lazorbeak

Maybe it's all the Mad Men I've been watching but Paul London is working the Don Draper look. TNA needs to bring him in as a constantly smoking, liquor drinking, suit-wearing bad-ass who gives fiery speeches that make no sense. God if TNA did that they could give Brooke the knockout championship and I'd still think they were the best thing ever.

Yes there was a bunch of build-up about how Hulk is too old, Hulk can't do it any more, etc....... And then Hulk went out and had the same tag team match he's been having since 1987. If that is the only story he can tell in the ring, don't even bother putting him in the ring. To actually see a Hogan that needed saving, a Hogan that couldn't keep fighting would've been huge because not only would it fit in with the story they've been telling us it would be something the audience hasn't seen a million times before. One of the best things about the Monday Night War is you would regularly see things you had never seen before. There was a few bright spots of that from TNA but a lot of it is just nostalgia.

Watching Impact now, first time I've done it in about a month, but I'm curious to see if things have improved. I'd say yes and no. The Good: The Sting turn is a positive, probably one of the two best parts of the show, because unlike about 90% of this, it's not a re-hash or a worked shoot or an excuse for 60 year old men to try to sell. Everybody has said Sting as a heel won't work, but feud him with RVD and anybody can be a heel. Steve Austin himself can work heel with RVD. Keep Sting away from Flair and give him a program with Abyss or something, but I like the guy and I have no problem with him as a heel. Angle/Kennedy confrontation: simple, old-school storytelling, with Angle as the "changed man" and Anderson as the jerkass who doesn't respect anybody. Very good stuff. Also in the net positive is the Beautiful People's win. The Knockouts are one of the biggest draws when it comes to TV, so I don't know what jesterx is talking about, and the tag belts seem tailor (not Taylor) made for them. The Bad: It's a shame that there wasn't better/more wrestling so we could get the never-ending Hogan-drama, and it doesn't hurt that so many of the best workers were left off the show entirely or appeared for about 1 minute (Pope and Wolfe). The Beer Money heel turn is pretty stupid, but both guys are good heels, and maybe we'll actually get some tag team wrestling out of it. TNA has one of the best tag divisions in wrestling, not that you'd ever know it from this show. TNA living in the distant past: beyond the fact that Abyss is not a great worker, the program with him and Styles is not too bad. But TNA is still booking like it's 1998. Way too much of the main event was Hogan/Flair (it would've been a bigger deal if we only saw them in the ring for part of the match or if Hogan could actually sell that he wasn't 100%), and beyond that we got the Band featuring 3 men who would be retired or on worker's comp in most professions and Eric freaking Young (who hits the trifecta of being small, a middling worker and impossible to listen to on the mic), a worked shoot about Steve Borden and an attack which saw him taking out another guy who's only known for what he did 5+ years ago. Why aren't legit talented workers like Homicide and Hernandez, Matt Morgan, the MCMGs, etc. not on the show at all so we can have this terrible nostalgia trip? Instead of just talking about how great things were 12 years ago, give the audience something new, TNA! Raven doesn't need another flock: make somebody new a creepy, terrible music-influenced heel. The Ugly: Flair and Hogan blading. Way to make it all about you, guys. And Hogan taking an unprotected chair shot was just stupid. Brooke Hogan's acting: "to everyone else, you're the Hulkster, but to me, you're like my dad." Spike cutting off Jeff Hardy's return: whoops! Also how retarded is TNA to bring in a guy a week out from a criminal trial where he's being charged with drug trafficking? What if he's found guilty? I mean it's not like TNA has a lot of prestige so this wouldn't hurt them the way it would a large publicly traded entity, but it does make TNA look like a haven for guys who can't pass WWE's drug policies. Just incredibly stupid. Wait until AFTER the trial, TNA. Assuming he doesn't get jail time (which is a pretty huge if).

I still can't believe Morrison isn't in MitB as he seems like the perfect fit to win it this year. That said I love the slow-burn feud between Miz and Morrison and their match a few months back was very good, so their tag title match should be solid. I agree Christian's the current favorite, but I just can't buy Christian as a babyface champion. He's small, not particularly flashy, and while he has good charisma, his look has never been special. Seriously he's like Chris Jericho Jr. That said Christian vs. Edge ladder match for the title would be pretty money, even if both started off as babyfaces.

