TNA - Titles Not Appreciated.

Many people have said over the years that TNA is a terrible name for wrestling company. Since here in England we don’t really have the phrase “T&A”, meaning tits and ass, it doesn’t particularly bother me that much. But lets run with the idea that the name should change – I have the perfect alternative.

WTF.

Aside from the obvious abbreviation, that stands for “Why This” Federation,because way too often that’s exactly what I find myself uttering. “Why This?”

I could spend a very, very long time on this, and frankly I don’t have the energy to go all the way, through. Instead, I’ll simply focus on a couple of issues that bothered me greatly this week, specifically involved the tag division, X-division and the women’s division, specifically the titles.

Let’s start with the tag division. Now I might have this totally wrong, but there was a match at Destination X between The Motor City Machine Guns and Generation Me, and MCMG won, to give them a number one contendership to the tag team titles, right? Have they had that title match yet? I don’t think they have, unless they had it during a pre-show or post-show or TNA today online segment that nobody watches.

So why have a tag team match between the Motor City Machine Guns and Team 3D TO DETERMINE THE NUMBER ONE CONTENDERS?? It’s ludicrous.

To add to that, who won? Did Team 3D win due to a DQ from interference? Was the match thrown out? I didn’t hear an announcement. It’s madness. What’s the point of any of these matches if a) they contradict stuff which has already happened and b) the match’s conclusion means nothing going forward.

Meanwhile, the tag team champions are........Matt Morgan. Morgan laid out partner Hernandez a couple of weeks ago, and we were promised an explanation of why. We are yet to receive one.

Instead, we got Morgan referring to himself as “we” and apparently will defend soon against the number one contenders, which might be the Guns, might be Team 3D or might be no-one. Who knows?

Any explanation of why he laid his partner out? If the belts will be vacated? If he gets to choose a partner? Nope, nothing. Just a vague hint at schizophrenia. OK then.

Let’s go to Destination X again. Do I remember a Ladder match? A Ladder match which Kazarian won? So where the hell is he and why was he not mentioned once as Doug Wllliams’s number one contender during Doug’s appearance on Impact?

Shannon Moore came out and asked for a title shot at Lockdown, in a way in which we normally find ends with exactly that happening. There will be people that now have in their mind that Moore will wrestle Williams at that PPV, despite them facing off at the last one.

It may well be an excuse to make this a three-way involving Kaz, Moore and Doug, and I have no problem with that. But at least acknowledge the existence of a number one contender during the segment put aside for the division.

And then there are the Knockouts. The poor, undervalued females of TNA who get no respect from those who ought to be showing it. They draw good ratings for the company every week, and many have called for them to have more exposure (in a storyline and angle respect, I mean) on television.

Now, I don’t want to scream “conspiracy”, but it didn’t half seem to me like the booking of the Knockout’s on Impact was deliberately tacky and absurd, so that if they fail they say “yeah, we tried the KOs in the main event /overrun slot, and they failed. Experiment over.” If they succeed, however, it shows that sex sells – so lets do more of it.

I’m taking a punt here, but this reeks of WCW, and so it wouldn’t be a wild assumption to think that perhaps Russo and Bischoff (particularly the former) are responsible.

If you didn’t see it, there was a 4 on 4 match - Velvet Sky, Lacey von Erich, Madison Rayne and Daffney v Tara, Angelina Love, Ayako Hamada and ODB. There would be four falls, and whenever one happened, the scorer of the fall would get a key, and both they and the loser would drop out of the match, until all were finished. Confused yet? You will be.

Then, the four keyholders would each open a box containing a ‘prize’. One was the TNA Knockouts title. Think of that. The women’s title belt was a prize which one person scoring a relatively nondescript pin in an eight-person tag would win. Someone achieving the same feat would win a spider. (how exactly that came to be TNA property is unknown, as is why they didn’t just simply hand it back to Tara)Another would be forced to take their clothes off. That’s classy.

Actually, I don’t even care that one of them was going to do this. Let’s not even worry about whether this ought to be passed off as entertainment or not. The problem is that people ought to earn a world title, or a world title shot. I don’t even mind them winning the world title in a tag match, although I’d prefer it otherwise. But this meant that a world champion (for that is what Tara effectively was) won a match, or at least did all that could be asked of them, and then lost their title. That’s madness.

