The Thread Killer

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.

My issue is that I don’t think this is as one-sided as some people would like to believe. There is no doubt that “The Elite” have a shit-ton of friends in the AEW locker room who support them, and can’t stand Punk. Fair play, I have no doubt that is absolutely true. But I also think there is a sizeble contingent in that locker room that does NOT like The Elite, and even if they are not siding with Punk, they are certainly sympathetic to his position in all this. Some people on Twitter are trying to paint that as pretty much FTR and nobody else, but I don’t necessarily think that’s true. A lot of those guys are probably smart enough to realize that if they come out against the EVP’s, it could go very badly for them politically. I have seen it said, and I do believe it, that Punk is the first guy who actually has the juice to stand up publicly to The Elite, but there are plenty of others who would have liked to have done so before all this mess. Just guessing here, but I am sure there is probably a fairly large third group of guys who really don’t give a shit about any of this and just want the whole conflict to go away so they can work in peace. Those are probably the guys I feel the most sympathy for.

I don’t get how his beef was shot down. Everybody knows The Elite talks to Meltzer all the time. That’s a fact, not even Meltzer denies it. The Observer reported that Cabana was going to ROH basically at the behest of The Young Bucks and because of heat between Punk and Cabana. It’s literally right here for all to see. I don’t see where it takes a massive leap of reasoning to see where Punk is coming from.

Oh, well if Bix said it, then it must be right.

And Don Callis. And he was good buddies with Joey Ryan. It’s like the sex pest HOF.

You know Kenny really must have said it when even Meltzer is confirming he said it. He actually stood up in front of the entire roster and said that he wouldn’t have hired 80% of them. The current spin on the comment is that it was intended to be a joke (perhaps aimed at Will Osprey) but obviously a lot of people didn’t think it was funny, and it certainly didn’t go along with the overall intention of the meeting, which was to smooth out backstage tension and improve roster morale. Way to read the room, you dork.

Damn dude, that covers a lot of ground. I think The People’s Elbow, The Judas Effect and especially The Canadian Destroyer are worse.

Apparently the former Gran Metalik wrestled on Dark, under his old name of Mascara Dorada. I always thought that dude was awesome and criminally underused in WWE. Let’s hope this means we get to see him on Dynamite soon.

Just don’t let Bobby Fish know she’s doing that move. Apparently it’s a real issue for him when anybody but KENTA does it.

Yeah between the Jays playing Tampa Bay tonight and the premiere of MNF, that pretty much ends any chance of me watching Raw live as it happens.

I think the Nese tag team with Josh Woods has a ton of potential. Unfortunately they’ll probably never get used on TV.

If Triple H does put Gargano over Roman, that should be considered proof positive that he is essentially trying to murder his father-in-law from a distance, by intentionally giving him a brain aneurysm or stroke.

Good Lord. Since his contract expired, it looks like Bobby Fish has made it his mission in life to give an interview to literally anyone who wants it, in which he relentlessly buries CM Punk for an ever expanding variety of reasons, praises The Young Bucks, (and Triple H, of course) and takes a series of increasingly less subtle digs at AEW and Tony Khan for daring to decide Bobby Fish wasn’t worth re-signing. I have seen at least four different interviews he has given over the past few days with these themes, being reported all over. This dude is starting to come off as an unhinged jackass.

Apparently they just re-signed him. So Jericho claims, at least. *Insert double facepalm gif*

I’m all for Danielson/MJF at Full Gear. That would probably involve BCC mixing it up with Stokely’s new stable in the lead up as well. It could be a good program.

That was precisely my feeling. It was perfect, why change it? Just because they want to own the guy’s name, it’s so stupid.

I probably wouldn’t have a problem with them giving him a new name if the name they ended up giving him wasn’t so stupid. I am not one of those people that automatically hates the new names that they give people. I thought Aleister Black was a huge improvement over Tommy End. I think Damien Priest is better than Punishment Martinez. But “Bron Breakker?” C’mon.