The Thread Killer

Now that the William Regal podcast is done, Conrad Thomason’s music producer Matt Koon is starting a new podcast on Conrad’s Podcast Heat/Ad Free Shows Network with…Dax Harwood. Koon and Dax are apparently buddies. I used to follow Koon on Twitter for a while and he is one of the loudest voices on Twitter complaining about how FTR are being misused in AEW. He’s also very pissy about the fact that Tony Khan replaced the (terrible) custom theme that Koon had produced for FTR in AEW with the Midnight Express knockoff (which is a million times better.) Somebody on Twitter jokingly asked Cash Wheeler if he would be getting a podcast too, and Wheeler replied: “Let me think about how many bridges I am willing to burn first.” That about sums it up. This has glorious train wreck written all over it. Dax Harwood is super passionate about Pro Wrestling and appears to pretty much wear his heart on his sleeve. He has already shown in his appearance on Cornette’s podcast that he is not afraid to vent about behind the scenes drama when he is pissed. Combine that with a co-host who is not kindly disposed towards Tony Khan, Dax’s friendship with Punk, FTR’s rumoured heat with the Young Bucks, his antagonistic relationship with Meltzer and a lot of Elite fanboys online…and most significantly the fact that FTR’s contracts are up in the next 90 days or so? This could be a bit of a spectacle. Then again, it could just be him and Koon doing watch-alongs of classic Bret Hart matches. Who knows? The show debuts December 29.

Don’t know if anybody saw it in the Podcasts folder, but now that the William Regal podcast is done, Conrad Thomason’s music producer Matt Koon is starting a new podcast on Conrad’s Podcast Heat/Ad Free Shows Network with…Dax Harwood. Koon and Dax are apparently buddies. I used to follow Koon on Twitter for a while and he is one of the loudest voices on Twitter complaining about how FTR are being misused in AEW. He’s also very pissy about the fact that Tony Khan replaced the (terrible) custom theme that Koon had produced for FTR in AEW with the Midnight Express knockoff (which is a million times better.) Somebody on Twitter jokingly asked Cash Wheeler if he would be getting a podcast too, and Wheeler replied: “Let me think about how many bridges I am willing to burn first.” That about sums it up. This has glorious train wreck written all over it. Dax Harwood is super passionate about Pro Wrestling and appears to pretty much wear his heart on his sleeve. He has already shown in his appearance on Cornette’s podcast that he is not afraid to vent about behind the scenes drama when he is pissed. Combine that with a co-host who is not kindly disposed towards Tony Khan, Dax’s friendship with Punk, FTR’s rumoured Heat with the Young Bucks, his antagonistic relationship with Meltzer and a lot of Elite fanboys online…and most significantly the fact that FTR’s contracts are up in the next 90 days or so? This could be a bit of a spectacle. Then again, it could just be him and Koon doing watch-alongs of classic Bret Hart matches. Who knows? The show debuts December 29.

Dax Harwood is starting a podcast on Ad Free Shows and Conrad’s “Podcast Heat” Network. It’s called FTR, it will be cohosted by Matt Koon and it is essentially replacing Regal’s podcast which is now officially done.

I don’t know what’s worse…AJ Francis, or all the Soccer talk in this thread.

OMG thank you. It drives me nuts that Moxley gets presented as some crazy out of control death match brawler, when in fact a good portion of his basic offense looks like weak, fake shit.

Point well taken. If you were to search them on YouTube and watch some of their best promos? Yikes. A personal favourite of mine would be from when Mark and Jay were feuding with each other and Mark gets so upset he heads to the gun range…

I must have missed the day my wise old grandpappy used that expression. Anyhow, my point was not that the Briscoes have a “right” to appear on TV or anything like that. It’s more that AEW and Turner/Discovery doesn’t seem to have a consistent response to situations like this. I’d be a lot less bitchy about this whole deal if they applied their standards equally across-the-board, but they don’t. Let’s not forget Sami’s infamous “joke” about Sasha Banks either. He got what, a month suspension and had to attend sensitivity classes? Rape conviction? That’s okay, you did your time, plus you’re really famous so we’ll pretend that didn’t happen. Rape joke? Slap on the wrist. Go to sensitivity class. Bank robbery conviction? That’s okay, you did your time. By all means, come on our national TV show and carve a motherfucker up. Homophobic tweets from 12 years ago, that you sincerely apologized for? Fuck you, you’re banished. It should go without saying that obviously I have absolutely no use for the sentiment behind the original tweets by Jay Briscoe. But for me, redemption should be possible, that’s all I am saying. If AEW and Turner had extremely strict standards that they applied equally to everybody, I’d be a lot less likely to complain about this kind of thing. As has been proven several times over the past year, the Briscoes are awesome. I have been reminded of that repeatedly recently, and I think it’s a bunch of bullshit that they are not on national TV. If I have to suffer through The Best Friends then by gawd I ought to be able to watch some Briscoes matches on TV.