That’s three titles IN ONE SHOW that were devalued. The ‘Legends’ title – stupid name, by the way, is being carried by Rob Terry. Really nice guy, and this is absolutely not his fault, but he is not good enough to be being pushed in the manner he currently is. That isn’t to say he won’t become an effective big guy. But he isn’t there yet.

None of TNA’s secondary (or tertiary) titles mean a thing. They are just treated like accessories, not prized possessions. Tara cares more about a spider than a belt. Now I’m not saying she shouldn’t love a pet, but it just makes the belt look trivial.

I could be here a long time, bemoaning the terrible booking of Desmond Wolfe, chairshots to the head, the insignificance of Hardy, lack of need for “The Band”, Bubba, swearing, lack of Joe, ladder matches with keys, Orlando Jordan and plenty more. But I won’t.

I may do soon, though......

TNA thoughts after lacklustre big Impact follow-up

Jeff Jarrett walked into Hulk Hogan’s office on TNA Impact this week. During their chat, which I will talk more about, Eric Bischoff interjected, and said that without Dixie Carter, TNA would have been a ‘blip’. Whether that sentiment is correct or not, I have to say that on the subject of blips, I have to hope that this week’s Impact was a ‘blip’.

Sorry, but I didn’t care for at all.

No, that’s not quite true. There were elements I liked.

I liked when Flair and Angle shook hands during the main event. I liked the Young Bucks v Motor City Machine Guns. I like Daniels better as heel (Huge “but” on this one, more later). I liked the intrigue about Mick Foley’s whereabouts. I liked the fact that AJ ignored the Kurt Angle handshake to lead to some actual bitterness before their world title match. I liked the Angelina face turn and how it was received. I liked Krystal Lashley on the mic again. I like Wolfe getting a win, finally. (Another huge “but” attached. I’ll elaborate, stick with me). I thought Jarrett was good in his segment with Hogan. I liked Flair on commentary.

But there was so, so much I didn’t like. These are in no particular order, they are just as they come to me, but they are things that chronically annoyed me about the booking and make-up of a follow-up edition of a show which got it’s highest ever rating last week, and is promoting a PPV this week.

“Can you hear the band, Fernando?”

The show was called “The Band”. This was a reference to Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Sean Waltman’s group now being referred to by that epithet, because they obviously can’t be the nWo any more.

I thought there were several things wrong with their portrayal. I didn’t care for the fact that Christy Hemme referred to “Syxx-Pac”. Is he “Syxx Pac” or is he Sean Waltman?

I didn’t like how Bubba the Love Sponge was dressed, since it was just like The Band. So is he a Band member? No, because he was asking them challenging questions. A petty thing, but it was unnecessary.

Mainly, though, I didn’t like a) why they are there, and b) their association with Eric Bischoff. I ought to elaborate more on Bischoff right now.

I thought Eric, in standalone segments, was great. He is a superb on-air character, and pretty much always has been so. The problem here is that we don’t know what to think of him. He has pretty much always been a heel, so anyone who is educated to know his existence is inclined to think of him as a heel. Hogan, meanwhile, is a de facto babyface, and has been since his match with The Rock, so his association with Bischoff blurs the picture.

Jeff Jarrett, possibly making up for January 4, cut a very good heel promo in my opinion. He also had a lawyer with him, which is a dead giveaway. Therefore, when Hogan and Bischoff responded to him, they were babyface. I have no problem with that.

Switch, for a second, to Beer Money. Beer Money are Over, folks. Very over. They shift more merchandise than anyone else in TNA. The fans LOVE them. They are babyfaces, and they made babyface sense when pleading their case to management for a match with Hall and Nash, who they believed attacked them last week. That’s all fine.

But Eric was seemingly opposed to them. Again, that’s fine, but it was slightly at odds with his portrayal during the Jarrett segment.

Next, you have Beer Money in a match which gets called off due to outside interference, and then The Band come down to take down Beer Money. After a beatdown, Eric Bischoff told Beer Money to be careful what they wish for, and went on to book Hall and Nash v Beer Money, but seemed to be pally with The Band.