Yeah Drew has had a variation of the "Chosen One" gimmick since he debuted, so it really isn't anything new.

Jeff Hardy goes to trial next week for several drug charges next week in North Carolina, so I would be pretty shocked if TNA makes any reference to him at all.

So much bad armchair booking here. Goldberg wasn't able to follow up after his loss to Nash because he hurt himself on TV and WCW had to find some excuse to remove him. I don't care who you put over him having him lose and then disappear isn't exactly going to keep the crowd hot. Ugh, no. Flair, in the worst shape of his life, fifty years old, is going to beat Goldberg with a low blow? Why not just tell every mark in the audience to just leave? There's a reason Flair wasn't booked as an active wrestler during this time period in WCW, and the idea that a guy like him who would receive almost zero rub from ending the streak should've been the guy to do it is just a bad idea. Nash was the right choice: he got a big win out of it, have him go from tweener to heel turn, re-unite the NWO, all of that was fine. Right up until the point when they put the belt on Hogan AGAIN. Nobody wanted to see that either by that point.

While Goldberg's peak year was over ten years ago and I absolutely agree he'd serve absolutely no purpose aside from completing the transition from TNA to WCW circa 1998, it's also not true that he is no longer a big deal or that Sting fills the same role. Yes, Sting was a huge deal in 1997, but he practically disappeared after WCW outside of his yearly BFG title wins for TNA. Comparatively, Goldberg is currently on a pretty highly rated reality show, has acted in a number of TV and film roles, and was a world champion in WWE. Goldberg has done a far better job staying in the public's mind and would probably be the biggest "name" signing TNA could make. That said, TNA doesn't have room for him on the roster, he's 43 years old, and he's never been a great wrestler.

What is the point of Matt? Well he's always going to be reasonably over because he's been featured on TV for the past decade and has won every belt except for the top titles. His job is basically to make the guys WWE is high on look good. But yeah, he's incredibly bland, as a heel and as a face, and basically the only reason he has a job is his brother is/was a pretty big draw. And WWE doesn't sustain his push because he's getting old and out of shape, he's not great on the mic, not that big, etc. Seriously whose push on Smackdown should he take? Mysterio's already got the #2 babyface spot locked down and can still work, Morrison is younger, has a better look and can do more in the ring, R-Truth has abs and has gotten himself over on more than nostalgia: Hardy doesn't appear on PPV much because he's not really good enough to warrant it. That said, he has a spot on the roster as a borderline trainer and guy to get others over: it's the same reason finlay and goldust have jobs.

Wait, what? Hogan's a moron for leaking that one of the biggest free agents in wrestling not named GOOOOOOLDBEEERG is going to be on TNA television? Am I missing something here? Also Hogan didn't even 'leak' the story, he just strongly hinted it and Spike put the information in print. So yeah, Hogan should be stripped of the book because Spike TV put something up on Twitter? Seems like that's the least of his problems. Putting up a watchable program is more of a priority.

I will respond to this as soon as I get it decoded into English. When did I become designated cheerleader? I guess I have to be when dealing with troglodytes whining about how WWE is terrible and they haven't watched it in 7 years and think they understand the business because they played a videogame about it once. WWE screws up plenty of things, from not advancing stories on Raw for months to cutting Elijah Burke awhile back to completely destroying Dolph Ziggler's momentum to make Rey Mysterio look strong as he went into suspension. All mistakes that hurt business. Not to mention the big one this decade, that at a cost of 4 million dollars of his own money Vince managed to shrink the business as a whole and hurt his own company in the process for a six month storyline that was headlined by The Rock vs. Steve Austin. It's just the illogical whining BS over stupid piddling crap that bugs me.

I have to say I'm pretty entertained by heel McCool and I absolutely don't get most of the whining about her. McCool and Maryse are the only heel divas in the company that have any heat, so it's not really surprising to see them in the title pictures on their respective shows. And as far as the Piggie James thing being in bad taste, it's an angle that's getting Mickie more over than she's been in years, and actually has the babyface championing a positive body image while the heel looks like skeletor. Compare that to Molly Holly and Trish's feud where Trish made fun of Molly for having a big butt for some reason in an angle that left Molly worse off than when she started, and it's freaking Dostoevsky.

