The Thread Killer

Good call on his part, I think.

In other news, reading the news sites today it seems that Tony Khan is doubling down on the significance and importance of this big announcement tonight, so I am definitely curious as to what it will be.

Nigel was in the broadcast booth for the ROH PPV this past Friday. I have mixed feelings about that. When he used to be the authority figure and colour commentator in ROH before, I always found him to be pretty terrible…high pitched and nasal sounding and not particularly good. He definitely improved tremendously during his time in NXT and NXT-UK. He and Tom Hannifan were a great team, I thought. However, the current existing ROH broadcast team of Ian Riccobani and Caprice Coleman are very good as they are. I really don’t see the need to add a third person to the mix. Then again, he seemed to be leaning a little bit on the heel side in his commentary during the pay-per-view. That could add a new dimension I suppose. More importantly, rumours are circulating that Nigel may actually get cleared to wrestle again at some point, and obviously, if that is the case, then that is outstanding news. He was an awesome talent and I always felt bad that his career was cut short as it was.

Seeing a family torn apart on social media just makes me feel ill and almost dirty. Accusations and counter-accusations and legal threats and innuendo while people who aren’t members of the family all throw in their opinions for retweets and likes and clicks…ugh. I hate social media. The whole thing is just so sad.

I hear you brother. I don’t think you are necessarily the one who is excited about it, I just never understand when they make a big deal about holding shows in certain locations when it’s on a TV show that can be seen all over the place. For example, right now WWE is making a big deal about holding a show in Puerto Rico. I live in Canada, so what the hell do I care about that? Hell, for that matter, they announced they are holding Forbidden Door in Toronto, which is where I live basically and I still don’t care. The tickets are going for $1,100.00 last I checked!

That was exactly my feeling. Aside from the Main Event of Wrestlemania Night 1, this was NOT a weekend where you would go home feeling good about the hero prevailing. I found the Mark Briscoe/Joe match to be especially disheartening because we aren’t talking about a storyline not paying off, this felt much more real. I know Mark really probably didn’t care if he won the title, but all that stuff with his family in the front row and everything was just a real downer. I really don’t understand the logic between doing that excellent video package of Mark, talking about how life has been without his brother and the little interview with him and his dad, and all of that, and showing all the times that Mark came up short trying to win the TV title, only to go with that finish.

I am talking about guys who could be slotted into a Main Event match and it wouldn’t look strange or out of place. I don’t subscribe to the Observer and I don’t much care about Dave Meltzer, or his opinion. I am purely talking about talent that the respective fan bases would accept as a Main Event talent. AEW has: Adam Cole Bryan Danielson Chris Jericho Claudio Castagnoli Hangman Page Jon Moxley Kenny Omega MJF Who could easily Main Event a PPV right now and the fans wouldn’t miss a beat. Plus they have: Malakai Black Darby Allin Eddie Kingston (?) Jungle Boy Keith Lee Orange Cassidy Powerhouse Hobbs Ricky Starks Sami Guevara Wardlow All of those guys are all either being groomed for a Main Event level spot or are easily capable of being pushed there with a minimum of effort by Tony Khan right now. The bottom line is, with very little work I can see any of those guys being accepted by the AEW fan base as legit Main Event guys. In the case of Darby, Jungle Boy and Sami he is literally pushing them as we speak. And that’s not even considering the access Tony Khan has to the top New Japan guys just by picking up the phone. Plus there is a definite chance Punk could return. And, there are one or two guys on top of that who have potential but have not been pushed much. Contrast that with WWE right now. Bobby Lashley Bray Wyatt (?) Brock Lesnar Cody Rhodes Drew McInytre Edge (?) Kevin Owens Randy Orton (?) Sami Zayn Seth Rollins Roman Reigns And the problem with that list, is most of those guys have already been cycled through the Main Event and there are no new or compelling matches for them. I would love to see Gunther added to that WWE list but who knows.

I really wish TK would bring Homicide back into ROH. I would love to see him teaming with Eddie Kingston again. So far, TK has done a great job of balancing the legacy talent and bringing in newer younger guys into ROH.

Reading all the reports about what happened backstage last night at Raw and it sounds just brutal. Vince, back on the headset, Vince changing his mind midshow and pulling whole matches at the last minute. It’s a small wonder the show sucked so bad.

Oh god no please no

It’s amazing how many Main event ready top level guys AEW has, compared to WWE. My only concern with Jay White going to AEW is him getting lost in the crowd. But I’d still way rather see him go there.

Did you get to see one of those matches they did with Bret in their corner against Brock Anderson and Brian Pillman Jr. with Arn in their corner? I was very curious about that match. I wanted to see it, but I wasn’t sure how good it would be considering Brock being green as hell and Pillman Jr. being…himself.

Yeah I really want to see a series between FTR and MCMG. FTR can work well with “modern style” teams…that second match they had with The Young Bucks last year was one of their best matches ever. Honestly, I think the key is time. If you look at that awesome match they had at Royal Quest with Aussie Open, or the matches with The Briscoes, or the aforementioned match with The Bucks, if they get enough time to tell the story everybody wants to tell, I think they can have a good match with pretty much any team. Who knows, maybe they would get that in Impact.