So is Eric is a babyface or a heel? All this would actually an intriguing aspect of the storylines, but it isn’t mentioned at all. You don’t hear Tenay and Taz wondering about Eric’s status, you just hear buttlicking about how Bischoff will change the company – which makes him a babyface, surely. It’s too confusing.

On another note involving The Band and Beer Money, it was suggested by Storm and Roode that Hall, Nash and Waltman were responsible for laying out everyone backstage on Jan 4 (I thought it was Lashley, but that’s my speculation rather than TV exposition). This wasn’t confirmed, so may be twisted later on, but that was the strong inference.

So, then, it makes sense that Beer Money would demand a match. Good booking.

But why didn’t the Machine Guns demand a match? Or Rhino? They were laid out too. You’d think Rhino, being a fiery character, would at least. Why didn’t anyone come to help Beer Money when they were down 3 to 2 in the beatdown?

Finally on this, Beer Money v nash and Hall makes sense if Beer Money win. And I’m talking ultimately, not necessarily this Sunday. That said, they can’t lose clean to two old dudes, or it kills them totally.

Who’s being a chump as Champion? I am, I am!

I’m ok with Kurt Angle v AJ Styles for the World Title at Genesis. That’s fine. Some might argue that they gave the match away last week for free, but last week was a big match on a big night, to my mind the equivalent of a PPV. TNA have to maintain their recent standard of quality wrestling at PPVs, so this is a good addition. I don’t believe this is the key selling point of a PPV that promises action from Hogan and a mystery marquee debut.

I didn’t care for a lot of how AJ v Tomko was handled. I am happy with Tomko being the masked man, and I don’t even mind his reasoning. I had a problem with the booking for that night, mainly because it made AJ look like an idiot. Eric Bischoff asked him if he was aware he had a match in a few days for the World Title, and said it didn’t matter, basically. It makes him seem daft, although I’m sure it is supposed to be an attempt to make him seem like a valiant hero. It didn’t.

And then there are the segments with Tomko explaining his dislike for AJ. I’m cool with that, but when did they do the interviews? After Tomko attacked AJ? So they did the interview, cut it, edited it together, spliced in some action shots and put in a music bed? In about twenty minutes? Wow, that’s some amazing producers TNA have.

Oh, and didn’t Kurt and AJ hate each other a short while ago. That didn’t take long to evaporate, did it? I guess they are united in dislike for Jarrett and his relationship with Karen......

Heeellllllloooooooo, Jobber!

I want to point something out – I like Sean Morley. I have long thought he is a solid, sound wrestler with a reasonable gimmick. The thing is, he has never drawn money. It might be because he wasn’t given the chance, but I suspect he wasn’t given the chance because no-one believed he’d be able to do it.

He has come into TNA basically as Val Venis, but under his own name. Even his music and entrance video sound and look like Venis. Has that been a formula for success? Not for ten years, if ever. He is known to all and sundry as a jobber, frankly.

Now I’m not opposed to them changing that status in TNA, but change the character. Hell, make him Right to Censor Val, and have him condemn TNA’s debauchery, then get his ass kicked.

Trying to make him a babyface that can hang with Daniels just feels wrong. Daniels could be used as a strong X-Div champion to raise that division’s status once again, and while I like his return to being a heel, it doesn’t seem right that he has to be on a par with Venis/Morley.

Why would the fans cheer him over Daniels? Why would the loyal fans in the Impact Zone who chant “TNA! TNA!” and then hope the blow-in Morley bests Daniels? Why should we believe he can hang with Daniels?

And the last point is the worst. I think Val Venis standing toe to toe with Daniels says “even the guys who suck in WWE are as good as some of the top guys in TNA” and that is terrifically worrying.

Joe’s gonna.......get killed?

I believe that if you polled everybody in the Impact Zone on a random week and asked for their favourite wrestlers in the company, you’d find the top three being Kurt Angle, AJ Styles and Samoa Joe. That’s pure speculation, but I don’t think it’s wildly out there.

If Kurt and AJ are main eventing and fighting for the title, what is happening to Samoa Joe? I tell you what is happening – he is losing matches with no fanfare in five minutes. That’s very worrying.

The thing is with issues like this is that we don’t know what happens backstage. There may have been major political reasons for this, and it may be Joe’s fault. My experience with him suggests otherwise, but I don’t know the man as well as I know other wrestlers in the company. But the Joe I have been around backstage at TNA is a laid-back sort of guy, albeit one that wouldn’t take any you-know-what.

