Will Vince McMahon still be alive? Will we have another guy in a wheelchair? Thoughts on NoC?

All World Titles, All the time.

Draft shenanigans!

Posts will be sporadic in the next two weeks as I’m on vacation and may or may not be local to watch the shows. I will put up a discussion thread for each show and we should get maclean to check in with TNA.

Enjoy the holiday!

10 Thoughts on TNA

Sorry, Daniels, I don’t have my other password at work, where I am so totally not writing about wrestling. At all.

Sorry about the two-week absence; between a brief hospital stay and my brand-new job, I’ve been distracted. All is right in the world now, so what better way to celebrate than by watching wrestling?

1- Isn’t that the best way to use BG James? A recognizable name and face, reasonably over if stale, who can be used to put over the headliner du jour? I think as TNA runs more and more shows outside of Orlando, guys like James will suddenly seem more useful, even if the uber-smart marks are sick to death of him.

2- My wife was surprised to see Daivari in a TNA ring, and I explained that he was actually a pretty decent wrestler. Her comment: “so they (WWE) brought in a wrestler to manage an actor (Hassan)? That’s Vince McMahon in a nutshell, isn’t it?” Hard to argue. By the way, this was a really fun match. More, please.

3- As a Western Canadian, it’s hard to get behind “Team International” in the X Cup. Daivari is American, and Tyson Dux is Ontarian, which is even worse. Damn you and your raging insanity, Teddy Hart, this was supposed to be your station in life.

4- It’s been said here before, but I love that TNA acknowledged Gail Kim winning the WWE Women’s Title in her first night. It *enhances* both TNA and Kim’s credibility, not vice versa. This was a really good video package on Gail, and it was nice to see Scott D’Amore and Pat “Simon Diamond” Kenney acting like normal guys for it.

5- Salinas is one of those women who on a given day either looks really good or really bad; there’s no in between with her. Tonight, she looked like a 40-year old drag queen. Just way, way, way, way, WAY too much makeup caked on there. She didn’t acquit herself too badly in the ring against Jackie, but she’s nowhere near the level of the top three faces; Gail, ODB and Tracy Brooks, and it shows.

6- Alex Kozlov’s dance and subsequent kick to Kaz’s head was, simply, brilliant. I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a fun little match. It takes a truly creative company to screw something like the X Cup up; you take 16 of the world’s best cruiserweights and tell them to go have good matches. How hard is that? Why can’t WWE, which could at the VERY least match the talent, pull something off like this every once in a while?

7- Damn, Frank Trigg really *does* look like Kurt Angle. Even more so than did/does Eric Angle. If Angle ever gets healthy again, and if Trigg is interested and takes to it (some mighty big ifs there, granted) that could be a fun tag team. Whether it’s with Trigg, or Tomko, or Tom Daniels, TNA should take a serious look; tag team wrestling could extend Angle’s career by a year or so, and his life by much longer.

8- I know we’re supposed to be sick of Team 3D, but I still dig their act. An *awesome* promo and a really good TV match. Brother Ray is the true heir to Mick Foley’s title as the hybrid hardcore/comedy performer who manages to maintain credibility in both…when he caught AJ’s boot and screamed “what are you gonna do NOW?” and then got CREAMED by the ensuing enziguiri, I laughed out loud. 3D may have been stale, but they’re by no means washed up.

9- Please tell me the Lethal/Dutt/Val saga doesn’t end with Val turning on Jay. No because I desperately want to see them together (although she would only get him more over), but because the swerve is both unnecessary and screamingly obvious. Bind and gag Russo if need be, but please don’t go there, TNA…it’s been done.

10- I wondered aloud a few weeks ago how I felt about Awesome Kong’s fan challenge, and I have decided: I don’t like it. When “fans” give Kong as much of a fight as did Gail and ODB, it just makes the “real” wrestlers look bad.

BONUS POINT: How much of a douchebag is Jesse Taylor? He must have done something truly bad to the “terrorized” women in that bar to get punted off the Ultimate Fighter finale, because the bar has been set fairly high on that show. As Forrest Griffin said, it’s hard to judge because worse things happen every day, but you get the sense Dana White was embarassed. You don’t piss Dana White off. It never goes well.

1) Vickie Guererro’s “Excuse Me” has to be the best catch phrase currently in the WWE. It makes my skin crawl and makes me want to boo her. I love it.

2) I occasionally wonder why, in a federation where they are desperate to get some babyfaces over why they refuse to move John Morrison above the mid-card. It seems like he has a good look and he’s a full-on WWE property. It seems like everything they would love in a top level face.

3) I hate watching Tommy be a jobber. I die a little inside each time it happens.
Continue reading ‘10 Thoughts on Smackdown - 06.13.08′

1) Vince got Rickrolled! How funny would it be if Vince, completely unfamiliar with ringback tones (which are pretty much the scourge of the universe, btw) just hung up on the guy and went to the next number? I would have laughed for a good 20 minutes.

2) Ugh, we’re two segments in and these constant money segments are really pulling down the show.

3) Hey just what a third boring segment needed. A Mae Young spot! This would be one of those Raws that I would be really, really angry if I went to.
Continue reading ‘10 Thoughts On Raw - 06.09.2008′

I guess there’s a TNA PPV on Sunday so obviously the last post on here before then should be about Smackdown. Credit to me for actually remembering to tape it. It’s also been a whole week since One Night Stand, so I’m going to pass on commenting about it. I guess we’ll just say that I thought it was a good PPV and I didn’t hate traveling to watch it.