Based on the ROH PPV I am curious to see what happens on ROH TV this Thursday. Tony Khan pulled his own miniaturized versions of the Cody/Roman debacle at Supercard of Honor on Friday. Dude spends a bunch of time producing these compelling video packages building the story of Mark Briscoe beating Samoa Joe for the TV Title basically in Jay’s memory and then Mark loses and has to go hug his crying family in the front row. Then they went to an insane amount of detail with that in depth history of Eddie vs. Claudio, only to have him lose too. Major bummer.

I haven’t seen Ace & Bey, they are a decent team? What style do they wrestle, high flying Lucha spot stuff, hardcore or traditional old school? You think they would match up well with FTR? (Then again, who doesn’t…but they definitely do better against traditional style teams.)

They seem to really want to work New Japan more, although I don’t know why they couldn’t do that and stay with AEW. Unless they want to do every tour or something. I don’t think there was ever a serious chance of them going back to WWE. I know that the hot rumour at the time was as soon as Vince was out of the picture, Triple H made a push to get them back, but they do not have a positive feeling about the time they spent there really.

That qualifies as a “huge” announcement that needs to be broadcast on network TV?

I know it’s 99.9% confirmed FTR are staying in AEW. Dax pretty much came out and said on his podcast that with Vince coming back, there is no way they go back to WWE. But that show does line up with the expiration of their contracts, and they did pose squaring off against the Impact Tag Champs over the weekend. And Dax is always saying they’d be happy to spend a year splitting their time between Japan and the indies, so there is that infinitesimal chance they do lose tomorrow.

That pretty much explains it. Based on how good Wrestlemania was, and based on the fact that the Raw after Wrestlemania usually has something happen, I actually went into that show interested. That was fucking terrible. It was like they were daring you to keep watching. Over the course of those three hours, I went from intrigued, to impatient, to bored, to frustrated, to praying for the cold embrace of sweet merciful death. That was complete and utter shit.

I went into Wrestlemania this year not really all that interested and I definitely wasn’t invested in the outcome. There is probably something to be said about going into a show with low expectations. But it doesn’t really matter how you slice it, if you look at it based solely on the in ring product, both nights were really damn good, and I say that somewhat begrudgingly. A few of those matches overdelivered to a ridiculous level. I am thinking especially about the Charlotte/Rhea match and the 3 Way IC match. I know this sounds hyperbolic but I think that both of those matches could go down as all timers. And the Main Event of Night 1 definitely delivered and didn’t disappoint. As far as Cody/Roman? Up until the finish, I was digging the hell out of that match. I just strongly disagree with the booking. I was the first one to crap on Roman for years, but people refusing to acknowledge (see what I did there) how much he has improved or how great he is now are either people who don’t actually watch his matches or they have some other axe to grind. I don’t see a compelling argument against him being the greatest active Pro Wrestler in North America right now. Maybe Danielson but after that I don’t think it’s even close. Who else is there? Moxley? Give me a fucking break. Omega? Putting aside the fact that he has barely wrestled any singles matches over the past couple years, he just doesn’t have the tools Reigns has and at this point he never will. The main strike against Roman is shitty booking and the total lack of viable opponents for him. That’s why we got him vs. Lesnar a million times, and they ended up having to book him against Logan Fucking Paul. I know it would never happen, but it would be awesome if Reigns could compete in New Japan or even AEW. It kills me to think the quality of the stuff he could do if he wasn’t hamstrung by WWE. But they invented him, they get to keep him. And considering the money he’s making and the schedule he works, who can blame him.

TK is at it again, hyping another HUGE announcement on Wednesday. Based on his previous HUGE announcements, let’s try and guess what it is going to be this time… The addition of the rumoured Saturday Night TV show? The dates and brackets for this years Owen Hart Tournament? He has re-signed Christian Cage? My guess is he has created even more Championship belts and booked some more tournaments, perhaps the AEW 8 Man Titles, or the AEW Pacific Northwestern Championship.

I haven’t watched RAW in ages, but I remember stuff used to happen the night after Wrestlemania so I tuned in. This show has been remarkably uneventful and ridiculously slowly paced. It literally took almost 25 minutes before anything significant actually happened. So far it has been two hours of nothingness. At least on the weeks when Dynamite sucks, it sucks quickly. This show is nothing but long drawn out ring entrances and stupid pointless exposition.

They may be getting ahead of the rush. When Endeavour took over UFC they did a fair bit of house cleaning. Just after Wrestlemania is usually time for releases as well, right? With the new ownership group I am already reading all over the place that they are planning on doing some serious cost cutting. If I was AJ Francis, I would be more than a little nervous right now.

Prior to today, I would have thought it might have been Triple H’s call. But it has been confirmed that Vince was at the event last night, on a headset no less. Plus, he admitted in the interview this morning that he will still be involved in creative on a so-called “higher level” (whatever that means.) So I think it’s a pretty safe bet that the ultimate decision of who was winning in the Main Event last night was Vince.

That’s assuming it was Triple H’s call.