So, taking to one side the fact that it may be slightly deserved (we don’t know), it cannot be right that Joe is receiving such a de-push. Admittedly his title run didn’t take off like some may have thought, but he is a highly-skilled wrestler and among the best the company has.

I don’t have an issue with him losing to Desmond Wolfe, by the way. But in a fifteen minute match, at least as a TV main event and maybe on PPV. Not without hype, in a throwaway segment used simply for Wolfe to shout at D’Angelo Dinero.

I wouldn’t mind if the show was jam packed with great stuff, but we probably spent ten minutes with Team 3D and the Nasty Boys.

This is, and I apologise for the near-profanity, SAMOA.......F’N........JOE!!

Eighteen months ago this was the TNA champion v the ROH champion. That could have been a big deal. Neither man is anywhere near washed up, so although they don’t have gold, it ought to be something meaningful. If they are doing a Pope v Wolfe feud, why aren’t they simply having a Joe v Wolfe feud? Both Pope and Wolfe are (relatively) new to TNA, and I don’t see the benefit with them feuding with each other.

On this subject, I just don’t get the Pope character at all. For one, I think he’s a natural heel, not a babyface. Two, I hate the third person “faux-Rock” shtick. Three, it’s a ludicrous, borderline offensive name, and I am in no way a religious person.

Random Annoyances

Amazing Red v a mystery opponent at Genesis - ok, but that was the first time the X-Division champion (who should be the second most important champion in the company) was mentioned in the whole show. That’s poor, and there has been zero hype for a mystery opponent. I can only assume it’s Shannon Moore and the reasoning for the surprise that no-one will buy the PPV to see Shannon Moore, but might for a surprise. Or at least another surprise.

Why wasn’t Flair’s involvement on Impact hyped way before he actually appeared?

Please tell me it was just my ears playing tricks with me when I thought I heard piped cheers during Impact. Please.

I don’t like the idea that all and sundry are publicly saying “we’re going to be really good now” which actually implies that you sucked before. That’s a bit WCW-like. Scarily WCW-like.

If you are not going to mention Jeff Hardy by name, why put him in the promo videos?

Some other points – not necessarily negative. It’s not all bad!

These are mainly questions and pieces of speculation.

Firstly, we have to look at who the big surprise is this Sunday, and how they will be involved. Will they simply turn up and wave, perhaps cut a promo, or will they appear in the main event to get involved.

If the decision is the latter, then I think that’s wrong. If everybody knows that a big star is debuting, but he hasn’t appeared before the main event, then we know he is going to interfere.

That hypothesis would also point to a heel, but all the leading names seem to be a babyface......except one.

The main three candidates are surely Goldberg, Ken Anderson and Rob Van Dam. I really hope it isn’t Goldberg. That doesn’t make fiscal sense, because the money they would need to tempt him out of retirement will be big, and they won’t make that money back in the amount of people switching their TV on, buying house tickets and ordering PPVs.

That isn’t to say that the other two won’t come cheap, but they would bring different fan bases. I think Goldberg fans are watching TNA already, or they have, in their eyes, grown out of wrestling and moved into MMA. RVD fans might be more hardcore who sniff at TNA but might be attracted now their hero is there, while Kennedy/Anderson marks might be more traditionally WWE who wonder over to TNA to see what’s going on.

I think the best would be RVD, but of those three the most likely is Anderson. I thin RVD v Styles is a big draw, and that RVD v Angle, RVD v Wolfe and RVD v Joe are very interesting. I’m sure he could have fun bouts with Lethal, Daniels and others given the chance. I’m not sure Anderson has quite the same cache or quality in the ring. Plus he brings a lot of baggage.

One more shout, though – I think it could be Sid. Hogan would think he’s a major star because he headlines Wrestlemania against him. I am perfectly aware that it was 18 years ago, but that might not matter to Hogan. He has apparently been talked up by Scott Hall of late, and fits the recent trend of bringing in older talent from another era.

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After seeing Jarrett and Hogan/Bischoff have a set tout, does that mean there will be a battle down the line for control of the company?

