The Thread Killer

I am new to observing New Japan here, so quick question… The World Tag League finals are tomorrow, between Yoshi-Hashi & Goto against Aussie Open…and whoever wins that gets FTR at Wrestle Kingdom? Is there a good website that anybody here uses to keep up to date on all the latest New Japan news? Way back in the day I used to go to Strong Style Spirit but that appears to be long gone.

In AEW nothing ever gets followed up on. In WWE nothing ever ends.

Is this Miz/Lumis deal ever going to end? All signs point to no.

Mick Foley (and pretty much everyone else who made money from Vince come to think of it) has taken the exact same stance since the allegations against McMahon first came out. I find it particularly hypocritical coming from Mick Foley, who has always portrayed himself as some sort of champion of women’s causes and vocal left wing crusader. Unless it’s against the guy that put millions of dollars in his pocket, in which case he can’t say anything, because he didn’t see it happen.

Yeah I am seeing all sorts of speculation about a merger with New Japan Strong. Which would probably not be the worst idea, come to think of it.

That’s pretty much where I am at with it, too. If TK had just announced this as his plan for ROH from the get-go, or even handled the announcement differently I would probably be a lot more excited about it. But the way he dealt with it kind of came across like he had no choice but to do this, because people have been bitching about all the ROH stuff on AEW TV and he couldn’t get a TV deal anywhere else, so this was his last resort. It didn’t exactly instil a ton of confidence in me.

I loved the promo that the Briscoes posted on Twitter. They talked about how Bret Hart was FTR‘s favourite wrestler, but that they loved Terry Funk. They mentioned how if Terry Funk fought Bret Hart in a normal wrestling match either guy could win or it might even favor Bret Hart, but if it was a cage match or hardcore match, they would pick Terry Funk every time...and that’s why they finally had the advantage with a dog collar match.

Thank you for the heads up. That’s weird though, I downloaded the app last night as soon as they made the announcement, and when I looked around, it only lists the events going back to 2013. But you are right, if you search by year, using the search function, you can find older events. From an appearance standpoint , the app actually looks pretty well engineered. It’s much more professional looking than NJPW World, that’s for damn sure. If they end up offering the complete archive, and then the weekly TV show, it may be worth the investment, although not having the pay-per-view’s included live is still a rip off.

I’d be much more kindly disposed to the whole Honor Club deal if the ROH back catalog went back farther than 2013, and if I wouldn’t still be expected to shell out an additional $40.00 every three months for the new quarterly ROH PPV’s. I ordered the last three AEW produced ROH PPV’s on FITE, which comes with unlimited replays…so I don’t need access to Honor Club for that. I’d love to go back through the ROH archives and watch some classic stuff…like say Joe vs. Kobashi or the Joe/Punk Trilogy…but that stuff isn’t even available on Honor Club and there’s rumours it might never be. Supposedly it will be a massive pain and expense to convert that classic stuff to streaming quality and it’s speculated that the VQ might render a lot of it unusable. I have a ton of those old shows on VHS and DVD and I can see that being a problem. So basically aside from seeing the yet to debut weekly TV, there is zero incentive to sign up for this thing.

Watching the post show press conference. It’s brutal. (These softball questions are just comical. These “reporters” HAVE to be paid plants.) Anyhow…Tony Khan is finally addressing the ROH TV situation. Basically, he couldn’t get a TV deal with WB/Discovery…so the TV show is going to be on the Honor Club streaming service but PPV’s will be separate from that and won’t be available to stream until 90 days after the event. He’s doing a lot of babbling about New Japan working with ROH too, but no details.

I assume whatever kind of TV deal they got won’t be involving Warner Brothers Discovery, since he put the tag straps on Dem Boys and they’re banned. Rumor has it it’s some sort of streaming deal. Overall, that was a very good show but in my opinion it peaked with the Tag Title match. Quite honestly, I’d be perfectly fine never seeing Chris Jericho on TV again. It has nothing to do with his personal life or his politics, or whatever else. I’m just over the guy, I used to consider myself a pretty big fan, but I’m getting really tired of his act.

That tag match kind of took the steam out of the crowd, a little bit. That’s one of those matches that it’s practically impossible to follow up. The Main Event seems to be finally waking them up a bit. Pity it’s a Jericho match.

Man…the ring crew changed that canvas fast!

That was fucking nuts.

LETS GO!!! You always know you’re going to see a bloodbath, when the participants are wearing their brand spanking new white tights.

There is the Army/Navy game and a UFC show tonight. Plus isn’t there an NXT show tonight as well?

You are absolutely right about that. Look at the Swerve/Lee vs. Taylor/Griffey match. They did a great job of quietly explaining all the different story lines going into that match, with the history between Lee and Taylor, while recapping the issues with Lee and Swerve. That match was way better thanks to the commentary then it would have been without it.

I have to be honest, as soon as I saw it was time for Brian Cage and The Gates of Agony, for me it automatically became time for a pee break, to take my dog into the backyard, and then give him his dinner. I came back inside just in time for the brawl with Top Flight and 2.0, and I am not concerned that I missed anything.

It’s hardly a technical masterpiece but for my money this Swerve in our Glory vs. Shane Taylor Promotions match is a lot of fun.

The consensus I am seeing on Twitter is that Dralistico was supposed to kick out but didn’t do it in time…so rather than pretending he did, the ref went ahead and counted three. I have a hard time believing Fox & Christian were supposed to win that, especially in that fashion.

Something definitely got seriously fucked up there but I am not sure what. Those guys did not look like they were on the same page for the entire match, and a bunch of stuff got screwed up, but something went very wrong with that finish.

I missed the whole Preston Vance unmasking deal…no Rampage here. So at first I was: “Who the hell is that dude with Rush?”

That entire pre-show was great. Gran Metalik vs. Jeff Cobb was a lot of fun.

It’s his life, Darby can do what he wants. I appreciate him basically killing himself for our entertainment. But you would think he would take a serious look at the way Matt Hardy hobbles around the locker room and can barely move, and understand that is definitely in his future… if not worse. But I don’t understand the mentality of those daredevil types. Ever since Misawa died, it makes me a lot more uncomfortable watching guys do physically risky stuff in the ring. Especially because it is easily possible to have a great match without doing that kind of stuff. But as @Timbo Slice pointed out, Darby has been doing that stuff all his life. If he wasn’t doing it in AEW he would be driving his bike off a roof or something.