Pro Wrestling Ponderings

Welcome back to the best column not only on Pro Wrestling Ponderings, but on all of the internet. Yeah, I’m that damned cocky.

Zane Thornsberry:

Undoubtedly, we’ve all heard about the Kurt Angle arrest by now. If you haven’t, Kurt was arrested for stalking his girlfriend Rhaka Kahn, driving on a suspended license, and a few other charges. While any other time this might not be that big of a deal, it’s happening during a crucial time for TNA. Not only is Kurt Angle the TNA World Champion, but he’s also trying to gain more control of TNA. As you all may know, Jeff Jarrett and Karen Angle are now “an item”, which has infuriated Kurt beyond belief. Kurt has went to Dixie Carter (majority owner of TNA) to get control of the booking staff away from Jeff, and give it to Kurt. In response, Dixie Carter has fired Savio Vega, and Dutch Mantell who were two guys close to Jeff and in the “inner circle” of TNA. After these firings, Vince Russo is said to be worried for his job as he too is a close friend of Jeff.

Now while the firing of Russo might be a good idea, it’s certainly not a good idea to support a man whom is self destructing (Angle). Having him as your champion is not only bad publicity, but bad for business if he dies or gets incarcerated. It’s been reported that several TNA wrestlers have went to Dixie asking her that if she fires Russo, to hire either Paul Heyman (former booker/owner of Extreme Championship Wrestling), or Gabe Sapolsky (former booker for Ring of Honor). Dixie has reportedly been saying that she does not intend to hire either man, but instead someone with a Hollywood background.

Of course, hiring someone with a Hollywood background is not the best move for a wrestling company. For one, the majority of the time these writers don’t know a thing about the business or the product they’re getting into. If they do know what they’re getting into, it’s still not going to do the company any good as they don’t know what works and what doesn’t in wrestling due to them never having drawn a dime, or worked closely with a booker.

It seems that the days of one man being in charge of “the book” of a company is on its way out. People who couldn’t cut it in the tough world of Hollywood, and are now looking for a paycheck are replacing it. Ultimately, it’s not just the company, who suffers, but all the wrestlers, their families, and the fans.

If TNA wishes to be taken seriously by the world of Professional Wrestling, then they need to cease trying to become a carbon copy of WWE, and instead strike out on their own unique path. Instead of several writers fromTV shows that got cancelled because the writing sucked (or who got let go because THEY sucked), have a few older guys in the business work on the creative staff. They need to have one guy who knows what he’s doing (someone like Jim Cornette, or Raven) at the head of the booking team, with everyone else doing what he dictates.

TNA needs to get back to the basics in every aspect. Instead of doing complicated, unfunny, boring feuds, they should be doing easy to follow feuds with a clear-cut reason why they’re feuding, and not have it be over some “therapy” sessions. Enough of the zany characters, enough of the over the top gimmick matches, and enough of the tag team matches for a singles title. Get back to what brought you to where you were, and that’s good old-fashioned wrestling. If they do this, they’ll undoubtedly pull in more wrestling fans, and be able to break even (or turn a profit) each and every month.

When it boils down to it, TNA is a wrestling business. Therefore, they should focus on the wrestling, and not “comedy” skits. All I’m saying is you don’t see Ben & Jerry’s (who make a fine product) selling health insurance do you? No, because they know Ice cream is their thing, and they need to stick to that. Will any of what I said happen? Who knows, we’ll have to wait and see. However, if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put my money on it.

Jerome Cusson:

Still can’t believe we’re so close to Summerslam. I think the card looks like decent, but it just doesn’t feel like the second biggest show of the year is coming in a week. WWE spent the week in Canada, and they made their distrust of the country very clear. First on RAW, they had Sergeant Slaughter teasing the crowd all night and Jericho turning on his home country. Then on Smackdown, they edited out the many cheers Tyson Kidd and D.H. Smith received before the main event. If I lived in Calgary or Edmonton, I would never ever want to see WWE again. Why spend 50 bucks on seeing a show when I’m simply going to get picked on for two hours. Pass.

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Have you ever had a weekend that made you question whether or not you wanted to continue being wrestling fan? Where you so much stupid garbage that you wanted to sell all those wrestling DVDs you’ve bought over the years. Where you want to desperately find something, anything to do on a Monday night just so you’re not home to see RAW. This is how the last two days have gone for me.

It all began on a cool July Sunday evening. This past weekend, I’d completely ignored professional wrestling in all forms. This did not cause me to ignore my rather nerdish instincts as I was enjoying all six of the Harry Potter films. It all climaxed with seeing the 6th film in a local theater Sunday night. After enjoying the movie and a lovely Prime Rib from Outback, I came home and started following the results of TNA’s July Pay-Per-View, Victory Road.

Coming into this night, I didn’t think TNA could anger me. I never thought I could muster enough energy to care one way or the other about this show. Yet, they found a way. I guess they always find a way.

