The Thread Killer

Sorry to hear that. Hope you land on your feet.

“He’s talking to the ketchup now.” ”Maybe being disgraced and forced out of his company destroyed his brain.”

I love the ECW series, those are outstanding. The first one covering 92/93 with Tod Gordon is especially great, there are some hilarious stories in there, plus he provides great insight into the founding of ECW, before Paul Heyman even showed up. He also dispels a few ECW myths too. The only negative about that interview, is that Gordon mumbles and mutters and talks really fast at times, so it’s hard to understand him. 94 features Shane Douglas and it is also excellent. Douglas is eloquent and well spoken and he has a good memory and is pretty insightful. I liked that one a lot. The 96 year in review is pretty good, but not as good as those first two I mentioned. Raven is the guest. He is really funny and offers some interesting insights into his time in ECW but his memory is terrible so there is a lot he doesn’t remember, or he gets confused. Plus he tends to go off topic a fair bit, he is very easily distracted. He himself actually attributes some of that stuff to his excessive drug and alcohol use during the time covered by this interview. I thought the 1997 interview with Sabu was great. He has loosened up a lot over the years and is way more communicative than he used to be. I get the impression that his attitude is that he doesn’t really like talking about himself or backstage stuff, but if he is getting paid to do it he will try his best. Keep in mind he has a slight stammer and obviously has social anxiety, but I still love his interviews and this one was great. The only negative thing I could say is that I think he tended to live in his own little bubble and I think his perspective on some things may not be the same as you would get from other people in the locker room. Still a great interview. The 1998 episode with New Jack is surprisingly subdued for New Jack. He might be high during this interview (it would not surprise me) but he’s definitely not taking anything that gets him all amped up like you sometimes see with him in a Shoot interview. This is not screaming, threatening, can’t stay in his chair New Jack. Much like with Sabu, New Jack tended to only see things from his perspective and how they affected him. Douglas and Raven were able to look at things as they affected ECW overall whereas Sabu and New Jack only looked at things as they affected them…but it’s still a great interview. The JYD story is a highlight. The 1999 interview with RVD is surprisingly good. For a guy who smokes as much pot as he does, he actually has a great memory (much better than Raven and New Jack) and RVD seems to enjoy the interview and gives some great answers and insight. The 2000/2001 interview with Justin Credible is what it is. This covers ECW during it’s death throes, so it’s kind of depressing. Also, Justin Credible is kind of a divisive figure with ECW fans because a lot of people tended to point to his push to the Main Event as a sign the company was going down in flames. YMMV on this one, but it held my interest and I didn’t hate it. He seems like a nice enough guy, and he’s a decent interview. The only negative thing I can say about the Kayfabe Commentaries ECW timeline series is that the 1995 interview with Sandman is a trainwreck and a total waste of time. He’s very obviously drunk and/or fucked up on something during this interview. Look at his face. I don’t like to lob accusations about somebody being on meth, but in this case… I’m not convinced that he would have been a good interview even if he was stone cold sober, but we’ll never know. Literally no interesting or insightful answers here. This really pissed me off because 1995 was a big year for ECW and this interview was a lost opportunity. I wish Sean Oliver would redo this one with Mick Foley. They did such a great job covering the entire lifetime of ECW but this one isolated interview was a missed opportunity. The 1995 episode is somewhat infamous because Sean Oliver sat there trying to conduct the 90 minute interview with a clearly incapacitated Sandman, only to discover that the asshole had literally left his kids waiting in a hot car the whole time.

