get the double submission. But I could be wrong.

So…Ricky Starks is turning heel again already?! WTF?! He cheats to win the Owen Cup and then massively disrespects Jushin Thunder Liger during the trophy presentation. I certainly can’t see with the way that came across that it was anything other than a heel turn. Right?

Yeah the Corny podcasts took a week off but they announced on YouTube and Twitter that all is well, and they would be back this week...and they were. In fact, it sounds like they are about to announce a very lucrative exclusive hosting deal. I don’t know if it’s going to be similar to when Joe Rogan went to Spotify but it sounds kind of like that. It’s kind of crazy how popular the Cornette podcasts still are. I check out the Pro Wrestling podcast rankings every month and you can pretty much count on The Experience and The Drive Thru being 1 and 2 in the rankings. People just don’t seem to be getting tired of Cornette’s act. I would have bet that they would’ve run out of steam long before now, but if anything, the opposite is true. He just keeps getting more and more popular. Love him or hate him, he’s hit on a winning formula and it sounds like they’re about to cash in. You can’t argue with their download numbers.

HOLY SHIT THIS MATCH! I LOVE FTR! I LOVE PRO WRESTLING! And it’s not even over yet…

Those two guys actually feuded in Billy Corgan’s NWA right before the Pandemic hit and everything went to shit. They had one of the few good matches at the first NWA PPV “Into The Fire.” It was then that I realized two things…Eli Drake was a lot better than I had previously realized, and his work was definitely a lot better than Ken Anderson’s work was. YEAH!

Testify, my brother. In unrelated news, I caught the opening match on Rampage tonight. Maybe it’s just me, but the last couple of times I have seen him, Keith Lee is starting to look a little bit more like the Keith Lee of NXT, pre-COVID. And not just because he has started dyeing his hair again. I am sure the fact the he is mostly working Tag Team matches helps, because it gives him a chance to catch his breath. But he has looked OK. The last few times I have seen him, maybe there is still hope yet.

Hey did you know Mauro Ranallo was in Creed III? I was watching it at like three in the morning, and as soon as I saw him, I had two thoughts: ”Oh Lord please no” and “Hey I wonder if @C.S. saw this, or if he is more like CM Punk and has never seen a Rocky movie.”

I’m not saying that the kid isn’t going to be good one day. I guess my mistake was that I assumed based on the hype I had read about him online that he was ready for prime time now. I freely admit that of all my Pro Wrestling pet peeves, the greatest by far is when spots are obviously choreographed and require excessive cooperation between the participants. Spots that take you out of the illusion of an actual competitive physical contest, and make it obvious that it is nothing more than a preplanned tumbling routine. I especially hate when one of the competitors has to basically stand around, waiting for the other to complete some sort of ritual or set up in order for the match to continue. For example, when Kommander (or The Undertaker) grabs a guy by the wrist, and then slowly climbs up to the top rope and starts walking across. The obvious question is…why wouldn’t the guy just jerk his arm away or push his opponent so they fell off the rope? Another example which drives me insane (and this happens weekly in AEW) is when a bunch of guys end up outside the ring there, milling around, waiting, and then they hold out their arms to catch the guy who dives between or off the ropes. It’s obvious the guy is coming. Why would you not just walk away? I found that in the match between Nick Wayne and Swerve there were a handful of spots that were almost painful to watch, because they required extensive cooperation and choreography between both guys and Nick Wayne was nowhere near polished enough to pull it off and make it look convincing. I just found more than one or two of the exchanges in that match to be cringeworthy. Which is fine, except this is national TV for a major promotion. I am not trying to be rude or belittle the kid just for the sake of doing it, but I came away from that match thinking Nick Wayne was yet another skinny underweight Indy geek…in an organization that already has much more than their fair share of those types. Hell, in AEW throw a rock, and you are bound to hit somebody who does the exact same thing that he does, and probably looks a lot more professional doing it. In his defense, I know he is just an 18 year old kid making his debut, but there was a fair bit of hype behind him, and I don’t think he is anywhere near good enough to deserve that kind of hype. I was expecting to see some sort of prodigy or something, and I don’t know what we are going to see from here, but I can’t see him being skilled enough to hold up his end of a major program or anything at this point.

Sabu broke into the Pro Wrestling business doing “Bearman” tours for Dave McKigney, wrestling as “Terry SR.” McKigney was good friends with The Sheik as for the longest time, McKigney was the only promoter who would still book The Sheik. When I was a kid, McKigney was running independent shows all over small towns north of Toronto featuring The Sheik vs. Whipper Watson Jr. and then McKigney wrestling the bear. A few years ago, Sabu was doing a shoot interview where he told the story about Adonis dying doing that Bearman tour. He told the part of the story about the other wrestlers robbing Adonis’s dead body at the scene of the crash. They actually used an audio clip of that interview in the DSOR episode. I remember the interviewer being absolutely shocked at the idea that there was the crash, Adonis was lying there in the van dead, and other wrestlers came to the scene, and basically robbed his dead body. Sabu told a story about the exact same thing happening to him. I don’t know if you remember, but a few years ago, Sabu was working for that Extreme Rising promotion in Philadelphia that was run by Shane Douglas. Sabu was in his motel and overdosed on Soma. He missed an autograph signing, so the promoter sent some guys to check on Sabu at the motel. They broke into his room and found him, and they thought he was dead, at the time it was actually reported online that Sabu had died. The wrestlers who went into his room and found him, robbed him of thousands of dollars in cash that he had been paid by the promoter and had in his room, and they also stole his watch, his boots, and the shoes off his feet as well. Then the called the cops to report he was dead…only to have the paramedics come to the scene and discover he was still alive. (I guess when you overdose on Soma it lowers your heart rate and blood pressure so much that you can’t feel a pulse.) Sabu got rushed to the hospital and when he eventually got out, he had no money and not even anything to put on his feet. And as he put it during his interview, these were his “friends” who did this to him. “The Boys.”

Ah crap. Mark Briscoe is injured and is out of the World Title Match at next week’s ROH PPV. Tony Khan says they will not name the replacement challenger until after Dynamite on Wednesday (2 days before the PPV.) For those keeping track, ROH has a weekly TV show, which is now being taped after Collision every Saturday. This pay-per-view next Friday was announced months ago. However, with this injury, we now have exactly 0 matches confirmed for the PPV which takes place in 8 days.

Um…maybe Nick Wayne needs to go back to the indies for another few years because…holy shitty choreography, dude.

I have to admit, as a local fan it was nice to see The Kelly Twins and The Canadian Wildman get some form of exposure and kind of publicity even though it was for tragic reasons. Dave McKigney was such an interesting, influential and tragic figure in Canadian Pro Wrestling. I also have to say…robbing a dead body is pretty much an all time scumbag move, even in the world of Pro Wrestling. Seriously, WTF?

Yeah Kommander would be a lot more impressive if his opponents didn’t have to endlessly stand around waiting for him to set them up…and if he actually squarely landed the move and hit his target. In other news, I admit I do love Don Callis’s theme music.