The Thread Killer

Damn, that was a good match. That’s how you open Wrestlemania and get the crowd riled up.

Honestly, I don’t get their beef with Bianca either. I know the announcers keep playing up the fact that Belair cost Rhea the title, but she really didn’t.

Yeah they booed the shot of him walking into the building. I guess the honeymoon is officially over.

Damn, Reigns is ripped.

He was never any good and he still isn’t any good and Pat McAfee manages to make him even worse if that’s even possible.

So Rey is officially out and Fenix is officially in, and Bayley is out of her match as well.

I caught the North American Title match, which I thought was really good, then the Tag Title match which was better than I expected. I missed the Women’s Ladder Match, the 6 Man Tag and the Women’s Fatal 4 Way. But I got back just in time for the Main Event and I really really enjoyed that a lot. Great match.

Apparently Rey Mysterio might have been injured in that 6 Man Tag on SmackDown. There is fan footage of him being helped to the back. Hate to see it, but if that is the case and he can’t work tomorrow, at least they have a built-in replacement right there. El Grande Americano cost Fenix his shot at winning the Andre the Giant Battle Royal tonight and Fenix isn’t booked on Wrestlemania, so they could easily have him substitute for Rey tomorrow. I doubt the fans would be disappointed.

Ugh, that Karrion Kross elimination from the Andre the Giant Battle Royal was pretty rough looking.

Well, aside from anything else covered in this week’s episode, I now know way more about Tony Atlas’s fetishes than I needed or wanted to, I’ll say that much.

I don’t know if it’s that the comments flew under the radar, or if it’s just that people really don’t care at this point. Let’s face it, the guy that is president of the other major company which is part of TKO is literally best friends with Donald Trump, and nobody seems to care about that anymore. So I don’t think anyone is going to fuss over Paul Lévesque making some inane but innocuous comments. I think the outrage bar has been cranked up quite a bit over the last few months. It’s probably going to take a lot more than these types of comments to garner any attention at this point.

Any chance this will be a squash, you think? Let’s be honest…Naomi isn’t really all that great, and Jade is pretty limited too. Lord knows, Jade has done her share of squashes.

I’m wondering if they are going to address who is going to end up fighting Randy Orton at WM41 tonight. I can’t imagine that he isn’t going to be on the show just because Owens is injured. I guess they could bring back Black or Rusev. Rey Fenix isn’t booked on the show yet. Some people are even speculating based on the RKO last week that it might be Nick Aldis?

I keep meaning to check it out, but I keep forgetting. Wednesday is Survivor night, dammit. And if FTR is going to be feuding with Adam Copeland & Christian Cage, I may have to start watching Dynamite again. But there’s nothing stopping me from checking it out after the fact, I guess. And it does have one huge positive going for it…no Booker T on commentary.

So apparently Ric Flair (after previously saying he would be there) is now saying he will not be appearing at Wrestlemania in any capacity…because he’s still technically under contract with AEW?!

Wow, I actually thought it was pretty good. Jey cut something resembling an actually serious promo for once, and Gunther sold it pretty well, I thought. When it comes to Jey Uso promos, that's about as good as we're going to get. Speaking of last night, that Women's Intercontinental Championship match was pretty damn good. A couple of minor botches but overall I thought it was a great TV match. Way better than that Elimination Chamber qualifying match they had a while back.

