Pro Wrestling Ponderings

As anyone who read my column last week knows, I’m giving TNA an opportunity to wow me. Why? Zack Danielson will be joining Kevin Ford and myself on a future podcast to talk about his trip to Orlando where he’ll be seeing Victory Road and two nights of Impact tapings. Also, I took advantage of their anniversary sale and purchased six DVDs for less than 50 dollars. This week I’m going to discuss three of the DVDs, and I’ll save my Impact thoughts for a special edition of the column next week when I preview Victory Road.

Before we get underway, it’d be far funnier if you read this column while picturing the voice of the voiceover guy from TNA. You know the one. Kinda sounds like James Earl Jones.

Heaven Sent, Hell Bound: The Best of Christopher Daniels- To me, Christopher Daniels is one of the most underrated talents in all of professional wrestling. The problem is TNA underutilizes him and has him doing stupid gimmicks or angles instead of just letting him wrestle. Also, to be fair Ring of Honor didn’t exactly use him correctly during most of 2006 and 2007 either. I knew going about some of the matches getting clipped, but whoever put this together seemingly hacked it together. This was so badly done. Instead of showing a bunch of clipped matches, I would have much rather seen video packages of the smaller ones and show the main matches in their entirity.

The best example I can think of is the way they cut down both cage matches, but showed an entire singles match between James Storm and Daniels. Even worse was that this match had a stupid no-contest finish. It was also silly to include entrances and show the beginnings of matches while cutting out some important stuff in the end. Like the final cage match with Triple X against America’s Most Wanted. The entrances were shown. The feeling out process is shown, but TNA clipped the parts where everyone got busted open.

I also thought it was silly to include a lame squash with Jerrelle Clark, but for seven dollars this was still worth it. I regained a lot of the respect I had for Daniels and gained a new appreciation. This is a guy who’s so smooth in the ring, but he can also bring it in his promos and can have great matches with anyone. If you want to know why Daniels is awesome, buy this DVD. Especially if you can get it for cheap.

History of TNA Wrestling: Year One- If you’re in the mood for high comedy and fiction presented as fact, BUY THIS DOCUMENTARY! Seriously, you’ll gain new respect for the production of WWE after watching this. If not for the actual facts presented then at least for the presenation. Dixie Carter was shown talking at various points, and she went on and on and on. I’m not necessarily blaming her, but I’m blaming the stupid idiots who edited this thing together.

The sincerity of the people talking about how hard everyone worked is not to be doubted, but there seems to be some delusion that the hard has ultimately led them to some great level of success. The reality is they’re still being held on the hand by an energy company. They’re still barely drawing 1,000 people for their live events and have barely left Universal Studios this year for Pay-Per-Views. And while I would never expect them to sell out The Palace of Auburn Hills, drawing 4,000 (roughly half papered according to Meltzer) is not good any way you look at it.

Thankfully, I only purchased this disk to get free shipping. The matches raise this DVD up a bit since it has the first ever X Division title match and the three way ladder match on it as well. Both of these are two of my favorite matches for 2002. The first X Division title match may even be one of my favorite matches ever.

Best of the Tag Teams: Volume 1- This was the best of the three DVDs, although there were still some issues. Instead of showing things in order, they went by different tag teams instead. For example, they showed The Naturals vs. America’s Most Wanted video package at the very beginning, but we didn’t see a match between the two teams until almost halfway into the disk. We also didn’t get to see some of their best matches from the ladder half of 2004 and 2005.

Thanks to some real quality matches involving AMW, Daniels/Styles, and LAX, this is an easy recommend. Oddly enough, this was the first time I’d ever seen the VooDoo Kin Mafia’s antics. I’d almost forgotten about that five minute period when people paid attention to them again for ripping on D-Generation X and challenging them to a fight.

I’ll get into this way more in my assessment of the company, but this made TNA look so second rate. As much as the D-X reunion was horrible and stupid and unfunny, the CREATORS of the group were at least the ones in it. Roaddog and Billy Gunn had nothing to do with the group until Shawn Michaels was out. The difference between D-X and this garbage is huge. D-X was about a rebellion, They actually went to WCW headquarters and to a live event. Not necessarily with permission from the WWF (just go along with it). The Old Age Outlaws as I like call them challenged Hunter and Shawn to a million dollar with permission from the TNA office. Real rebellious there guys.

Next week I’ll look at the Christian Cage and Kurt Angle DVDs, as well as TNA Impact in Japan. I’ll also have my thoughts on four weeks of Impact as well as a preview of Victory Road. Until then, everyone have a safe week, and be sure to check out Pro Wrestling Ponderings for the latest recaps and podcasts.

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