You might be wondering how not even watching the show could anger me. Simple enough. You open the show with a stupid finish and do a useless title change. You have a guy who can’t even do a simple lock-up in Matt Morgan beat one of the most professional of professional wrestlers in Christopher Daniels. You have Abyss wrestling Dr. Stevie in a usless mid-card match. You have Team 3-D obliterate an entire heel group by themselves.

But see. That’s just the usual TNA crap. Of course, it’s not a single buy, but there really isn’t anything that can cause one to just simply want to quit watching wrestling. Little did I know. Little did anyone else know just what the little engine that couldn’t had in store for us. More on this metaphor later.

Jenna and Sharmell had what has been described as one of the worst wrestling matches in the history of this sport. Two women who are non-workers were allowed to compete… hell, people had to pay them 30 dollars to watch these two women fight. These women had an atrocity of a match while Alex Shelley, Chris Sabin, Jay Lethal, and Homcide sat in the back. I guess they can’t possibly draw the kind of money Survivor Chick can.

Kevin Nash then cut a promo saying all the babyfaces are the same place they were seven years ago. He then proceeds to beat A.J. Styles clean with a chokeslam. Yes folks, Kevin fucking Nash won a championship match clean in the year 2009. I kid you not. If I could put the visual evidence up on this website, I would. I want to hear the justification for this from someone in TNA management. Here you have a guy in Styles who goes out and busts his ass for seven years, who’s been loyal to this company from the beginning, jobbing to someone who helped kill WCW and has an amazing streak of luck when it comes to injuries just before jobbing.

Scott Steiner and Booker T then defeated Beer Money for the TNA Tag Team titles. I guess at this point we were just playing out the string, but here’s another young duo doing the J-O-B to a pair of individuals over the age of 40. Maybe Booker can still make a contribution to this sport, but Steiner has been done for the last 10 years. Beer Money has become one of the most over acts in the company, but the NW… I mean MEM RULZ!

Samoe Joe actually got to beat one of the so-called legends. Of course, this wasn’t without its’ own bit of calamity. Sting either forgot the ending or just plain didn’t want to take the Musclebeater because he was the first of two consecutive top babyfaces to tap clean. Pretending that Sting refused to take the Musclebeater, can you imagine if someone else refused to take Joe’s finisher? They’d be fired before they even got to the back. Now pretending Sting forgot the ending, what does it say about his professionalism that this happened? This man is supposed to be a model for a lot of the young kids to follow, and here is someone well-respecting “blanking out” on a main event match’s ending.

Also, some guy named Tazzzzzzzzzz (I believe that’s the new spelling.) debuted. Apparently, he’s like Paul Bearer in that Joe sees him and immediately can begin not selling anymore.

Kurt Angle had cut a promo earlier saying not to expect a Pay-Per-View quality match when he wrestled Mick Foley. He also said that if any Main Event Mafia member lost, they’d immediately be fired. This promo, recorded very early in the show, assured everyone of the ending of all the matches and thus a waste of their hard-earned money. Of course, it was probably 20,000 die-hards, but that’s still incredibly presumptuous to have Angle cut a promo like that.

Angle of course went on to defeat Mick Foley clean as a whistle with the anklelock, thus completing what some are calling one of the worst shows of all time. Judging by these results, I can almost guarantee the quality of this Pay_Per-View was below much of what even WWE has produced this year. I’m very interested in hearing what our own Zack Danielson has to say about this show. If he tries to justify any of this bullshit, there will be an argument. A long one and a very loud one. I cannot possible justify the existance of this company anymore.

I gave TNA four weeks. They not only squandered their chance but so angered me that I refuse to even watch and review their Pay-Per-View. When I called them “The Little Engine that Couldn’t,” I meant that every time this company has a huge signing or seems to take a step forward, they invent ways to take ten steps backward. They’ve pissed away so many chances. They signed away so much ex-WWE talent. What has it gotten them? A lousy 1.1 every single week. They can’t even defeat FCW on SyFy. They can’t defeat Smackdown, which is on a Friday night. They can barely beat Superstars and A.M. Raw on a weekly basis.

I want to see the wrestlers have jobs and be able to support their families, but how far can you possibly take this? TNA is an eyesore to every person who considers themselves a professional wrestling. This company is a slap in the face every single week it puts out their shitty television show. Every single week Impact airs is another slap to the face of everyone who’s made this wrestling business what it is today. Every single Pay-Per-View that airs robs the 20,000 or so people of cash every month. People, specifically wrestling fans, are so desperate for something, anything to entertain them when it comes to wrestling, that this has become an acceptable form of entertainment. I no longer consider this to be anything but a festering boil that continues to slowly kill the business

If anyone is curious about my thoughts on the Kurt Angle and Global Impact DVDs, please listen to the podcast this week. I’ve wasted enough column space on “The Little Engine that Couldn’t.” As for how to end this column, I can only think of one senetence containing five words. The first two words are a phrase echoed by thousands of ROH and PWG fans over the years as a representation of how they feel their favorite wrestlers have been taken advantage of. The third word joins together the first and second phrase. The fourth and fifth words are exactly how I feel about this company. And I can tell you that this how so many others feel as well.

Fire Russo and fuck TNA.

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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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