The Thread Killer

You don’t like MJF as much as I do, so screw you, I ain’t giving you shit

I don’t think you’re a troll at all. As far as I’m concerned you’re an authentic PWO Good Bubba (tm) but I think only @KawadaSmile is allowed to officially make that designation. In fact, I might lose my official status just for trying to calling you that without authorization.

Sorry if I came off like a dick. Due to my personal and professional history, I get a little heated when the topic of charity and donations comes up.

Exactly. Those guys have awesome chemistry. Reminds me of Abyss and AJ in TNA. Every time they faced off, it was watchable no matter what the stakes were. Hell, screw the damn Elite, give me those guys in a Best of 7.

I was going to post that exact same thing. That guy has nothing but upside. He should be and hopefully will be a Main Event level player, and hopefully sooner rather than later. His ring skills are consistently solid to sometimes excellent, but more importantly he just has that mythical “It Factor.” Charisma and personality to spare. If TK has half a brain, he will push the hell out of this guy. It absolutely baffles me that WWE had him, and released him.

As a team to put the champs over on free TV, I don’t have a huge problem with Jarrett and Lethal. Jarrett is a part-time guy who works in the office, and I assume Lethal will be heading to ROH once TV starts for them. It’s not like they are getting a main event push or title shot on PPV or something.

Yeah this Page/Moxley deal doesn’t do a lot for me either, to be honest. I’ve never been a Moxley fan and Page just doesn’t connect with me anymore. On an unrelated note…Jeff Jarrett is in ridiculous physical condition for a guy his age. He and Billy Gunn defy time.

Fair play to Jericho for losing to Starks clean there. I’m not going to bitch about the rest of stuff that went down until I see where the rest of this angle goes. If this actually means that Starks becomes a bigger name in the end, then I am all for it. I do have a question though. How has Jake Hager been around as long as he has, yet still be so bad at the basics? That spot where he just stood there like a doofus waiting for Andretti to hit him with the chair, and then he actually looks over his shoulder to make sure it’s coming…looked pretty bush league.

That’s exactly what I was thinking. Why use Red and Blue, when those colours are associated with the competition? Not a huge deal in the bigger picture, but still seems like an odd choice.

I never really took it seriously in the sense that I thought there was much legitimacy to it. It was more the Karen Jarrett aspect of this that I found humorous and noteworthy. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that Tony Khan booked the angle and of course they agreed that Jarrett and Lethal would make the challenge, The Acclaimed would ignore them, Jarrett and Lethal would attack them, Caster would do his video, the match would happen, and we'd all move on. What I am betting happened is that Karen Jarrett didn't much care for the joke about Jeff stealing her from Kurt, and Kurt clearly didn't care for his name getting brought up in the angle. I don't for a minute believe Tony Khan wanted Karen Jarrett to start rehashing all of Kurt Angle's past marital misdeeds and naming names on Twitter, of all things. I also don't see how JJ going on his podcast and dragging Dixie Carter and Vince Russo's names into the mess helped serve this story at all. You have to know that as soon as Jarrett brought up Russo's name, old VinnieRu started doing the dance of joy. Now he's going to start trumpeting about how he will tell us all his side of the story and what REALLY HAPPENED, BRO. Behind his paywall, of course. I just think this is pretty much a standard Pro Wrestling angle that started to go off the rails a wee bit somewhere, probably thanks to Karen Jarrett.

As Good Bubba @Ricky Jackson pointed out, I am CANADIAN, dammit. The only thing European about me is my bikini area. For the record: "Whinging" is defined as complaining about something in an irritating way. "Whining" is what @C.S. does when Tony Nese gets booked on TV.

