The Thread Killer

The man is sick! Hasn’t he already suffered enough? COVID-19 is one thing…but having to go to a Raw or Smackdown taping? Why would you wish that on anybody? That’s just cruel, dude.

Last week @sek69 went to Dynamite. Then he got the COVID-19. Today the AEW World Heavyweight Champion Hangman Page announced he will miss tonight’s episode of Dynamite because he has the COVID-19. I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but this can hardly be a coincidence. It’s clear Hangman Page is trying to keep @sek69 out of circulation. Why? Is Page trying to sabotage PWO for some reason? Is Page afraid @sek69 is planning on challenging for the AEW World Heavyweight Championship? I can’t tell you the whole story here, but you can find out all the behind the scenes details on my exclusive hotline report tonight at 1-900-909-9900. Kids, get your parents permission before calling.

That sucks dude. ☹️ How are you feeling, are your symptoms severe? Goes without saying that I hope you can beat this back easily without too much physical discomfort, hang in there and best wishes brother.

That’s the thing, right? If you accept going into it that the guys are probably going to be lying, or bullshitting, or have faulty memory, or are being general carnies, you can still enjoy the thing for the entertainment value at least. And based on the work they have done together so far for KC, they have great chemistry and it would be extremely entertaining to listen to. I don’t mind being lied to if you are at least entertaining about it! It would be like the exact opposite of Vince Russo, for example. Pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth is total crap, but on top of that he is obnoxious and unlikable. Nash is one of those guys who I probably shouldn’t like, but he is so charming it’s hard to dislike him. Plus he is very funny, and a great storyteller. And as you alluded to earlier @El-P, Sean Oliver is miles ahead of Conrad (and pretty much anybody else you could get to host a podcast.)

Funny timing after all. Sean Oliver just posted a picture on Twitter of he and Kevin Nash setting up what looks like a podcast rig, with the question: “Why are these men setting up a studio?” Kevin Nash is notoriously full of shit, but if you accept that going in, he is also an extremely entertaining and engaging interview. If those two teamed up for a podcast I have to admit I would give it a listen. I wouldn’t believe a damn thing that came out of Nash’s mouth, but it would be a lot of fun to listen to, I bet.

I honestly cannot see any scenario under which FTR return to the WWE. That interview they gave to Jim Cornette after they left WWE was very detailed regarding their grievances with Vince. The bottom line is, tag team wrestling is treated as an afterthought in WWE, and I don’t think that is ever going to change. I think creative is the most important issue with them. They claim, and I believe them, that they were offered a ton of money to stay and they turned it down. After hearing that interview, and seeing things they have said since then, I really don’t think there is a number which would be high enough to get them to go back there. Keep in mind, they only left after they told Vince and Bruce Prichard that no matter what they were offered, they were going to walk out as soon as their contracts expired.

The problem is, Conrad Thompson has pretty bad taste when it comes to what personalities to bring into his shows. Let’s be honest. This is a guy that thinks The Casio Kid is funny and a good personality to be a guest on his shows at times. Paul Bromwell just strikes me as bland, unremarkable and uninteresting with a kind of easy listening FM radio DJ type of vibe. Whereas The Casio Kid is…yeesh.

I was all in when Sean Oliver first debuted his new podcast, but that thing ran out of steam really quickly. His heart just wasn’t in it, you could tell. He is now a published author, in addition to his nonfiction books he has written about pro wrestling, he has also written several thriller novels which have apparently sold fairly well, so I think he just doesn’t care about pro wrestling as much anymore, which is a shame because I agree with you, he would be great hosting some of those shows on AFS. I was always a big fan of Sean Oliver and would have loved to have seen/heard him on some of those podcasts.

I am not an AFS subscriber anymore, but back when I was, I used to listen to the monthly Q&A podcast that Conrad did with the members. He was asked just that question at one point. I don’t know if his attitude has changed, but back then Conrad made it very clear that he will never give up on his mortgage company. He very honestly pointed out that he actually got into the podcast business to help promote his mortgage company. He has been able to use the publicity from these podcasts to expand his business into practically every state. I know he acts like an “aw shucks” country boy, but his business is so successful that he is a legit millionaire at this point. He made it pretty clear he is never walking away from that. Plus, I remember he and Bischoff candidly discussing the fact that the whole Pro Wrestling podcast bubble is bound to burst sooner or later, so he doesn’t want to hitch his wagon to that at the expense of his family business. As far as new co-hosts, he seems to be trying to do that with Paul Bromwell, but I am not sure the fans are crazy about that.