Yeah it's pretty funny but I'm not sure you'd get much out of it if you haven't seen the films like Dolemite or Shaft that it's parodying.

<p>I enjoyed Shutter Island a lot: it's well-crafted and a mind-**** in the best possible way.</p><p> </p><p> I know Up is on everybody's top movies of the year list but I found it to be probably the worst thing Pixar's done other than Cars. The montage at the opening was cloyingingly sentimental and the tone was all over the place throughout the film. Pixar's been making movies for adults disguised as kid's movies for awhile, but this was probably the worst offender in terms of some of the adult themes, but then for some reason it also had a bunch of dogs acting like dogs jokes. I know it's going to win best animated feature, but I wouldn't put it in my top 3, with Coraline, Mr. Fox, and the Princess and the Frog in front of it.</p><p> </p><p> Also I know the Book of Eli may look like the Road visually since it has the whole post-apocalyptic look, but I think it's selling the Road short to just say it's like Eli but bleaker. I don't have the same expectations from a Hughes brothers movie starring Denzel that I do from Viggo Mortenson and the director of the Proposition. I expect one to be mildly entertaining and I expect one to be legitimately good.</p><p> </p><p> Also I never saw Mumford but Jason Lee in the Incredibles and Dogma is my favorite Jason Lee.</p>

Seriously? He's the first choice of WWE's new stars to get a DVD put out, he's one of the top babyfaces on Smackdown, and he has a great look. He's probably just giving a friend a hard time.

Changing gears but staying on the general topic of the thread, I've gone back and watched some early "Attitude" era stuff starting with Montreal and I just watched Summerslam 1998. I never watched this stuff while it was happening, as I didn't give up on WCW until early 1999 when the whole Rock/Mankind feud was up against the NWO post-fingerpoke reunion. Anyway, here's some random thoughts on the period: Definitely a more high impact style, with moonsaults, back suplexes, piledrivers, and other stuff you don't see on TV. I understand why a lot of that stuff got cut, but it'd be nice to see on PPV's at least. Terry Funk doing a moonsault onto two chairs on WWF TV is pretty crazy and probably the best example of how much WWF's product at the time owed to ECW. At the same time, Austin was really innovating the current "main event" style that requires guys to go lower impact and really build a story. Obviously Austin was mostly known as a brawler but he had some underrated technical skills even after the neck injury, and his psychology was excellent. His matches with HBK, both with Dude Love, and Undertaker at Summerslam were all great. His match with Kane was decent, but not really at the same level. Despite obviously being the top guy, Austin was off TV enough that he really managed to give some of the spotlight to DX, who were pretty incredibly over. Also to anybody that didn't see The Rock becoming a big superstar, I just have to question how big of a mark you were at the time. Rock's facial expressions and ability to get the crowd hot was just unbelievable. He took a really weak elbow drop and made it a huge move as a heel! There was a discussion in the TEW 10 boards about Jeff Hardy's charisma, but for an example of bad charisma, look at WWF in 1998. Steve Blackman, Dan Severn, DOA (the Harris Brothers). A big part of that is facial expression but it's partly body expression, too. All of these guys moved like robots and never expressed any emotion, no matter what. None of them got over. Mark Henry only managed to leave his default expression when making eyes at Chyna, which I guess fueled the "Sexual Chocolate" gimmick, since there is literally nothing else he could do other than "be a big guy." Sable was ridiculously over in this time period. It's a shame none of that heat ever really went to Marc Mero, as he wasn't half-bad in the ring once he'd given up the high-flying act. Guys that could've been bigger: D'Lo Brown: good charisma, big guy, the whole European Champion thing was great for him, but he needed to adjust his move-set if he ever wanted to be a big deal. His moves were athletic but they were mostly cruiserweight-style moves, and for a guy that was about 6'3-6'4, he needed to be built as stronger. I'm really worried Kofi Kingston ends up in the same boat, because he reminds me of D'Lo a lot. Kurrgan and the Jackal: somebody brought up Cyrus in the ECW thread, and he was just great, but WWF completely missed the boat on him. He had a great monster heel in Kurrgan but because of politics or whatever Kurrgan did nothing but beat up jobbers and Jackal got his release. Kurrgan for some reason was made into a comedy babyface in some attempt to make sure he never drew any money ever. When I recognized Kurrgan in the new Sherlock Holmes I couldn't help but thing wrestling lost a guy they never even tried to push. Ken Shamrock: I know he was King of the Ring and eventually won the IC title, but he could've been a huge star for WWF. Sure he wasn't all that big or all that great on the mic, but the fans believed he was a crazy bad-ass and the reactions when he "snapped" were comparable to any pop from anyone not named Steve Austin. I can see why there's so many fans with rosy memories of this era, as it does make for pretty exciting stuff, but there is a lot of terrible stuff you'd never see on Raw today. A ten minute DOA/Legion of Doom match on Raw is just brutal. Jeff Jarrett and Jim Cornette's NWA revival was mercifully short-lived but replaced by the equally painful Double J and Tennessee Lee combination. Goldust had literally nothing to do, turned heel on Marlena to get her off TV, and by Summerslam is just doing brief spots where he's a straw man of christian values who hates WWF's content. Vader is completely wasted, but he was already halfway out the door. Bradshaw was wrestling every week but literally no one cared about him, although part of that might have been he kept a hilariously dumb mustache for a really long time. The "brawl for all" was really stupid and just as much a waste of television as the diva search, but at least it used guys actually under contract and succeeded in putting Bart Gunn over as a tough bastard. Of course, that didn't go anywhere and he was punked out by a guy that had gone 3 scripted rounds with marc mero when butterbean knocked him out in one round in a non-scripted fight. But even with the negatives, stories developed much faster then they had (or do today), and probably the most interesting thing is how little structure there was at the top. Aside from Austin and Undertaker, nobody had been WWF champion as of April 1998. HBK, Bret, Sid and Nash were all gone and there were no "proven" draws on the roster. It actually made for much better television than WCW, where Flair, Hogan, Savage, Sting, Nash, Bret and Luger were all multi-time world champions but the 1998 crowd was giving Goldberg bigger pops than any of them.