Here's the thing though...who cares? The money doesn't know where it comes from. I will take a celebrity like Jericho publicly giving money to make himself look good any day of the week, as opposed to somebody who won't give at all, or even worse...a total asswart of a human being like Steve Jobs who not only wouldn't give to charitable causes, he actively discouraged other from people doing it. I am not talking through my ass on this topic, either. I literally have an entire of career full of experience dealing with the charitable/non-profit sector. Granted, I spent the majority of my career working in the client care end of the field, but I was still intimately familiar with the financial and operational aspects of the charity sector. Towards the end of my career, I did work in the Fund Development area of a major charity. Let me tell you something, if it wasn't for people donating money to charity in order to make themselves look good, or looking for a major tax break, then a lot of money wouldn't get donated. The majority of the big money, to be honest. Once I got into the fundraising end of things, I learned some pretty horrifying truths. I was shocked at the number of obscenely wealthy people who either donated the bare minimum to charity throughout their entire lives, purely for tax purposes or even worse, they never donated at all, ever. But then, they would die and leave a massive amount (or in a few cases, all) of their estate to charity. Basically, these people would hoard their money until they were done with it, and discovering that science had not yet advanced to the point where they actually could take it with them, they left it all to charity. Usually in the form of a foundation or so-called "legacy" project like the construction of a building or something. And those donations usually came with naming rights stipulations. They would only leave the money if it the building had their name on it. Hell, there have actually been cases of rich families being shocked by posthumous charitable donations and trying to sue the estate in order to get the donation voided...all so the family could keep the money for themselves. I will do you one better, I could tell you stories about what actually gets done with that money once it gets donated that would make even the most sunny optimist become cynical as hell. A lot of charities, even some of the biggest ones, are almost a legal scam in a lot of cases. For example, knowing what I know now, I would never donate a damn nickel to Mother's Against Drunk Driving, let me tell you that much. Even in the most efficiently run charities with the best financial and operational oversights in place, only about 30 to 40 cents of every dollar donated actually end up getting put toward the actual charitable cause they are claiming to support. In the majority of cases, it's less than 20. The majority of the money donated goes into operational expenses and publicity in order to perpetuate the constant fundraising cycle. Whenever I give, you can get bet your ass I do a shit ton of research into where my money is going...but sadly a lot of the people asking you for your dollar are totally unaware of what will be done with the money donated. If you actually ask them for a copy of the audited financial statement from their most recent annual report, they will either turn ghost white or not even know what you are talking about. My main passion at this point (after over 20 years of working with foolish mortal humans) is domestic animal rescue. In the end, I came to appreciate the donation of time and volunteer hours much more than money. One time at the animal rescue a group of school kids raised cash and bought us a brand new washing machine, to clean the dogs and cats blankets and beds. A incredibly kindhearted senior citizen bought us a brand new golf cart, so we could drive around the grounds of the rescue and feed all the animals. I would take a donation like that of something "in kind" rather than in cash any day of the week...and you always know your donation is going exactly where you want it to. I sleep a hell of a lot better at night helping find adoptive homes for abandoned, abused and neglected dogs and cats, or cleaning up dog poop and scooping kitty litter at a rescue than I ever did begging rich old people for a cheque or asking them to leave money in their will after they die so they can get their name on a building. The point is, you would have to look pretty long and hard to find somebody who is more cynical than I am when it comes to charity and charitable giving. Over 20 years in the non-profit sector turned me from a cheerful college kid happily regurgitating poorly thought out and in most cases unrealistic and impractical left wing talking points, into a bitter old cranky libertarian with a deep seeded distrust and dislike for the government, social service agencies and most of all, the majority of human beings in general. Believe you me, I saw some of the most heinous shit you couldn't even possibly imagine. Stuff people did to each other and it many cases, innocent children that haunts me to this day and did serious permanent damage to my mental health. As a rule, human beings suck. No, we're not getting better and no, we're never going to join hands to sing and work together to save the planet and come to a deeper understanding of one another. Hippies actually believed that during the 60's, and look where we ended up. Having said that... Once in a while, people are capable of doing good things. Even bad people. When Damar Hamlin went down, it was pretty horrifying to watch. Some people (a depressingly large number of people) decided to immediately jump on Twitter and blame the COVID vaccine, because of course they did. Some others managed to do an impressive feat of mental gymnastics and point to this injury as an example of the systematic racism in the NFL. But some others just offered up the standard "thoughts and prayers" mantra which seems to be standard in situations like this. Then somebody found out that Hamlin had a charity toy drive, and they wanted to send him a message that they were supporting him, and his charity...so they donated. And it snowballed, and here we are well over 4 million dollars raised, apparently. I cannot and will not believe that those funds were raised with anything other than the purest of motives. Yeah, off the top of my head I could probably name you at least five charitable causes that could use that kind of money desperately, where that money could do some serious good. But that wasn't the point. It is my hope that Damar Hamlin totally recovers from this injury and he sees the gesture for what it was...an entire country taking a minute to do whatever they could to try and support him when it looked like he was about to die. I also hope he gets some good advice, surrounds himself with smart (and more importantly experienced) people and that all that money gets put to a good use and ends up going where it needs to go. But honestly, even if it doesn't...the actual act of giving the money was a rare example of a whole bunch of people coming together trying to do something good after something bad. Yeah, Chris Jericho is clearly an egomaniac. I have listened to enough of his podcasts to understand clearly this is a man who absolutely loves the smell of his own farts. He frequently refers to himself in the third person, which is always a sign of douchebaggery of the highest order. He donated money to Trump. His wife was at the January 6 riot at the capital. I don't much care for what I know about Chris Jericho. Hell, we shouldn't forget that the dude is a millionaire, so a $10,000 donation from him is probably like a $100 donation from one of us. But once again...so what? He could have done nothing. Or he could have done worse...he could have been like those people who tried to use this situation to further their own political talking points, or conspiracy theories. But he didn't. He threw a few bucks at the problem. Believe you me, there are much worse things.

