Moe Hunter

So my take on Genesis... "Oh my god, what's Red gonna do, he's amazing!"... Apparently he's going to do a really basic front flip, land with a little bit of his leg over Kendrick's shoulder, the rest of him hitting the floor and smacking his jaw on the guard rail. Red did one decent move in the whole match, and that was the finish. Kendrick continues to impress me, very nice to see his mat game is as good as his speed game was. Interesting that he's kept the look of "THE Brian Kendrick", but none of the gimmick. Beer Money... I just don't see why there's any fuss about them. In a promotion where pretty much every team says "we're the best team in TNA/The World Today/History"... Actually, it didn't make sense when Tomko or 3D said it either. But anyway - James Storm, Robert Roode, didn't impress me in 2005 and seemingly haven't added anything to their game in the past four years. I imagine when they do their mid-match taunt that they yell "Lame!" -- "Lamer!". "The Band" are about as you'd expect them to be. Waltman can still go, but he can't shake the X-Pac Heat still. I like that Nash's character is at least admitting that everything around him is bogus. Morley continues to suck on the mic. While we're at it, do they need to make his video a clone of his WWE one? All the stupid visual innuendos? ... I like that Daniels went into the Gogoplata / Hell's Gate - a dig at Undertaker's girl using his and AJ's finishers, perhaps? That Koji Clutch is a hell of a move, btw. They really have the wrong guys being Face and Heel in this one. It's stupid having Daniels say "I love TNA... wait, no I don't like the fans though, I'm not on your side". Mr Anderson had a really good debut promo. Pity the match was slow, and that Abyss really isn't a great opponent. I counted only one of Kennedy's moves used in the match, too and that was the basic Face Wash, which Joe does anyway. No Finlay Roll, Kenton Bomb, Mic Check, the double roundhouse... Nothing that really showed him off. By the way... How crappy is Lashley if he gets knocked out that easy, and can't compete half an hour or so later? If that's how he is, how is he ever supposed to compete in MMA? Oh, and story-wise... If he's so passionate about not wanting to wrestle in TNA... Why does he show up to every event? Pope and Wolfe! These guys are plain awesome, and Wolfe found himself an extra stak of star power and strengthened his character with his new valet and his pre-match routine. Very solid match, love all the submission moves and the psychology pretty much all the way through. Only iffy spot was when Wolfe went for his Headstand move for the second time... Why? It didn't make sense. Still, great match, great finish. Women's match was subpar. ODB still really sucks, busted implant or no. Tara bringing a spider to the ring *is* lame as others have said. And putting it on her fallen opponents isn't any cooler than when Boogeyman put worms on his opponents. Hernandez has some really good moves, but I'm not sold on his look entirely. I think the team of him and Matt Morgan is definitely a good one. British Invasion I don't feel like I've seen enough of to make a proper opinion of. Styles vs Angle was really good. Seemed a little bit slow, but that's probably just because their previous shorter match is still in my head. The turn was handled really well, but as people have said there aren't any good faces to take on AJ. Anderson or Daniels would be nice choices if the bookers hadn't decided they should arbitrarily be heels. Pope might be good, but he's probably not quite there. Wolfe would be great... again, if he wasn't heel (but I think he needs to be heel). I'm not looking forward to the Orlando Screwjob, but I am enjoying a lot of the wrestling on display with TNA.

As always I'm behind on my viewing, so I've just seen the 1/14 show. Generation Me are really talented, but I agree that they look super plain. Not just their build and skin tone, but their faces just don't look like they belong on TV... it's hard to explain. Definitely want to see more matches from them, and the Guns are always awesome. Daniels is really good on the mic. Very natural. Funny to see how much smaller than Morley he is though. Morley outright sucked in that promo - just had NO substance whatsoever. Without being able to mention specifically the type of movies he makes, not having any direction of actually recruiting any Knockouts to star in them... Just nothing at all. And the stupid sleazey laugh after every half sentence, combined with shots of women in the crowd looking indifferent or *slightly* put off. Only one minor problem with Daniels delivery, is in his "movie pitch" he refers to Morley as a "fast-talking sleazebag"... Except Daniels talks *way* faster than Morley. AJ vs Tomko wasn't exactly a good match, and then half of it they spent cutting away to other crap going on. They barely spent any time putting over the match in progess on commentary. Doesn't make much sense for how excited Bischoff was about "having a Main Event". I really don't like how they have those feud summary packages that just exist outside of any live interviews. We should have had Tomko talking to Borash or Bubba the Lame-o Lovesponge and giving his reasons why he did it. All the Tara vs ODB comments should have had some live actions instead of these random soundbytes played over replay footage. Tomorrow, on to watching Genesis!