So it sounds like Conrad is starting a podcast with William Regal. I am all over that sumbitch. I know Mick Foley is going to be starting a podcast soon as well (“Foley is Pod”) but I don’t know if it’s with Conrad’s company. I know they have both mentioned working together in the past, but I don’t know if they have made a deal. By my count, that’s… - Prichard - Schiavone - Bischoff - JR - Jarrett - Angle - DDP & Jake Roberts - Flair And now Regal for sure and maybe Foley. That’s nuts. No wonder Conrad has been handing off co-hosting duties to Paul Bromwell on a lot of these shows lately. That’s an insane amount of content, not even including all the stuff he is doing with AFS.

They are teasing an FTR vs. Von Erich Brothers match on Twitter, and MLW is offering to host it. I know FTR are taking independent dates, but I don’t know if MLW counts as an indie because they have a TV deal, so TK might not not let them do it.

Well, you are not wrong there. FTR are definitely on top of their game right now, no doubt about it. And I agree that Fish and O’Riley are a little bit lacking in the charisma department, but I am very hopeful that those two teams will still end up facing off in AEW and I have high hopes for the resulting match.

They fought once in NXT, it was after The Revival had been on the Main Roster for a while, they came back to NXT for one night to fight Fish & O’Reilly. The date was 11/20/19, and the match was excellent For The Record (see what I did there?) For all you people who think ReDragon aren’t exciting enough or aren’t a good team? I humbly submit that you’re smoking the crack cocaine, because they’re awesome. Their matches in ROH with the Briscoes were outstanding and that’s not just because of The Briscoes. Wait and see, if FTR and ReDragon end up having a match in AEW it will be excellent.

Braun’s message to the IWC after making a colossal douche-nozzle out of himself:

Quick note to anybody who is planning on recording tonight’s show on their DVR and watching it later, there is apparently supposed to be an overrun so set your timer accordingly! I used to get burned by my cable company on a fairly regular basis when Raw and Nitro ran over and I was recording it for later because I wasn’t around to watch it due to work or whatever.

Sounds like The Briscoes are coming in full time as of the next set of TV tapings after the PPV.

I don’t know about you @sek69 but he was one of the first Puro guys I was exposed to back when I started buying tapes in 99. First tape I ever got was Super J Cup 94, and there he was. Then I saw him in J Cup 95, he was all over the best NJPW Juniors stuff, then I saw him in Zero 1, he even popped up in NOAH and of course Hustle. Before my taste changed to Shoot Style and eventually King’s Road, he was one of my favourites for sure. Hayabusa, Misawa, Takayama and now Otani. All my favourites from my early days as a fan are crippled or worse. Tragic as hell and goes to show what that insane style can do, especially if you stay with it too long. I hope he’s going to be okay but right now it doesn’t sound good. ☹️

Via 411: Japanese legend Shinjiro Otani has been hospitalized after he was stretchered out of the ring from a serious injury at Pro Wrestling ZERO1’s Sunday show. BBM Sports in Japan reports that the main event of the show saw Otani facing Takashi Sugiura for the latter’s ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championshp. During the match, Otani took a German suplex into the turnbuckle that rendered Otani unable to move. The match was stopped and Otani was stretchered from the ring and taken to the hospital. Tokyo Sports spoke with the match’s referee, Katsumi Sasazaki, who said, “He was conscious. He could hear [his own] voice and he could clearly see where he was. However, he complained that he couldn’t move his hands and that he couldn’t move, and he said, ‘I can’t feel my hands.'” Otani is believed to have suffered a cervical spine injury.

I hear that. if the library back catalogue was comprehensive enough, I’d be all over that in a heartbeat. And if there is ever was an AJPW streaming service with the whole 80’s/90’s library? Let’s just say I would have to say goodbye to my family for a couple of years because nobody would ever see me again.

