The Thread Killer

Not gonna lie, since her return, WWE did a great job of slowing building Asuka’s heel turn, finally culminating with what happened during and after the Main Event on RAW tonight. Of course everybody saw it coming from a million miles away, but it was still really effective. It helps that Asuka is able to straddle that fine line between corny overacting and coming across like a complete psycho. I am very interested to see Rhea & Iyo vs. Asuka & Kairi now.

Maybe, but you combine that with the insane amount of muscle he has packed on, his apparent lack of cardio (how could you have decent cardio at that size?) and his advancing age, and it all adds up to a recipe for…yikes. As a friend of mine was saying, I don’t even know why the hell at his age and this stage in his life, Lesnar would even do that to himself? It’s not like he’s going to be wrestling enough to justify “getting into that kind of shape” and he reportedly doesn’t really care about the business anyhow. Aside from vanity, I can’t imagine why a person would put their body through that kind of abuse.

I also couldn’t help but notice that after about 90 seconds of physical exertion, Lesnar’s face turned red, he was sweating profusely, and he looked as if his blood pressure had skyrocketed to the point that steam was about to start blasting from his ears. For the people who hate Brock Lesnar and don’t want him around, you may be in luck, because he looked like his heart is about to explode. Seriously, there were some eerie similarities between how Lesnar looked last night and how the Warrior looked the night of his Hall of Fame induction…and we all know how that worked out.

I don’t know if anybody has seen the clip going around Twitter and YouTube, but Jey Uso managed to almost knock himself out and busted himself open with a chairshot.

Good Lord, Lesnar is massive. He’s definitely exempt from the Wellness Policy, or he got himself a Testosterone exemption like Orton and Styles.

No

Did not expect that finish in the MJF/Briscoe match.

I felt that FTR vs Copeland & Christian match was kind of underwhelming and didn’t really deliver the way I was hoping it would. I felt it was just starting to build some steam when the whole Stokely/Beth stuff happened and kind of wrecked the flow of the match. It was also shorter than I was expecting. I assume based on what happened afterwards that there is going to be a continuation, but I didn’t much enjoy that.

I was morbidly curious regarding when Mark Shapiro's colossal stupidity was going to start to affect WWE, and it seems last week was a prime example of what is to come. Firstly, the moron gives that interview where he basically says that WWE needs to raise their ticket prices, because when Vince McMahon was in charge, WWE was catering their live event ticket prices to families, and TKO wants to see WWE ticket prices brought more in line with UFC prices. Lets ignore that clip that went viral last week of a fan complaining to Nick Khan that ticket prices were getting too high. On it's face, that interview was ridiculous for two reasons. Firstly, we all know that the only thing TKO cares about is maximizing profits above all else. They have demonstrated that repeatedly since the takeover. But even somebody with a Business Diploma from a Community College could tell you...you don't actually SAY THAT IN INTERVIEWS, not if you want to be seen as a fan friendly organization. All major corporations want to maximize their profits (especially those that have shareholders) but 99.9% of them aren't stupid enough to basically announce that they don't plan on being affordable for families. It's bad enough when you're a money hungry, greedy blood sucking corporation, you should at least do the fans the service of pretending that you care about your customer base. This leads to my second point, which I've said previously here at PWO... Mark Shapiro is so stupid that he literally doesn't differentiate between the UFC and WWE fanbase. Apparently either TKO is either the only major live event business that doesn't do market research (highly unlikely) or Mark Shapiro doesn't read the research, or even worse, he doesn't understand it. (Much more likely.) Just look at the crowd shots during WWE TV and PLE's. It's packed full of families, and kids. Then look at the crowd at your average UFC show. Dudebros. Lots and lots of single men (or men with girlfriends/wives but no kids, who presumably have lots of disposable income.) You can't assume that just because dudebros will fork out literally thousands of dollars for a UFC PPV ticket, that some poor middle or working class family is going to be willing to do the same thing. Especially when the families spend a ton of money on merchandise at these shows. So we had barely gotten past that ridiculous nonsense, when TKO announces they are doing Wrestlemania in Saudi Arabia. Like everybody else, I have read all the speculation that the Saudis are paying $100 Million to TKO to make this happen. Which makes sense, because when you factor in moving the entire dog-and-pony show over there for Wrestlemania week, it's crazy. They're doing the Friday SmackDown, both nights of Wrestlemania, and the RAW after Wrestlemania, all in Saudi Arabia. The expense of all that alone must be enormous. Today, a couple of sites reported that the figure TKO is getting is closer to $250 Million, and as insane as that sounds...I totally believe it. The Saudis have the money, and I can see TKO insisting on a price this high to make it happen. Never mind the optics from a political standpoint of doing a show with the Saudis. That point has been made and remade and beaten to death, and lets be honest, that horse has left the barn. WWE and the Saudis are in bed together now, with both legs under the covers, and that's not going to change. My main interest is how this decision is going to come across to the WWE fanbase. As we all know, WWE has pretty much trained their hardcore fans to eat whatever shit they serve up, and act like it tastes like chocolate cake. But this decision, coming right on the heels of the announcement about ticket prices going up could start to upset even the most apologetic of hardcore WWE marks. Over the past couple of days I saw footage on Twitter of some fans vocally booing this announcement at the actual press conference, and when it was recapped at the AAA show on Friday night, there were audible "You Sold Out" chants. Between jacking up ticket prices in the least diplomatic way possible, and moving their flagship event to Saudi Arabia, TKO/WWE is basically giving even their most ardent fans the middle finger. I'm legitimately curious about how the fans are going to take it. Add to that all the stories that are circulating that the Saudis actually tried to buy WWE before the Endeavor deal, and that they are still interested in acquiring them even after the formation of TKO? Yeesh.