I have some sympathy for Black. He has been plagued with a career threatening back injury and he apparently has been struggling with some mental health issues as well. He was a Triple H guy and his wife works in WWE, so why not go back there if he can? Reading between the lines of his recent Instagram post, it seems pretty obvious that he feels AEW has not delivered on promises made regarding his creative. And who can blame him there? Tony Khan’s “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t” booking drives me NUTS. There is almost no point getting invested in any character in AEW because as soon as they start to get momentum, Khan pulls them off TV for weeks at a time. I was shocked that he actually pulled the trigger with The Acclaimed. I figured once they got so hot after the PPV, TK’s natural reaction would be to keep them off TV for a month. At least if Black does go back to WWE, he’ll be featured consistently (now that Vince is gone.) Then again, the rumour is that his release has a clause that he cannot go back to WWE. So who knows. AEW recently trademarked “House of Black” which means they either think he’s coming back there, or they don’t want him using it anywhere else. I don’t disagree with you about Buddy. I think he’s pretty much at his ceiling no matter where he goes. Mind you, if he did go back to WWE, I can see him having some issues with the Wellness Policy based on how he’s been looking lately.

Of course not. Talking about ECW would distract Conrad from going through the WWF during 1997 in excruciating detail. Because none of his other podcasts have ever covered that topic. In all seriousness, they do talk about his first match with Sabu in one episode, (#12) but the majority of the shows so far have been WWF focused.

The rumour has it this whole deal is leading to Owens & Zayn vs. The Usos right? I’d be there for that.

Same reason Miro and FTR are barely on TV. You have to make room for the big stars like Daniel Garcia.

Quite honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it the tension has been defused because the whole bunch of them are gone. The locker room might just be glad all the sources of drama are gone. Plus it sounds like Jericho, Moxley and Danielson have been trying to step up and keep the atmosphere positive since the incident.

Even if he is…they’re pretty much the best team in the business right now and they’re at the top of their game. There is no excuse for keeping them off TV. If all the people who were annoying backstage and on Twitter were kept off TV, they wouldn’t have enough people to fill a two hour show.

No. He wrestled Claudio on Rampage a week or two ago. And FTR has a big match coming up on a NJPW show against Aussie Open. Dax has even broadly hinted on Twitter (as has Miro recently) that he’s not sure why FTR hasn’t been booked more. They just haven’t been because…reasons.

Four hours and no FTR? Seriously?

In the version of the fight I envision in my mind’s eye, Kenny and The Bucks were already crying when they confronted Punk. And once punches started being thrown, it escalated to full blown sobbing, accompanied by some whining and babbling about how mean and unfair Punk was being about the whole thing. I know that’s not how it happened, but that’s how I like to imagine it, mostly because unlike you, I do NOT like The Bucks.

They just added a bunch of Maple Leaf Gardens house shows to Peacock today. They also added a house show from Hamilton. Crazy thing is that I was at all of those Maple Leaf Gardens shows, the only one of those shows I wasn’t at is the Hamilton show. I remember that July 88 show because Terry Taylor was on the show and he wrestled twice. This was before the Red Rooster gimmick, and nobody in Toronto knew who the hell he was, for the most part. I knew Taylor from the Apter mags and from Bill Watts UWF show that my buddy recorded with his satellite dish…but I must have been the only one because as I remember the crowd was DEAD for both his matches. I distinctly remember him getting heckled, I should go back and check and see if my memory is accurate after all this time. They were both jobber matches, too. Weird. I remember the September 88 show because there were literally only two marquee matches on the entire show, Jake Roberts vs. Rick Rude and Hogan was supposed to defend the World Title against somebody big (I forget who) but whoever it was no showed, so the Main Event was Hogan against Haku. That show was terrible.

If Dennis Stamp taught us anything, it’s that if you’re not booked, you do not show up. But you must be ready. I hope he is in his backyard jumping up and down in his trampoline in his underwear, working out with dumbbells.

I remember seeing the original Survivor Series on closed circuit when it first began. Back when teams of five strived to survive. Great times.

As nice as it can be here, Nickelback would ruin it for you. They could ruin anything.

I know this sounds extremely pedantic and it is something Jim Cornette would say, but I have a problem with them announcing War Games months in advance. We all know Pro Wrestling is fake, fine. But for storyline purposes, should War Games not be the ultimate end to a feud between warring factions? It should be the participants demanding the match, not the other way around. There is no actual storyline going on right now that demands this match as the blow off being booked this far in advance. I assume it will be The Bloodline against some other group, I guess.