So overall, I thought it was a decent show but I didn't even bother with the Main Event, not going to lie. -> I have seen very little of Kevin Knight. Dude is obviously super talented, and I don't blame him one little bit for not signing with WWE, where he would undoubtedly get massively lost in the shuffle or end up in NXT purgatory for a year or two at the very least. Then again, talented wrestlers have been known to vanish into the Tony Khan vortex for extended periods of time as well, so who knows. But he's probably better off in AEW. I like Ospreay well enough, provided he keeps his mouth shut, bruv. This match was pretty damn good...really leaned into the flippity doo dah of course, but if you're going to do it, do it well...and these guys did. Really fun match. -> So from this thread, I am hearing that Bryan Keith is talented and has had some good matches. If somebody like @Blehschmidt says that is the case, I am inclined to believe him. But I have only seen him a couple times in AEW and he didn't do a whole lot for me...and he didn't do much of anything in this match. To me, he kind of got eaten up in this match, and not in the "face in peril who tags his bigger partner in" sense. If Keith got any significant offense in during this match, I don't remember it. This match really didn't seem to be structured all that intelligently. Big Bill looked really good in spots, but this didn't really flow like a great tag match should, in my opinion. Unlike a lot of people, I have no issue with Lashley and Benjamin as a team or even as the Tag Team Champions, but it does seem ridiculous considering the massive amount of talented teams in AEW that the last PPV they fought the Outrunners and this PPV they ended up facing Big Bill and Bryan Keith. Put these guys in there with an established, decent team, FFS. And I have no clue where they are going with this MJF deal, and I have no confidence that it's anywhere good, considering TK's booking. This match didn't do anything for me. ->Mone vs. Hart was what it was. I am not a big fan of either of them. It wasn't too offensive and at least it was short. ->The Trios Title match was excellent. Really great work by everybody in this match. I thought it was hilarious how much heat Wheeler Yuta has. I'm not sure if the fans really hate him like WWE fans hate Dom Mysterio or Logan Paul, or if he has the proverbial "go away" heat. I have never liked the guy and never understood Tony Khan's obsession with putting the guy on TV, but what are you gonna do. Even though we all pretty much knew the FTR turn was coming, it was still done to perfection. I laughed my ass off when Wheeler stole the neck brace and put it on, and then Dax started giving him chest compressions. No complaints about any of this, this was just great stuff all the way around, and if it is leading where we all think it is, then sign me up. -> Man, I loved the Storm/Bayne match. Generally I much prefer the WWE Women's Division to AEW, but it's hard to find fault with this match. Bayne is a superstar and Toni Storm is definitely up there with Rhea as one of the elite talents in Women's Wrestling right now...and Toni definitely has Rhea beat when it comes to character work. I kind of want to see these two fight again, I suppose it's too much to hope that this program would continue. This felt like a definitive end, so we'll see what's up next for Toni Storm I guess. -> I thought Briscoe vs. Fletcher was excellent. Probably went a bit longer than it needed to, but it was still an outstanding match. I really wish they'd do something significant with Mark Briscoe, (aside from the ROH stuff because...come on, that doesn't count) but Fletcher going over here was probably the right call. To quote Don Callis: "That kid is money." -> I totally admit I was kind of dreading the next match, so maybe I went into it biased...but I did not enjoy the Jericho/Bandido match, not one little bit. Jericho still tries to work like he did when he was good, and now he moves like he's knee deep in mud. Bandido is great, but I just didn't like the story this match was supposed to be telling. I have seen a million matches in AEW where somebody gets beat because of a weapon being used, or outside interference, and not once do I ever remember a second referee reversing the decision or restarting the match. And IF you're going to do that...why would you not just call for a DQ? Dude just got hit with a baseball bat, and you restart the match? Like most things Jericho related, this was crap. -> If Adam Cole and Daniel Garcia were going to work a program, they really should have found a way to work in a posedown like they did with Rick Rude and The Ultimate Warrior at the 1989 Royal Rumble. Anyhow, I guess this match was okay. Daniel Garcia has never really done anything for me, and I liked Adam Cole well enough in NXT, but I don't remember anything he's done in AEW that I liked...and he's done a lot that I really didn't like. If I live to be 100 years old, I will never get over the fact that he of all people was in the Main Event of the highest attended Pro Wrestling show of all time. I don't really like either guy, and I didn't really care about this match. -> I have mixed feelings about Omega/Ricochet/Bailey. I have actually grown to appreciate Omega a lot more over the past couple of years. I don't think he's anywhere near the Greatest of All Time status, and I think anybody who does think that is clearly sniffing the glue. However, I have grown to appreciate him and his style a lot more than I used to. I'm at the point where if he's in there with somebody I like, I can enjoy the match. I've never liked Ricochet, I've always found him bland, uninteresting and just another flippy guy in a sport full of flippy guys. I give full credit to both him and Tony Khan that they have managed to get more personality and character out of Ricochet in a few months than WWE did in all the years they had him, so full credit to them. As far as "Speedball" I have seriously mixed feelings. The guy is obviously a very talented high flyer. However, he is also a geek. Between that haircut, and his "physique" I am betting that dude got dunked in the toilet in school...like...a LOT. Like his nickname was probably "swirly." He's probably so fast because he spent most of his youth running away from bullies. As I suspected, this match was fast paced, and had a whole bunch of cooperative and overly choreographed spots. But it was entertaining, and it was fun enough. All three guys worked really hard and unless it's stupid hardcore garbage crap, I have a hard time criticizing guys who work that hard and do that much high risk stuff to entertain the fans. It's not my favorite style of Pro Wrestling, but I enjoyed it for what it was. -> I didn't watch the Main Event. I stopped watching AEW TV partially because of Jon Moxley and partially because of The Young Bucks. I knew that I was going to have to see Moxley and I saw the rumors that the Bucks would be returning, so I tapped out before this match even started, and from everything I have read, I have no regrets about that decision. It's funny...I don't like Chris Jericho, for example...but I can suffer through his crap. But the mere sight of Jon Moxley just makes me want to shut my TV off. From the widespread reaction to this show online, I am not alone in those feelings...so of course Tony Khan felt the need to double down, beat Swerve, and add the Young Bucks to the mix, because of course he did. This was a really good show. Ospreay vs. Knight, The Deathriders vs. Rated FTR, Storm vs. Bayne, Fletcher vs. Briscoe, and the Triple Threat Match were all really good (and in some cases excellent) matches. You give me a PPV with 5 great matches like that, and I'm generally not going to complain about the actual show. So it was a definite thumbs up PPV for me. I'm not a hardcore AEW fan, I don't watch the weekly TV (although I will, if the FTR/Cope & Christian angle kicks off) and I'm generally not a huge fan of the AEW style of Pro Wrestling. But objectively, (and not to sound like a broken record here) there are clearly some problems with Tony Khan's booking. Let's ignore the fact that the Main Event of both nights of Wrestlemania this year are featuring talents that AEW had under contract, but through general managerial ineptitude he let both of them slip through his fingers. (But hey...he got to keep Jungle Boy, and that's what's important.) The bigger issues are that his booking is pretty predictable. I don't even watch this stuff regularly, and I knew that there was very little chance of Knight beating Ospreay, or Big Bill and Bryan Keith winning the Tag Titles, or Julia Hart beating Mercedes Mone, or Briscoe beating Fletcher, or Omega losing to either Ricochet or Bailey. The finish to the Trios match was also a foregone conclusion, but that was part of a larger story so I would give Tony Khan a pass on that...but my point remains. With the exchange rate, AEW PPV's are $70.00 on Amazon Prime or YouTube in Canada. Why should a fan pay 70 bucks for a show where the outcome of at least 5 of the matches are not in doubt. Yeah, you can still enjoy the matches for sure, but a little unpredictability wouldn't kill the guy. But obviously the bigger issue is that the fans at large (not just me) seem to hate this whole Moxley/Deathriders angle, but Tony Khan appears to have adopted Vince McMahon's "You will take what we give you and you will like it" attitude...and that's just crazy. It's not working, the guy needs to pivot. From what I understand, AEW has actually improved over the past couple of months, so more power to them. But let's be honest...their big show in Texas in July...they're aiming to get basically the same number of fans in attendance for that show that the WWE gets for a normal episode of RAW, for gawd's sake...and AEW is running their show in a fucking stadium. It's going to look like the World Class Parade of Champions at this point...and I have to believe that a lot of the reason for that is because fans don't want to attend a stadium show headlined by this kind of bullshit. I know I sound like I'm on repeat at this point, but I REALLY wish Tony Khan would give somebody else a chance to book this stuff for a while. He clearly needs a break. And my final observation is this... @sek69 you are absolutely correct. Dang...the show did NOT need to be THAT long.