Yeah, but Penta is actually kind of doing better as a solo act right now. With the way WWE treats their tag team divisions (at least the RAW tag division) Penta teaming up with Fenix would unfortunately kind of seem like a bit of a step down from where he is right now. I would definitely like to see the Lucha Brothers reunited at some point, but when it will actually mean something. Although this whole angle with Penta kind of feuding with The New Day could be heading in that direction.

I have also since read that the rumour is it was supposed to be Fenix and Andrade getting the Tag Title shot at the Paris PLE (which makes sense when you consider the winning streak they were on) but after SummerSlam Andrade got suspended and basically went home and went radio silent, so they fired him. There’s also some weird story about him being escorted out of the arena when he got suspended, and another story that he was asked to appear in AAA but refused. I don’t know how much stock I put in any of these stories at this point. Sucks for Fenix though, because that team was great, they were really on a roll, and it finally felt like he was getting some momentum.

Apparently, Meltzer is now reporting that Andrade’s release was for “disciplinary reasons” but had nothing to do with a Wellness Policy violation or his relationship with Charlotte, for what that’s worth.

I had been thinking about the drama between Andrade and Sammy Guevara. I remember they had some sort of incident backstage, and then they were sniping back-and-forth at each other on Twitter. Turns out, Tony Khan felt Guevara was the problem during that issue, and he actually liked Andrade. So much so, that when Andrade was getting ready to leave AEW and go back to WWE, Khan supposedly made an offer to try and get him to stay, but of course Andrade would not because he wanted to be on the same schedule as Charlotte because they were trying to have kids. Some sites are reporting that Tony Khan is saying that Andrade left AEW “the right way” and was a professional, with no hard feelings on either side, so maybe the door is open. So maybe I was wrong, apparently there is a chance that Andrade might be welcome back in AEW, which would also give him access to CMLL, I guess? Time will tell.

That’s odd. There has to be some sort of story behind that. His contract was apparently not up for another 18 months, and this is not part of budget cuts because nobody else is getting released, just him. I’m probably in the minority, but I kind of liked him, actually. I thought he was a solid midcard guy, and I was really enjoying his team with Fenix. I wondered why we hadn’t seen him since SummerSlam. I guess he’s kind of screwed now. I imagine considering how things went for him in AEW, he can’t go back there. AAA is probably not an option either. Rumour has it his divorce from Charlotte was kind of contentious so you have to wonder if that has something to do with this.

Over the last few weeks on SmackDown, we saw London, we saw France…and now we’ve seen Brock Lesnar’s underpants.

Smackdown is only 2 hours now, and since it’s on traditional TV, you have to subtract 30 minutes of commercial time, so in reality it’s only a 90 minute show. I’m not saying last night wasn’t a talk heavy episode…it definitely was…but not quite as bad as 3 matches in 3 hours.

Sooner, apparently. All Out will be on HBO MAX and for only $40.

AEW just announced they are moving the start time for All Out from 8:00 PM to 3:00 PM.

So the ticket sales for All Out in Toronto were actually moving really well up to this point. The Scotiabank Arena seats around 18,000 but initially AEW only opened up 8,000 tickets for sale, and based on the map, it looked like they were blocking off the rest of the arena with the stage and ramp. Surprisingly, they sold the 8000 tickets pretty quickly, so they opened more seats. As of now, they have opened up around 11,400 seats and have sold around 9,700 so they only need to sell another 1,700 for a sellout the way the arena is configured now. And keep in mind, this was all before it was officially announced on Dynamite last week that Copeland & Christian are fighting FTR. I expect the fan interest in that match to be especially high in the Toronto area, so I would not be surprised at all if they sell out all 11,400 seats, and maybe even have to open up a few more, although I don’t know how many more seats they could open up considering I know the stage and ramp take up a huge amount of space in those big arena shows. The only possible monkey wrench is that of course WWE is now running the Wrestlepalooza PLE directly opposite All Out. Toronto has always been a hardcore WWE town, so it’s conceivable that some fans may choose to skip this show in favour of the WWE show, but at this point, the two audiences are so divergent, I don’t know that it will really be an issue.

That crowd was crazy and that show massively over-delivered. Cena vs Paul was miles better than I expected.

Well, Roman certainly gave Reed a lot. That was a really good match, and I can only assume from the post match beat down that Reigns is going on another extended break. Reed definitely got his heat back. The tag title match was decent. Looks like they are finally going to pull the trigger on breaking up the Street Profits, which is long overdue if you ask me. Not to be mean spirited but Dawkins is clearly the Jannetty of that team.

Clash in Paris time. Bronson Reed rockin the Pimp Fur Coat. Nice. Reed should probably go over here, but he probably won’t. I just hope Roman gives him a lot, and it’s a good match.

Booker T might not have been a good promo in the classic sense of the word, but he connected with fans. He had charisma. He had personality, and in the immortal words of Jules Winfield…personality goes a long way.

In Kelly’s defense, her Father just died so there is a valid argument to be made that the “too soon” rule applies to Becky’s promo. On the other hand, Kelly Osbourne is not exactly blessed in the self-awareness (or general intelligence) departments. My personal favourite highlight from her was after Trump got elected the first time, and in a show of solidarity with Latino people she righteously asked on The View: “If you kick the Latino people out of the country, who is going to clean your toilet, Donald Trump?”

They tried with New Jack a couple of times, but it never stuck.