Agreed. That was pretty much the way this whole situation seemed to be going. I don’t necessarily think there are any clean hands here. If anything, this whole deal reinforced to me (for the millionth time, not that it needed any actual reinforcement) that Social Media is a festering cesspool. I will never understand the compulsive need some people have to air their dirty laundry in public. Back in my day, we used to do horrible, emotionally scarring, heinous shit to each other behind closed doors, away from the prying eyes of the public, and we were all a lot happier for it, dammit. Well…maybe not. But still.

I get that, but much like with pretty much everything else in life, there are the proverbial "shades of grey" (tm Vince McMahon.) To me, a lot of these issues need to be looked at on a case by case basis, not just with the attitude of "you said something stupid 10 years ago, so no more work for you, that policy applies to everybody with no exceptions." Firstly (as I mentioned earlier) the major component is "does the person who said or did the fucked up thing still think that way." People love to complain about The Ultimate Warrior (those people clearly have NO concept of the power of Destrucity, but I digress.) He said a lot of stuff which was viewed as offensive, hurtful, controversial, etc. To the best of my knowledge, Warrior never apologized for anything he said, nor do I think he even thought what he said was particularly wrong. So in that case, I totally get people (except WWE apparently) refusing to give the guy a pass. But as I said, in the case of Jay Briscoe, not only did he apologize repeatedly for what he said...there is fairly compelling evidence to suggest he honestly doesn't feel that way anymore. This is where I have an issue with people who want to hold him to account still, after all this time. People can change. People can grow. Allow me to share with you an example from my own life. When I first began my career in Social Worker back in 1989, we were having a noticeable and concerning surge of racially motivated physical assaults in the Toronto Area, perpetrated by Neo Nazi Skinheads. They would surround somebody (usually a minority) on the subway and do something they called a "swarming" where a group they would push the person to the ground and proceed to kick and stomp, the ever-loving shit out of the victim. There was a huge public outcry, and police quite rightly began rounding up all the Nazi skinheads and throwing the book at them. Eventually, a number of these lovely young citizens ended up serving time as guests of the state, and ended up in my professional neck of the woods. Do you know who ended up being the most effective counsellor I ever saw working with Neo Nazi skinheads? A buddy of mine who was... A reformed Neo Nazi skinhead. Doug had been a member of some sort of "White Power" organization and was also a cocaine dealer. He was addicted to meth (although back in my day, we called it "crank" for some reason.) Doug got caught dealing, got sent away to prison and while there he underwent drug treatment and ended up going through a total personality transplant. He renounced his racist views, and once he got out of jail he had all of his (plentiful) Nazi tattoos either burned off or blacked out...and he dedicated his life to getting kids out of that lifestyle. Doug worked tirelessly to try and teach kids who had fallen sway to those insipid and hateful ideologies to reconsider their behaviour, find out the real reasons they were acting like this...and most importantly to face the impact their behaviour was having on their victims. I personally witnessed this guy save a number of kids from a life that was destined to end up hurting both themselves, and a lot of other innocent people, and put them on the right path. He was a hundred times more effective at helping get kids out of White Nationalism than guys like myself were at the time. I was a 20 year old kid straight out of college who (although well meaning) didn't really know my ass from my elbow. Doug understood exactly what those kids were going through, he knew all the language and how they got sucked into that life...and most importantly, how to get them out and put a stop to the cycle of hate. I can't help but wonder...if Social Media had existed back then, if Doug would have even been allowed to atone for his behaviour and try to make up for the harm he had done? I doubt it. I am guessing it would have been a case of: "Hey, 10 years ago you said Hitler was great and death to the Jews." Which he did say. But then he changed. Not only did he not feel that way anymore, but he was wracked with remorse and that guilt motivated him to achieve great things in the name of undoing the damage he had done to society. If we stop allowing people to apologize for wrongs they have committed and stop letting them atone for their behaviour...where will that leave us? Now granted, people like Hulk Hogan muddy those waters, when they are clearly only sorry they got caught saying something terrible and don't actually regret it. And @sek69 is right...private companies have every right to refuse employment to anybody for any reason. That is one of the many great things about the free enterprise system that makes capitalism so much better than any other system, especially socialism...right @El-P? I just think we should judge each case individually, and not apply the same brush to everybody. We've all said and done stupid shit, to varying degrees. I don't think a person's chance to earn a living should be permanently altered based on things which were said a long time ago, especially if seemingly legitimate remorse has been shown.