Apparently it is Big Bill’s lot in life to be saddled with untalented Tag Team partners. (Well, aside from Starks, I guess.) But Brian Keith looked pretty useless in that match.

If he wants anybody to take him seriously, he needs to ditch that American Gladiators ring gear, stat.

Charlotte legit lets the fans get to her as well. She was on some talk show this past week complaining about how hard she has it because she got divorced again and how the fans wouldn’t let her tell her comeback story. She is definitely one of those people that doesn’t seem to realize how unlikeable she comes across.

I get that HitC is a seminal match in WWE (and Pro Wrestling) history. But on a personal level, much like the TLC matches and the “Monday Night War” if I never heard another word about it, I would be perfectly happy with that.

Good point. And you just know the Foley/Taker Hell in the Cell is going in, because Lord knows nobody ever talks about that one.

For years I know it had been rumoured that WWE was going to start inducting individual matches into the Hall of Fame, and I remember a couple of years ago the heavy speculation was that the Main Event of the first Wrestlemania was going to be the first match inducted. I have to say I am much happier than it is going to be this one, because this is actually a good match.

Agreed. I know they are building it up to make it look like Dax is turning on Cash, but apparently those guys agreed when they decided to team up that they would never split up. I suppose it’s possible they have changed their minds, but I imagine it’s more probable that Dax is going to turn on Copeland and it will look like Wheeler is going to support Copeland, only to have him stick with Dax. Which makes sense because simultaneously it certainly looks like Christian might be on the verge of a betrayal and face turn of his own.

Christian and Copeland used to fantasy book working with FTR when they had that podcast years ago, and I know Copeland is legitimately close friends with both the guys in FTR, to the point where he name dropped them in a promo after he made his comeback in WWE. I have been critical of them using Copeland in a Main Event spot in AEW, but I have to admit I am legitimately curious and cautiously optimistic about an E&C vs FTR program. Does anybody else here feel the same way, or is the general consensus that AEW just needs to get rid of all of the older guys, especially those who became famous in WWE?