I was just listening to Jim Cornette’s review of FTR/Briscoes III and when he’s right, he’s right. Somebody please explain how AEW can have a convicted rapist in Mike Tyson appear on their TV show, and that’s OK. They have Nick Gage, a convicted bank robber in a featured match, during which he slices a dude up, no less. No problem! But no Briscoes. Because Jay Briscoe tweeted something awful and hateful 10 years ago. And has apologized repeatedly since then. And has never done it again. And has people advocating for him that say he has never shown any sign since then of holding the bigoted or hateful opinions that he originally tweeted. But they still can’t get on AEW TV.

Overall I would say that was an excellent episode of Dynamite. Way more good stuff than bad stuff. Any episode that highlights young talents like Jungle Boy, Hook, Starks, MJF and uh…Action Andretti (?!) is definitely going in the right direction. The Main Event was great and most importantly we got… “Scissor This, Slapnuts” as my new favourite phrase.

That Dustin Rhodes promo cracked me up. He says “Spooky Boy” and Danhausen looks confused and then points at Trent.

Adam Page is entirely unsympathetic to me. His acting skills would fit in perfectly in WWE. His stupid fake crying is getting so old. Bunch of stagey bullshit.

Bizarrely, the Briscoes just got more AEW TV time than they ever had before. Pity they couldn’t have done just a little bit of that leading up to the match, not afterwards.

Hot damn these ladies are laying their shit in.

Has anybody ever actually heard of this kid?

Oh yeah… they have the biggest roster in the world, so WHY IS BRIAN CAGE ON MY TV

Swerve is fucking money. That promo was awesome.

Scissor this, slapnuts! I LOVE IT!

But now Kenny is cutting a promo so that will make it so much better.

She was driving the White Hummer. I can’t say more about it here…but if you call my hotline I can give you all the details. Kids, get your parents permission.

I don’t disagree with you one little bit about the independent contractor status. That is the biggest pile of shit I have ever heard in my entire life. I have heard the arguments from guys who actually think that it’s not a bad thing but as far as I’m concerned, if a company is paying you and they tell you that you can’t work somewhere else…then you are an employee. The problem is if people like Mandy Rose were actual legal employees then they would have even more restrictions placed on them by the company, not less. I just don’t see any possible scenario where you can get away with working for a publicly traded company that has advertisers and network TV contracts, and still get away with producing adult content on the side. All corporations are far too risk and liability adverse for that to ever work.

I was literally just reading online that the whole reason Mandy Rose got sent back to NXT was because they had invested a significant amount of money into her contract, but she was not improving at the rate they thought she should and there was some question regarding her overall potential and viability as a long-term member of the roster. I don’t know how reliable the sources are, but apparently there was some question about her interest in improving or her willingness to learn. I guess the transfer back to NXT was looked upon as a last chance for her to get her shit together. Then she supposedly refused to get vaccinated so some people are saying this OnlyFans deal was pretty much the straw that broke the camel’s back. But who knows how much truth there is to that, we will have to wait to see if more reliable news sources pick it up.

Trust me, the aforementioned company that I worked for was most likely involved in all sorts of shady shit. The CEO got fired for being involved in a extramarital affair with the CEO of a competing company, where it seemed like they were sleeping with each other, and stealing industrial secrets from one another at the same time. It was huge news. I STILL had to sign the stupid contract and abide by it if I wanted to work and pay my bills and eat and support my family and stuff like that. That’s just the way of the world. I looked into it carefully and discovered much to my dismay that moral outrage doesn’t pay very much. I guess it kind of sucks that Mandy Rose got fired, but in all honesty, she works for a publicly traded company, and she was selling pictures of herself having sex so what the hell did she think was going to happen? It’s not like she was going to win entrepreneur of the year. Vince or Matt Riddle or anybody else being scummy doesn’t make her choices any less questionable. As a human being she has every right to do whatever she wants to make money so long as she’s not hurting somebody else or breaking the law, but by the same token, it’s hopelessly naïve to expect to get away with something like that in ANY sort of corporate environment. This is hardly exclusive to WWE. There was a big scandal just a couple of weeks ago, where a schoolteacher and her husband got fired for having an OnlyFans page. There is some stuff you just can’t get away with and hold down a normal job. That’s just the way it is.

Aside from the MJF/Starks match, Jericho is in action tonight. Now that the interminable BCC feud is over, and he no longer has the ROH angle going, I am morbidly curious to see whose heat Jericho plans on leeching off next.

Sure…but you’re forgetting the logical counter-argument of: “Aargh righteous outrage something something Vince McMahon something something Saudi Arabia!!!” I have told this story before here, but I will mention it again. The last company I worked for had a strict policy that you were simply not allowed to mention that you were an employee of the company on Facebook or Twitter or any other form of social media. Any violation of this policy would result in immediate termination. Of course, there were a wide variety of people who thought that was entirely unfair and complained about it. The standard response was that the employee in question could always feel free to not work there and then they can post whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted. Bottom line is, if you are going to take a company’s money to work, then you should probably understand that they have social media and/or morality clauses and also policies surrounding outside work in general. If you feel that is unfair or you can’t work within those parameters then obviously, you go work somewhere else. This kind of stuff goes on in all sorts of companies, in all sorts of different lines of work. Fair? Maybe not. Reality? Yes.

That was the match in England from Night 1 of Royal Quest in October? Yes, I just saw that match this past weekend and was quite impressed. I think a rematch would probably be a great idea.