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1) See, when Edge brags about ending the Undertaker’s career, that’s OK. The problem is the announcers and production team selling it. Just stop it. Besides the fact, how did the Undertaker not try to get the match turned into Tables, Ladders, and Caskets? Just saying, wouldn’t that have been cooler? I’m not sure exactly how the finish of that type of match would work, but it would have been cool to say.

2) Edge and Vicky are planning their wedding for the July 11th Smackdown. So, are we penciling in the Undertaker’s shocking return for that evening? Put another ruined wedding on his resume?

3) Am I the first one to call Palumbo “American Slashass”? I certainly hope so. It’s amazing that of the four interchangeable tag guys who came over from WCW that they managed to save the one guy who I really couldn’t care less about. He wasn’t even the best character out of the four.
Continue reading ‘10 Thoughts On Smackdown - 06.06.2008′

The site is very, very slow now. I’m not sure what’s going on. I know that some spambot has found us and dumped about 1,200 comments into the spam queue over the last two days. I’ll keep you all posted.

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1) I guess Big Show’s face stitches were a little more serious than we thought as they had to throw out the results of the PPV and go with a Fatal Four Way with the winner to face Kane tonight.

2) Adamle is growing on me after PPV skit with Cena. “I’m goin down to TJ with my old buddy Gemini from Gladiator.” He still seemed completely over-matched trying to call the finish of the Fatal Four Way… trying to call finisher after finisher after finisher. I think the pace is still a bit quick for him but for the first time tonight I started to get the idea that he’ll pick it up eventually.

3) Teddy Long invited Matt Hardy over from Smackdown to take on Armando. Widro’s right… Smackdown is scrubtastic.
Continue reading ‘10 Thoughts on ECW - 06.03.2008′

As was mentioned previously, there was a fire in the data center housing TWB’s server over the weekend. My Smackdown column got eaten so I probably won’t repost that but I’ll catch up on something regarding One Night Stand soon. As was noted, the reason Pulse and TWB don’t go down together anymore is because the performance issues on Pulse finally made us split Pulse off on to its own machine. The machine that TWB is on now only hosts Pulse’s media (images and podcasts and such).

That said, the site will probably be down again around 11pm - 11:30pm tonight so I can re-upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.1.

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1) I still don’t really like John Cena… at all… but he needs to be the champion, not Triple H. Triple H is the San Antonio Spurs of the WWE. He’s old, boring, and no one really wants to see him as champion anymore. As I said last week, he’s one of the least egregious examples of nepotism in wrestling history but it doesn’t make his matches any more exciting. That said, I’d be pretty happy with a four-week Hardy/Cena program leading to Cena’s win at Night of Champions.

2) I keep waiting for Paul Birchill to not be boring… it doesn’t seem to be happening.

3) Is it just me or does the WWE seem to be employing a huge number of countout finishes lately? I guess it makes sense when you need a non-finish and it’s better to mix in count-outs than constant DQs, but it seems weird now that they went so long never using them. Embrace the heelishness Chris… just do it.

4) Wouldn’t it be amusing if Jericho held the IC belt for like a year and started pretending it was bigger than the World Title? I mean, if any guy could pull it off, it’d be him. They could offer him world title shots and he could turn them down saying that he already had the premiere belt in this business. I have no idea if that would make him a heel or a face, but it’d be damn funny.

5) OK, stupid little things like the million dollars getting its own entrance music are one of the myriad of little details that makes the WWE a million times better than TNA. I’m not greedy. I’d take $40k to pay off my student loans. If they’re real generous I’d take $100k to pay off my student loans, mortgage, and leftover credit card debt.

6) The Orton and Batista meeting on ONS last night sparked a lot of talk around the IP office about the awesomeness of a faction including Orton, Batista, Rhodes, Dibiase Jr, and (maybe) Smith. Even more awesome would be the storyline that would eventually see Batista ejected from the later-generation superstars. You could even give them the name “Evolution” and have Orton and Batista talk about how Evolution is an ongoing process and stuff.

7) The WWE needs to have a training course for all new and upcoming stars about not speaking with lots of pauses in their speech. Dibiase Jr hasn’t learned yet and it defeats the WHAT morons.

8) Could they please stop selling the Undertaker’s retirement match as a permanent retirement? Please. It’s insulting. The only difference this year between every other year when he goes on summer vacation is that he’s not “dead” this time. Can we stop pretending that he won’t start “haunting” Edge, who will then demand that Vicki re-instate him, in time for Survivor Series or Summerslam?

9) I will never understand spectators who want to jump into the ring. I mean, first of all, they operate on a delay so you never, ever manage to get on televsion. Secondly, you generally get your ass kicked by WWE security or one of the referees (I remember Dave Hebner locking in a guillotine at one point) and you most likely get arrested for some ridiculous thing that we’ve never heard of (like “Interfering with a show” or something). On top of all that, in the YouTube age, it’s very likely that a video of you getting your sh*t ruined will end up on the Internet for all to see. It seems like an awful silly way to spend a night in jail. At least try to steal the money or something.

10) Great finish. Hardy crossbody into a Cena roll-through into Cena picking up hardy and turning it into an F.U. Probably the right winner. I have no idea what they’re going to do with Jeff for the next few months… which probably means they don’t either.

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I’ll be back later tonight with some One Night Stand thoughts while watching to see what part of Pedro Martinez’s body falls off later.