Hyde, what it means is if the crowd is cheering for the New Age Outlaws throwing Cactus Jack in a dumpster, don't try to sell the crowd that they're heels. It's not about not building up new stars or whatever, it's about recognizing what the crowd wants and giving it to them. It's what wrestling is about. Like I said in an earlier post, the babyfaces in a wrestling company reflect the ideals of the fans that cheer for them. So if your crowd is a bunch of kids and old folks who want nostalgia, TNA should start booking the Hulk Hogan/Kevin Nash title match we've all been waiting for. It's why, in the territory days, you couldn't just bring in a guy and use him as your top face. He's an outsider, someone different. It's still true today, territories or no. TNA tried to push Sean Morley as a babyface, but the crowd saw him as an outsider and Daniels as their guy.

Ugh, wasn't the bisexual OJ idea considered and rejected circa Smackdown 2005? Yup, wikipedia confirms OJ pitched the idea of him, Trinity, and some dude he knows as a bisexual angle but WWE future endeavored him. Jeez, OJ, got any other ideas besides "hey what if my gimmick was that I occasionally sleep with my bro?" Seriously I have a great gimmick for OJ: He dates a white woman and then MURDERS her. So edgy and relevant. Also he wrestles in black gloves. Then he runs over Joe in his Bronco. First, no, it's never been the job of wrestling to set trends. Ever. Wrestling has always been a pretty reactionary business. The faces always reflect the values of the fans, not the other way around. If they don't, the crowd will treat them like heels (die, rocky, die). It's a business dependent on selling what the crowd wants to pay for, not what's good for them if they'd open their minds. Second, a "gay" bad-ass just wouldn't ever work, unless the guy was so buried in the closet the fans had no idea (maybe if the promotion had a large gay audience, since faces reflect the fans). Wrestling is largely spectacle based: there are certain identifiers people see and immediately think "hey this guy is a tough bastard" and there are identifiers people see and they think "hey this guy is probably gay." The two are such a fundamental disconnect (in the average person's mind, at least) that it's basically impossible to play a character even implied to be homosexual without getting a lot of heat. See: Adrian Adonis, Goldust, Too Much, or Chuck & Billy for details. Since there's some amount of homo-eroticism in wrestling anyway, it's important for the fans to recognize a wrestler isn't gay so that they can more easily identify with them. How many times do young wrestling fans have to defend the notion that two men fresh out of the shower grappling in swimsuits is totally not homosexual? The gay wrestler makes a liar out of that kid, and the kid hates the wrestler for it. The wrestling fan already has to explain away Hogan's mustache (and yellow tights), Shawn Michaels coming out to "Sexy Boy" and posing in Playgirl, and Justin Bradshaw wearing chaps without pants. How much does it muddy the waters if one of those guys is gay? Because wrestling is market-based and so reliant on visual identifications, I don't think you're going to see a successful out of the closet babyface in a major promotion. Challenging viewer expectations is really not the job of professional wrestling. It's the job of critically acclaimed premium channel cable shows.

