  We consider the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations in a finite cylinder
$\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^3$. We assume that $v_r$, $v_\varphi$,
$\omega_\varphi$ vanish on the lateral boundary $\partial \Omega$ of the
cylinder, and that $v_z$, $\omega_\varphi$, $\partial_z v_\varphi$ vanish on
the top and bottom parts of the boundary $\partial \Omega$, where we used
standard cylindrical coordinates, and we denoted by $\omega =\mathrm{curl}\, v$
the vorticity field. We use estimates and $H^3$ Sobolev estimate on the
modified stream function to derive three order-reduction estimates. These
enable one to reduce the order of the nonlinear estimates of the equations, and
help observe that the solutions to the equations is ``almost regular''. We use
the order-reduction estimates to show that the solution to the equations
remains regular as long as, for any $p\in (6,\infty)$, $\| v_\varphi
\|_{L^\infty_t L^p_x}/\| v_\varphi \|_{L^\infty_t L^\infty_x}$ remains bounded
below by a positive number.