If you are talking bad about AC/DC I am demanding @sek69 ban you. And then I am going to petition Bolsonaro to have you publicly flogged, and extradited here to Canada, where you will be forced to sit in snow while listening to Nickelback for 50 years.

They were going to start playing the other Starship classic “We Built This City” but they didn’t want people to be injured when there was an inevitable stampede of fans trying to run screaming from the building with their hands over their ears, while sobbing in agony.

Back when Vince first left, I said I would give it three months until I expected to see if there was a significant change in the actual product, and I named Survivor Series as the goal date. I kept saying if things had not noticeably changed by then, then they probably are not going to change at all. Triple H is already way ahead of schedule, but if this is true it pretty much confirms that yeah, things have changed.

Even Dana White said it was a fact that the buy rate for UFC 203 was higher because of CM Punk. A lot of people bought that PPV specifically to see him, whether it was because they were fans of his or due to a serious case of schadenfreude. White admitted that is why he gave Punk a second shot. Any other fighter probably would have been banished to the untelevised prelims or released after that first fight. Dana White liked Punk personally (prickly asshole birds of a feather) and he respected his balls…but bottom line is, he knew Punk was getting eyeballs for the UFC. What would have been ideal is if there had been a season of The Ultimate Fighter happening around that time. White could have had his cake and eaten it, too. Remember what happened when Kimbo Slice was on TUF. Everybody knew that the odds were Slice was not going to make it in the UFC, but with that show they got him on TV for a while and drew ratings, without having him get his ass kicked. Up until his first fight, that is.

I have been to a couple small Indy shows outside during the summer, but they were under a tent canopy. They were fine. I have heard that outdoor shows are bad for crowd noise because the cheers just go up and the sound disappears…but those Indy shows were so small it wouldn’t have mattered. The most notable outdoor show I went to was the infamous “Big Event” which had somewhere around 60 -70,000 in attendance. I had floor seats on the aisle, and all I remember was that it was crazy cold. It was the end of August but I still remember freezing my butt off, I was shivering. I am glad I went, but that was what…36 years ago? You wouldn’t catch me dead in a crowd like that now, no matter who was on the card.

Unfortunately, no. I do have FITE and I use the app all the time (especially for AEW PPV’s) but for some bizarre reason, AEW is only available on FITE for “international” users and for whatever reason, Canada doesn’t apply. I suspect it’s because Dynamite is broadcast on TSN in Canada, but I am not sure. We don’t get the “Battle of the Belts” specials either. Come to think of it…I could probably get around that restriction with a VPN which I have been meaning to start using anyways.

Jericho recently mentioned that before the Turner deal came together, AEW had offers on the table from Showtime (?!) and Amazon Prime Video. I would personally love to see a major promotion get a deal with a streaming service like Prime. Let’s face it, streaming is the future and network and cable TV are eventually going to become non-entities. I am an MMA fan, and ONE FC just started a streaming deal with Prime and it’s awesome. They just did their first show a few weeks ago, the production was great and if you miss it or want to see it again, you can just go back and watch it no problem. And Prime is available on all platforms. Contrast that with AEW Rampage for example. That’s on TNT, which we can’t get here in Canada. It’s not available on any other channel. So if you want to watch Rampage in Canada, you have to stream it on the TSN website…but the TSN app is shitty, the VQ is inconsistent at best, and the app isn’t available on SmartTV’s or Gaming Consoles which means you have to watch it on your phone or tablet and try to cast it to your TV which buffers like crazy and is a giant pain in the ass. I often don’t bother. I would love to see AEW either start their own streaming service or go with a service like Prime. Especially because I would like them to get off their butts and get moving on a ROH show and make the ROH library available.

That should be billed as “Darby Allin and three other guys who probably shouldn’t be wrestling, for a variety of reasons.” But I’d still watch it.