Pete, don't bother arguing with it: just view profile, add to ignore list, and move on. I like the move to Mondays, but I just have to wonder what TNA does differently than WWE at this point. Yes they have some great workers, but their product gets more similar to WWE by the day.

Cappy, did you not get the open letter from the guy that wears suits to every TNA taping? A dozen guys putting themselves over by chanting cute crap like "AJ's married" and flashing hand-signs for the name they gave themselves as they whine about being told what to do when they don't buy tickets, which makes the season tickets metaphor especially incorrect.

Like I said in my first post on the subject, if Dinero is eventually a main eventer, that's fine, but he hasn't actually done much of anything: he feuded with Suicide, he split a couple of matches with Desmond Wolfe. If you build him up for awhile, you give him exposure so fans actually want to see Dinero get a run with the belt. Morgan, while he may or may not be "better," makes great fodder for putting over a champion like AJ because he would likely be willing to put AJ over clean and make him look great, and has the size and natural look that AJ gains credibility as a champion when he goes over. Since he's been floating around the upper midcard since the whole Main Event Mafia thing, he has more experience and exposure in the company. Yes, this is pretty much the gist of it. I just wish TNA didn't seem to be in such a colossal hurry to get where they're going. Hogan may have been a huge jerk in the 90's, but he seemed to understand the value in building fans up for a program (Sting vs. Hogan was built up for how long and got Wrestlemania-level buyrates). Present-day Hogan seems to be in a hurry to get the guys he wants where he wants them to be.

So because some other company makes a bad decision means TNA gets to make worse decisions? Also TNA doesn't have the exposure WWE does so it's not a very good comparison anyway. I just listed alternatives: Morgan/Styles could be a pay per view main event if Angle and the other guys also have something to do. Weird that I don't talk about what other companies need to do right when talking about the subject of the thread, right?

So was this show nearly as bad as it looks on paper? Angle eliminated in the first round? The title match not going on last? The Duds and the Nastys going almost 11 minutes with the Nastys going over?!? Not sure if I like the somewhat rushed Pope push, either. If he's your guy, build him up over a few months while having AJ go over guys like Matt Morgan or Hernandez or Abyss: established babyfaces who are credible threats for a little guy like Styles. Then once both guys are built up, people will care about a title match. But as much potential as Pope has, what has he done in TNA? He had a good match with a very good wrestler in a losing effort.

A lot of the divas that work under their own names were introduced under their own names as diva search contestants or otherwise appeared as themselves first. Maria, Maryse, and Eve were brought in through the diva search, while Melina Perez's first exposure on WWE TV was through Tough Enough. For divas that come up through the indys, they do tend to re-brand them: Mickie James is probably the biggest exception where they used her real name instead of her old indy ring-name. Beth Phoenix, Katie Lea, and Jilian Hall are all indy signings that didn't keep their real names when they were brought in.

Not sure what you mean by "any reason I should have a clue"; she wasn't part of WWE prior to this if that's what you're asking. If you're asking if you should recognize her for her indy work, she was Serena Deeb in SHIMMER.