Quite honestly, if Tony Khan gets a TV deal for ROH, I would be fine with the Briscoes staying there. You would have to imagine they will now be paid a lot better than they have been in previous years. And maybe that would be the best place for them.

You will get no argument from me whatsoever. I think it’s pretty much criminal that those guys are not signed somewhere big right now, whether it be AEW preferably or even NXT/WWE. From a selfish standpoint I would much prefer to see them in AEW. This past weekend just confirmed what I already knew and that is they are still one of the best teams out there. I know there is still some residual heat on them for that tweet by Jay nine years ago, but they have apologized multiple times since then, I don’t know what else they need to do to get past it. It’s not like it is an ongoing issue. An authority no less than EFFY has said that they are “changed men” and are a welcome presence in the locker room. It would be a whole different story if they were still saying stuff like that to this day, but they have been contrite about this whole issue for nine years now, I honestly think it’s time to let that go.

I am most curious to see how they handle FTR vs. The Young Bucks Part Deux, from a booking perspective. There have been a lot of rumblings and rumours that The Bucks are not fond of FTR IRL and have wanted to, or tried to, basically bury them. Dax Harwood went so far as to joke about it in one of his promos leading up to their match with The Briscoes. He encouraged Dem Boys to sign with AEW, so they could job to the “EVP’s” and get buried like FTR had - and then The Briscoes and FTR could get on with having their match. Of course, you can look at that two ways… Dax could have been saying it tongue-in-cheek and was just having fun with the online rumours, or he could have really been sniping at The Bucks. Cody had said in an interview way back when that The Bucks were offended that people used to say The Revival are the best Tag Team in Pro Wrestling when they were with WWE, when The Bucks clearly think they are. I would say that even the most ardent Bucks fans would have to admit they are notoriously sensitive and thin skinned when it comes to people criticizing them in any way or questioning their status as the so-called “Best in the Business.” Regardless of whether or not you believe it is just a stupid online rumor, a joke, or is there some truth to it, the way the initial match between the two teams was booked was a little strange if you ask me. There was so much hype around those two teams finally meeting that they had a custom T-shirt printed up for “The Dream Match.” They match up once (in front of next to no fans due to the pandemic) and The Bucks go over and then…that’s it. Rivalry finished! It might not be a burial, but it sure has all the signs of one. An argument can be made that The Bucks just wanted to get their win, make their statement and then disengage. Even if you don’t believe the conspiracy theories about a burial, I don’t know why that was never turned into a full-time feud or angle. It seem to me to be a wasted opportunity at the very least. It’s a fact that CM Punk held off debuting with AEW until after the pandemic because he didn’t want to waste that opportunity by having it happen in front of no fans. I obviously don’t think that TK should have held off debuting FTR due to the pandemic, but he certainly could have kept those two teams apart until the fans came back. In fact, that was a golden opportunity to build up suspense and momentum for when they eventually did face off in front of fans, really build up the hype. Instead it was one and done and kind of unremarkable the way it was booked. The Bucks are no longer booking the AEW Tag Division but they certainly have Tony Khan’s ear. I for one am not a fan of how FTR have been booked so far during their time with AEW. AEW has a much deeper Tag Division than NXT/WWE had (plus AEW actually treats Tag Team Wrestling seriously and not like an afterthought) but FTR’s greatest matches came in NXT despite all the potential matches they could and should have had so far in AEW. And that’s booking. They ended up jobbing to Sting and Darby, they lost to Moxley and Punk who aren’t even a team FFS. It’s hard not to wonder if somebody is trying to hamstring them. Now we finally get to see the rematch tonight. All I can say is that if FTR ends up doing a clean job again, you are going to have a hard time convincing me that there is no truth to the rumors.