WSX had completely fake crowds. As for having a crowd full of kids - Kiwi Pro Wresling's current show has that - they invite Wellington schools to come along. No adults besides teachers and the occasional parent. Honestly everything sucks about the show except that the actual wrestling is okay. The crowd is definitely the second worst thing about it, the first being their pathetic commentary team. I have no interest in watching any wrestling show that just has an audience of 5-10 year olds. It's really off-putting.

As part of that historic vote for Val Venis, I can assure you it was all done as a joke by the GameFAQs PWB. Yeah people like him and see his talent, but more than anything this was a "chance to get a jobber a WT shot". Yeah, in 1999. Since 2003, I believe he's only had one proper, even, good match - against King Booker. Other than that, TOTAL comedy jobber.

I'd love to hear how Kennedy was responsible for Cena botching his hiptoss. Was Rey Mysterio responsible for Mark Henry smashing his knee on that SNME? Reviewing the footage again on the suplex to Orton, the only thing possibly wrong with Kennedy's execution was it looks like he pushed up slighlty too much with the hand that's at his ass. The drop was straight enough, Orton didn't have to twist around like he did - it's not Chavo he's facing.

He "injured" Randy Orton, who didn't suffer any injury from the incident. It was a back suplex that was actually pretty standardly performed, Orton just landed by rolling on his shoulder then freaked out (much like he did to Kofi this past week). He allegedly complained backstage that Kennedy dropped him on his head, which is clearly false. Nevertheless, Kennedy was released. Speaking of Orton and injuries though, remember when he "got into a motorcycle accident" and "broke his collarbone" while getting his tattoo sleeves done? I seem to recall something shady going on there.

I can't believe they stuck him with a Stuttering gimmick when they were trying to "push" him. And Burke cold have been huge. The whole New Breed storyline would have been great if they manage to keep it going properly. What's with all the Kennedy hate? 1. He was in NWA: TNA as Kamikaze Ken. 2. He was Mr. Anderson *before* he was Mr. Kennedy, in that same gimmick. 3. He's a blond guy, so he's a Holly? Awesome logic. 4. He's going to break AJ's neck? Sure, like the long list of others he's injured.... Oh wait! Cena injured himself, Orton wasn't injured at all. Holly and Benjamin specifically broke script and injured Kennedy. So I have high hopes for Mr. Anderson in TNA. Much like Christian's defecture made me watch TNA back in November 2005, this will keep my eyes on TNA now, along with Pope, Wolfe and the MCMGs (Shelley was who I 'discovered' last time around).

Who did Vickie ever take to the top? Edge and Big Show were already well established in the Main Event. Chavo, Neely, Hawkins & Ryder never got anywhere near the top because of her. As for feuding, The Undertaker is about as high up as you can get, and Vickie didn't do anything for him. Maybe I've missed some amazing feud where Vickie elevated someone from midcard to main event, but I've never seen her as having any associative value.

Ed Leslie! Remember, this is Hogan talking. Yeah, three of the matchups are the same as the 1/4 show. At least they'll get more than 4 monutes this time!

On pure name alone, as soon as I heard people talking about "The Young Bucks" I shuddered. Awful name. Completely generic, limited time potential (not gonna be young forever), just no value to it at all. "Generation Me" isn't a WHOLE lot better, but it definitely is better. Their individual names being changed slightly, and still sounding like "Matt" and "Jeff" is troublesome - couldn't they go the Major Bros / Ryder & Hawkins route?

I have no idea who Reon Mahima is, or how he got into FCW... I don't think I've seen him in any of the NZ promotions before.