The money Jericho donated in this particular case is going to Damar Hamlin’s charity for inner city kids. THAT BASTARD.

Allow me to quantify my original statement. It’s hard to find fault in that, unless you’re a needlessly contrarian smarmy whinging pedantic hipster.

I don’t know if anybody here has been following this story as it unfolds, but it is becoming pretty hilarious. As we all know, Tony Khan is building towards a big World Tag Team Title match tomorrow night on Dynamite, when The Acclaimed defend against Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett. The angle got kicked off a few weeks ago when Jarrett smashed a guitar over the head of Max Caster. This past week, AEW showed a new music video from The Acclaimed, taking aim at Jarrett and Lethal. During the video, Caster takes a major shot at Jarrett “stealing Kurt Angle’s wife.” It appears Karen Jarrett did not take kindly to this comment. She apparently went on a bit of a rampage of her own on Twitter. This is where she diverted from what was probably intended to be a work, when she started venting about Kurt cheating on her during their marriage…and naming names. Including the former Kelly Kelly, who issued a denial. Kurt Angle himself tweeted about people using him to get heat 12 years after the fact…which he then deleted. So the newest episode of Jarrett’s podcast was released on YouTube this morning. Conrad Thompson started off the show, clearly trying to advance the angle and get a comment from Jarrett about the whole “controversy.” It was clearly a pre-planned promotional spot, but it appeared to go off the rails quite badly. Jarrett went on a bit of a bizarre rant involving Caster, Kurt Angle, Dixie Carter and Vince Russo?! Before anybody says anything, no, I am not an idiot. I do not think all of this is real. Of course I think most of it is a work. It involves Jeff Jarrett, the carniest carny who ever carnied. However…let’s not forget that Karen Jarrett seems to have a legit goofy streak. Let’s not forget that whole brouhaha between her and Braun Strowman a couple years back. I am thinking that this whole thing was probably preplanned and preapproved and Karen ended up taking it too far. There was no logical reason for Kurt Angle and Kelly Kelly and others to get dragged into this mess. Plus, if you watch the opening part of this podcast, you can clearly see where Jarrett is trying to balance between working and getting legitimately annoyed and Conrad kind of loses him. It is a humorous example of trying to use real life stuff to promote an angle. Anyhow, the opening segment of this podcast is pretty funny, if nothing else. If you are going to watch it, you have to skip past a commercial and a bunch of college football talk. It starts about 12 minutes in.

Agreed. Chris Jericho is extremely generous with donations and fundraisers for injured or ill wrestlers, or other pro athletes. It’s hard to find fault in that.

Translation: “Nobody has signed up for our subscription service, and we can’t get a TV deal to save our lives, because Tyrus is our champion and the owner/booker is an idiot. So…YouTube is our only option.”

So I listened to the preview episode of this show and then to the first episode. Both my suspicions were pretty much confirmed. This is going to be a pretty good podcast because Dax is so passionate, and it is going to cause a kerfuffle on a regular basis, I bet.

“There comes a time where the fans are going to stop believing in you, if you always lose. Road Dogg said wins and losses don’t matter. That’s just something Vince McMahon says, that he’s regurgitating. Sorry about that, Road Dogg. But not really.”

Personally, I am hoping this leads to a gimmick where Samoa Joe systematically goes through the entire roster, one person at a time, until there are ZERO man buns left.

I was going to say…the dude gets attacked backstage with a pipe so he barely makes it to the ring, he fails to get revenge on the guy who attacked him (after betraying him) and he loses. Then he gets his hair cut off and essentially has to be rescued by a guy who weighs about half what he does. Not exactly booked strong. Not that I really care, honestly. Based on their last match I would way rather see Joe/Darby II anyhow. But I almost feel a bit bad for Wardlow.

YES! DEATH TO THE MAN-BUN!

I think Joe might be at the point in his career where fans have so much respect and appreciation for what he’s accomplished, that they are not going to fully buy into him as a heel, or commit to booing him, no matter what he says or does.

It’s not that it’s flippy shit. I expect that from the AEW Trios Division. But it’s just non stop car crash spots over and over and over again by the same two teams, week in, week out. When you don’t enforce any rules to begin with, matches with no rules as a stipulation really don’t mean anything special. It’s just desensitizing at this point. Next time there’s ladders. Whoopee, who gives a shit.

It’s going to go the full 7, because God hates me. in all seriousness, I have to believe that the most devoted, die hard, unshakable Elite/AEW fans are starting to get tired of this shit. It never ends, the same crap every week. It’s almost exhausting. I barely cared win the series started, but they have managed to make me care even less now.