The Thread Killer

I strongly agree. What the hell is the point of the Lucha Brothers defending the ROH Tag Titles against Powerhouse Hobbs and QT Fucking Marshall? Does anybody think there is an even a 0.1% chance of them winning? Or even that it would be a good match? What’s the point? Then again, I am still totally baffled at the fact that they have saddled Hobbs with Marshall to begin with.

I wondered about that after seeing the episode. The crowd seemed pretty loud for the Takeshita/Tony Nese match, but aside from that and the aforementioned Six Man, they seemed pretty subdued. They really need to do their own tapings.

I sure hope so, because I just watched this week’s show and there seemed to be a notable drop off in quality from the first month. For the most part…this week’s show was just another episode of Dark.

The first month of the new ROH TV show on Honor Club was taped over two nights, at Universal Studios. They did an excellent job of creating a unique atmosphere. The soundstage layout was great. It was a small crowd, but very vocal and passionate. I really loved those first four episodes, there were some great matches and it was a lot of fun. The other obvious advantage of taping an entire month worth of TV in two nights was that it forced Tony Khan to plan ahead. You could tell where he was going leading into Supercard of Honor. A lot of stuff built up over those shows, the feud between Top Flight and The Kingdom, the alliance between AR Fox, Blake Christian and Metalik against The Embassy, and especially the angles with Mark Briscoe/Samoa Joe and Eddie Kingston and Claudio for the World Championship. Unfortunately, it now looks like Tony Khan is going to be taping the weekly ROH TV show in arenas before Dynamite every week. I guess the advantage to that is that the show will be taped in front of a much larger crowd, and because it is before Dynamite goes on the air, the fans are pretty amped up. The problem is, it really makes ROH feel like the AEW “B Show.” Don’t get me wrong, I definitely know and understand that is what the new ROH really is…but I do believe he is trying to keep the brands somewhat separate. I was hoping he would be letting them do their own independent TV tapings least. Tony Khan has done a great job integrating the ROH Legacy talent and mixing them with the young up-and-coming guys from AEW. I hope that continues. I just wish the TV product was a little bit more distinguishable.

Eddie and Vicki’s other daughter Shaul Guerrero (who used to be a talent in WWE and is married to Aiden English, I believe) issued a statement today. She seemingly legitimizes some of the claims made by her sister, but also confirms some of the counterclaims made by her mother. She also bemoaned the fact that this entire situation is being played out in front of the “fans” on Social Media.

The best Wrestling family was either the Graham family (Dr. Jerry, Eddie, Mike, Crazy Luke and Superstar Billy) or The Andersons (Gene, Ole, Lars, Arn, CW, Karl and now Brock.)

Didn’t he shoot a documentary of his retirement tour where that was the entire point of it?

Hook better win this match.

After everything that has happened over this week, I am very disappointed in the content of Max’s rap. The best he can come up with is taking shots at George Santos?

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.