I just read that Hogan had no idea that the TNA ring had six sides, and said "well doesn't that leave a whole bunch of exposed turnbuckles if you only have 12 pads?" Yeah.... Oh Wait! I don't believe everything I read. Like that guy who "scooped" us all about Hardy, when Dixie had already announced his appearance via Twitter. Anywho, having finally seen the show via torrent since it doesn't get broadcast here... Steel Asylum was a pile of crap. No sense at all, most of the moves you couldn't even tell who was doing what to who as they were all so contrived and assisted. Amazing Red really seems to suck bad. As has been said, all the Hogan promos were awful. So he wants to put over that he's not going back to the old ways, and he's gonna push the young guys? A better way of doing that would be... Not having the old guys on at all, and actually featuring the young guys! ODB tries way too hard on her gimmick, it's akin to the cheesey BS New Zealand wrestling we have on at the moment from KPW. Other than that, very impressed with the Knockouts. Confused as to what The Beautiful People's gimmick is though, how self-aware are they? They seem to be going in and out of character at whim. Glad to see Burke find his "time to shine!" finally. McMahon really should have followed through with him after announcing him as the future on ECW. Wolfe is pretty awesome, too bad these guys didn't get more time. Is it just me, or did Foley say "here's a video package for Dixie and Hulk", stare into the camera, and then NOTHING played? Then he just continues to try and get in the building. Very anticlimatic and not dramatic at all, all of the "trying to get in" and "oh no, someone's been taken out!" crap. Bubba the Love Sponge is an idiot too. I don't like Borash, but I like this guy even less. In general, why even feature matches that go for only a minute or two, on a THREE HOUR SHOW? For a company that claims, and fans that chant "this is wrestling", there was very little wrestling to be seen. Oh, and did anyone notice that sign "TNA - The New Era"? Yeah, nice acronym dude!

I could have sworn it was January 1999, when Foley won the World Title, that WCW's 83 Week Ratings streak ended. A little over a year after Starrcade 97.

When you go back and watch some of Hart's old promos in WWF, it's pretty crazy to hear all the S bombs. Compare that to say, even Smackdown! in 2005, where they say "ass" a lot, but bleep it.

It's hardly the first time Flair has "retired" and come back. He had a whole hour of Nitro dedicated to his return from retirement in 1998/99 leading into the formation of the Horsemen team with Benoit, Malenko and Steve McMichael.

Never mind that Jeff already went to TNA for three years, and WWE welcomed him back, and gave him a lot of Main Event exposure / Title runs?

How do they deal with WMXX to Vengeance 2004 on the DVD?

Apparently you have no concept for what an internet message board is. Good luck with that. Speaking of which, bad idea to have him stand next to Drew for that segment. McIntyre is the bigger, tanner guy with IMO the better and more legitimate look. How sad. You really don't know the difference between Push and Draw. You not liking Warrior is proof that they can PUSH whoever they want, but they won't necessarily DRAW. Drawing is the part where they... wait for it... Draw viewers in, bring fans to the show, the arena, and especially the PPVs. They draw money. Warrior did not do this, despite their VERY best efforts to push him. Yeah, he didn't spend all of 2008 with or around the title, feuding with Orton, Cena, Khali, Edge, Kozlov, Hardy... His 2009 Title feud with Orton wasn't 6 months long... Triple H knows exactly how to stay out of the Title picture.

What Tristram forgot to mention is that we had WCW on a 6 month delay! You could get PPVs at the video store well in advance of what you could see on TV. And Nitro usually started at like 11pm. Raw was on a channel that most of the country couldn't even get. I got into wrestling through the games mostly. I started catching the programming later on, went back and got some old tapes, etc.

Hogan, Nash, Flair, Sting, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sid Vicious (Raven, Daffney, Jarrett)... Really? Why on earth would TNA go for this? I could have sworn they were supposed to be "edgy" and "alternative" for a "new generation". This truly is nothing more than WCW 10 years ago. AJ's got a title reign that might last more than a few weeks now, after how many years since he was supposedly their #1 guy? How long before another old timer takes his place and he's forgotten about again?

Also, "The Ego has Landed" was the name of an album by Robbie Williams - basically combining "Life Thru a Lens" and "I've Been Expecting You" in order to breach foreign (non-UK) markets. Ellie-May was the name of the daughter in The Beverly Hillbillies, so it's drawing from two old TV shows.

Haha, what's on the board, Miss Ford? Yep, part of my list on page 1

Since this has been at the forefront of my mind these days - Agent 69 was the original name of Get Smart's Agent 99 before the censors had their say back in the 60s... Coincidence?

And a video game from the 80s...

Haha! Awesome stuff. Was I right about Sara Silver = Sarah Silverman and Markus Rush = Marcus Lush? They both have potential to be off but to me they ade sense. While I'm thinking of NZ personalities, it'd be cool if there were a couple of workers called say, Simon Gunn and Jason Barnett in the next expansion/iteration of the C-Verse... Or Suzanne Parker and her huge imported bodyguard Anthony Ray Paul.