Foley was built strongly the Impact prior to this as someone who seriously hated Bischoff and didn’t care for Hogan. Now Jarrett is in the opposite corner. Eric told both men to get in line with everyone else. Jarrett could easily enlist Foley and have the two of them versus Hogan plus one for control of TNA. I’m saying would be great, but it’s possible. It happened in WCW all the time.

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Does Tomko figure into the Genesis main event? I can see him attacking AJ to hand the title to Kurt. I hope not, really, because I don’t think Kurt ought to turn again so quickly.

Another suggestion is that Flair might help AJ cheat and they both turn heel, but again I don’t care for that. Ditto Flair doing the same with Angle.

I definitely think Kurt will win, since the “no more title shots” claim is ludicrous. I would like to see Kurt win, whether by fair means or foul, and then for he and AJ to have a best of (x amount) series, with a variety of different matches. Not Russo specialty “on a pole” matches, but a submission match, a No DQ bout, maybe Falls Count Anywhere, a cage, a ladder match. That would be great fun to watch, and hasn’t been done for a major belt for a long time.

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Who was Bischoff on the phone to? “I’ll see you next week” – does he mean the PPV or Impact? Not being hyped so much, will it mean a lesser star debuting? You could start thinking back to his WCW days and note DDP or Bagwell or some such name turning up, but it ought to be remembered that he was in WWE for over nearly four years, so feasibly anybody that was on Raw during his tenure (2002-2006) could have been on the other end of the phone.

How about Nick Dinsmore? He was on the Hulkamania tour, and it would follow storylines where he was Eric’s nephew. Just throwing it out there.

Monday Night War reactions: 2 - the Impact negatives

Yesterday I addressed a great many of the things that I liked about the Impact from Monday night.

In the interests of fairness I ought to take a lot at some of things I didn’t think worked at all, and a bunch of other things which I didn’t think work on the night, but I’m willing to sit back and watch to see how it comes together over several weeks.

I thought the biggest problem TNA had all night was that there were a lot of major errors of judgement or elements that made the hour hard to watch. I watched Raw live then Impact later so I can’t be a proper judge, and I am a Bret Hart fan so that would cloud me more, but I’m fairly sure that after the first hour of Impact I would have switched to Raw.

Obviously, as many have already said, the X-Division match was a bit of a disaster. If the whole point was to have Hardy start a programme with Homicide, surely they could simply have had a three way with Homicide, Red and Sabin, for example, and when Red retained Homicide goes crazy with the baton, with Jeff making a save. I guess the point was to have the visual of Jeff Hardy sitting on the cage, but to have an eight man match go to a DQ after four minutes was ludicrous, then there was the very dull bit where Homicide climbed anyway – badly. To round all this off Jeff Hardy landed a clean chair shot to Homicide’s head, and that wasn’t the only time that would happen during the night.

Off on a tangent before I come back to the dodgy first hour, I think the Jeff Hardy acquisition is a very odd decision. I know the guy is a major star, but I think it sends a bad message that this guy with many, many obvious problems and a possible custodial sentence hanging over him can walk into a job. I would be delighted, to tell you the truth, if that was a one night deal for now while Hardy sorts out his legal issues. Let Shannon Moore on Impact and have him talk about Jeff every week. Have Moore wrestle Homicide and have the Notorious 187 pick on Shannon, but then Hardy comes back to make the save at some point, should he be free from any major legal issues.

Also, if you are going to have a major star like Jeff Hardy, I’d make more of him than what they did. He was lost in a bit of a sprawl, and frankly both his and Flair’s appearance would have been bigger had the other one not happened. I think there was enough going on in the three hours to suggest that it would have been plenty of a success without Flair or Hardy, and that either of their returns could have been held back a couple of weeks to make the ongoing Impacts interesting.

Back to the problems with the opening hour, and I’d suggest that there were two other major problems with the opening match, aside from the four minute nonsense and the fans’ distain. One was that the red structure of the Steel Asylum looked awful. It shook when people climbed it and one section looked like it may fall down.

Also, and I’m not sure how they rectify this problem apart from moving to a much later timeslot, but the crowd’s “bullshit” chant had to be partially bleeped out, and it was embarrassingly hard to watch. I guess the first thing is that they need to not produce segments that make the crowd chant “Bullshit” (they did it again when Hogan dissed Jeff) and then it isn’t a problem. Going forward, I’d be interested to find out where they can take this, because if they were to end up going head-to-head against Raw, it would be odd to see a kid-friendly wrestling and a teen/18-40 wrestling show going out at the same time.

I didn’t at all care for the section of the fans saying “TNA is better than WWE” and “I want to watch wrestling, not kiddie comedy”. That to me was self-defeatist, because anyone agreeing knows that anyway, and anyone partially DISagreeing may well have just been reminded that WWE was on later that night.

Leaving the first hour aside for now, I’d say that the element of the show which I disliked the most was the talk of “the format”. Eric and Hulk ripping up “the format sheet” and then later Eric telling a runner to cut down a segment because it was running too long. I hated that. Wrestling (or Sports Entertainment) is a unique type of television show, I realise, but basically it is an amalgam of Sport and Soap Opera. You don’t watch a major sporting event – an NFL game, a Champions League football (Soccer) game, anything – and see them talk about ratings. Neither would you watch Eastenders or ER or CSI or any drama and have a character talk about doing something for ratings or to change the product. It’s ridiculous. How can you have a format for a sporting event full of a series of matches? You don’t know if that match will last twenty minutes or two minutes. How can you schedule that?

The biggest thing that has ever happened in wrestling was Scott Hall showing up on Nitro and the nWo beginning. They played that as “is it real, is it not real?” but they didn’t talk about a script or a schedule or a format. They let people’s imagination run wild and played it as though it was real. Austin was a wildman running roughshod over Raw and terrorising his boss. If he had stopped to say he was only doing it for ratings it would have bombed. If TNA never mention ratings again I’ll be delighted.

I’d also be happy if they didn’t use so many insider terms. I didn’t like Christy telling JB that if he let Foley in the building he’d “get heat”. I didn’t care for Hogan explaining that wrestlers would “get the push”. I hate that. If it’s a sport, then no-one “gets a push”. The guys that win more often get successful. They don’t get a push from management. Or at least they shouldn’t.

Some other minor points from the opening hour – I thought the Tara v ODB match was poor considering both girls are reasonably strong wrestlers. I thought neither of them had any character developed or explained, considering there may well have been new viewers. I didn’t like that AJ Styles, Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe were barely mentioned, if at all, in the first hour. I didn’t like that basically no big matches were announced. Two of the matches that were announced didn’t even happen (Rhino v Abyss and Beer Money v British Invasion).

A criticism I had early on in the show which was addressed as it progressed was “who is in charge?” It was very confusing in the opening ninety minutes or so as to who had any power. I understand that Hogan would be in a position to be an authority, but for quite a while Bischoff was spouting off without any real reason to. Then there was Foley and Jarrett. At least they addressed it all eventually.

I’m not crazy about TNA announcing “First evers”. They said it was the first ever Joe v Abyss. Hmm, I wonder who those two people I saw wrestle in Liverpool in June 2008 were. Looked like Joey and Abby to me.

The Nasty Boys. Hmmm. I actually thought that they were a fun addition to the show, and would although it wouldn’t be my type of wrestling, I think Team 3D v the Nasty Boys might be interesting to section of TNA’s audience.

Orlando Jordan? That is ridiculous. There is a point where more returns actually make things worse and not better, especially if they are wrestlers who haven’t been seen for a couple of years and made absolutely no impression when they were around. Perhaps they have signed him because of his first name, considering where Impact is filmed.

Considering they had three hours, there was not nearly enough wrestling for my liking, but to be fair they a lot of plot to fit in.

I didn’t care for Dinero beating Wolfe. The former Nigel McGuiness is a very talented wrestler who put on two awesome matches with Kurt Angle but jobbing to Elijah Burke? I don’t know, I thought that was poor. I’ll be honest, I have no love for the “Pope” character. I’m not offended by it, personally, but I couldn’t see why people might be. I just think it’s a bit over-the-top and doesn’t really work. Plus Wolfe is way to talented to be losing in three minutes.

Finally, I have one other point to make. The character blurring was an interesting aspect to the show, but there was probably a few too many “tweeners” (I hate that word, but I can’t think of anything better) all over the show. Foley, Jarrett, Hogan, Bischoff, Hall, Waltman and Nash were all played as tweeners. So was Flair, come to think of it. And maybe Sting.

Fans like people to cheer for. I know it is a Russo thing that characters ought to be grey rather than black or white, but you can’t have too many of them because the fans will be struck dumb. This is not a soap opera which you watch in a armchair. At least, you don’t watch others watching it from an armchair. As much as the wrestling, the atmosphere is generated by people watching a live spectacle, and for that to be effective, as it often is in the Impact Zone, people need to be booed and cheered.

I’m sure, though, this will be rectified. Actually no I’m not, but I’m sure they’ll try to rectify it. The hope is just that they do it right.

Good luck, TNA.

Monday Night War reactions: 1 - the Impact positives

Wow. Quite a day.

It’s taken me until now to get a look at both Raw and Impact, and its fair to say the combination of both shows being on at the same time has led to probably the biggest day in wrestling since Vince bought WCW back in 2001. Make no mistake, this is momentous. Not necessarily notice given that TNA will take over, but enough to suggest to me that they can be, and indeed perhaps already are, a player.

My thoughts, initially, soon after digesting both the shows and the fallout are that there is no clear winner here. I would think both sies are happy with their output. TNA debuted a raft of new stars – maybe too many – and got a great deal of people talking about their product. From what I hear of their rating – a rumoured 1.5 – they must be ecstatic about that too. They were never going to beat WWE on Monday, but they have drawn bigger than any point in their history. They now know that they CAN go on a Monday night.

WWE produced one of their best shows in a while as competition. Not just the Bret Hart stuff, mind. Bret’s exchanges with Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon were captivating, but you can’t base a whole show on that. DX had a great match with JeriShow (anyone else see Hunter give something to a front row fan? Possibly a cheeky dig at Bret?) and Orton continued his character development, first with a great exchange with Vince, before his Legacy brethren put him in his place. The wheels are really in motion for DiBiase v Randy again.

I’ve talked about WWE aplenty in my review at The Sun – CLICK HERE - so I’ll get down to a much more detailed appraisal of Impact in this blog. Stay tuned – there a lot of things to get through.

I’ll start with the positives, because there were many, and although numerically the negatives are going to probably win the day, I’d say a great many of these positives re more important.

I’ll start with what I felt was the most important thing of all, and suggest to me that Eric Bischoff had a HUGE amount to do with the TV show, and that is that the show felt chaotic. That is absolutely not a criticism, and is a huge piece of praise. I loved that old-school Nitro (and I mean early, successful Nitro) feel for the show. It felt live (well it was live, but Raw doesn’t even feel live any more, it is so sterile) and it felt as though anything could happen. That is why Nitro took over Raw because the WWE’s offering was taped at the time and the hook of Nitro was shocking happenings.

I particularly liked the cut during a match to the backstage area to show that the Motor City Machine Guns had been laid out. It showed that things could happen at any point. That a potential assailant was not pausing for the end of a match before attacking was great.

The show had Bischoff fingerprints all over the thing, and that’s great. Here’s the thing that is never said about WCW – what if Bischoff had more power? What if he hadn’t been shackled so much by the corporate environment? Admittedly he wouldn’t have been able to spend so freely, but that now doesn’t become a factor, since they have the talent they need available. I think Bischoff is a very intelligent man who will have learned about everything that ahs happened to him over the years. I’d reign back his on air performance as much as I can, but encourage him to get involved backstage as much as humanly possible.

Let’s note a couple of other things I really loved. Obviously the main event has to be respected. A fantastic match between two brilliant wrestlers with top notch quality. It was a good decision to have a seriously good match to close the show. No-one really knows how many typical Raw fans saw it, but that was probably better than any match which took place on Raw in 2009. It would help cement TNA as wrestling, not sports entertainment.

I liked the Sting cameos. I know it is old, but as long as he doesn’t stalk Hogan for a year and attack him like he did in WCW, then its fine by me. Sting can’t be expected to be one of the guys or to wrestle every week. Everyone knows his rafters gimmick, so can buy into it quickly. Do this for a month or so and then have him rappel at some point for a big angle, whatever it may be. Sting is talented enough on the mic to be babyface or heel – I’d make him a heel. Has Sting ever really been a heel? Not often, if ever. If there is going to be a Foley/Jarrett stable of sorts to fight Hogan and co. then I’d side Sting with them. Have him call the people idiots for cheering Hogan and saying people like him come to TNA, give them blood sweat and tears and then get kicked to the curb.

I loved Flair getting out of the limo. That felt major. In fact I liked the intrigue surrounding Flair full stop. Ric Flair is a promo guy par excellence who should be allowed sufficient time and focus to make his first verbal gambit. Not lost amongst a sprawl of tons of stuff. I have no idea how Ric Flair will be used, but I hope they find something useful for him, because he will be earning plenty of dollars.

I also liked Flair taking a look at the main event and nothing more being made. I like that kind of segment which isn’t explained. It suggests that things are in the pipeline.

I liked the initial comment by Nash that Hulk Hogan was coming “but not alone”. There was then someone switching limos to join Hogan. I assume that was meant to be Bischoff. It wasn’t clearly explained, but I really liked the build that Hogan’s arrival was a big deal. He made it look stupid by saying “I’ve been in the back all day” when he was supposed to be arriving by limo, but I guess you could explain that away by saying that he was, then disappeared to pick Bischoff up.

I am keen on the fact that there were plenty of questions to be answered throughout the show and indeed plenty still remain. I might have liked my announcers to play them up a little more, but think of: Who is the guy in black that attacked AJ? Is Hogan siding with the (former) nWo? What will happen with Foley and Jarrett? What are Sting’s intentions? Will Jeff Hardy stick about? Lots to think about, and more besides these points mentioned.

I liked Foley trying to get in and being thwarted. In fact more than anything else I liked that they had a spot with Christy Hemme as an interviewer talking to a generic fan but interrupted it so she could, run and talk to Mick. I’m sorry that Christy’s body is in a bad way, but I think she’ll be a very, VERY good backstage interviewer. Back on track, I felt that Mick’s spots throughout the show build nicely from a polite wish to get in the building to a furious drive to see Hogan. I especially liked parts of the last segment where Mick talked to Sean Morley (more on that later) and (gasp) logic came to the fore. Morley mentioned an office “down the hall on the left” and Mick commented that there was only one office “down the hall on the left”. The underlying meaning here was that Morley didn’t know whose office that was, and Foley knew that he meant the office that he (Foley) once occupied.

I liked Hogan being on the show at the top of the hour. It made great sense, and showed me that TNA understand the scheduling of a head-to-head show. That may sound obvious, but it was a boneheaded mistake WCW used to make.

As long as they don’t hang about for three years and take up loads of TV time, I liked the Nasty Boys’s involvement. Ignore the fact that they are Hogan’s buddies, they are interesting, they have character, and a tease for a brutal match with Team 3D is exciting.

I really enjoyed the Girls tag match. The initial Tara v ODB match where a title changed watered down the tag title switch, but the match itself was very good.

I know it was a bit derivative, but I liked the Beautiful People segment. Look, WWE is going PG, so it behoves TNA to go down the opposite path. Therefore, if you have three hot women whose gimmick is being beautiful, and at least one of them (Lacey) can’t really wrestle, it makes sense to me to have them strip down a bit. The show will lose credibility quickly if there is nothing but scantily clad girls dancing about, but if this supposed to be an adult show it doesn’t hurt to have to sexual content. And actually this isn’t even sexual content, it was just slightly titillating.

The former Val Venis, Sean Morley, is a solid hand, and it really would not surprise me that his return is as much as an agent as a wrestler. Either way, it’s a solid acquisition.

Krystal did a great job on Bobby Lashley’s behalf. I have met Bobby Lashley and Krystal, and they are genuinely nice people. Bobby is a hell of a guy and I hope he does fantastically well in MMA. That said, I always thought he was overpushed in WWE and that his TNA run has been poorly received, at least compared to the hype. I was in California for Bound for Glory, and Lashley got booed out of the building trying to play babyface against Samoa Joe.

I’ve now seen the ratings – I’m not going back and editing, because I can’t be bothered. I like the fact that this is stream of consciousness, and it gives you a flavour of how long this blog post has taken me so far.

In fact, I’ve gone on for plenty enough time. That’s pretty much it for the positives aspects of TNA. I have plenty of negative points which I’ll come back to in a post very, very soon.

Stay tuned.