WTF TNA part II

Before I get into this let me just say that Ring of Honor is the best wrestling promotion going today and they are losing their TV deal in April. With that being said...


Total Nonstop Action wrestling is the most upsetting thing in the world. Literally. There is nothing more upsetting to me in the world of wrestling than the current state of TNA. And it’s upsetting for a few reasons, I’ll touch base briefly on a few of them and then go into detail on the more pertinent ones. A little over a year ago Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff “took over” TNA creatively. They took away the trademarked 6 sided ring, inflated the roster with WWE and WCW rejects, and made us all feel like we were in the sinking ship that was WCW 10 years ago. But as the year progressed we had our shares of ups and downs. The ups seemed a bit more logical than the downs, Hogan axed good friends Bubba the Love Sponge and Brian Knobbs & Jerry Sags (The Nasty Boys) among others. We also saw the departure of Scott Hall, Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, Sean “Val Venis” Morely, Shane Douglas, and a slew of others culminating in the departure of Kevin Nash, a wrestler that many fans and critics wanted out of TNA years before he finally decided to leave. The downs were also present,, but forgivable, an attempted ECW reunion that ended up in a half-assed stable of washed up veterans, losing great talent like Christopher Daniels, Homicide, Awesome Kong, ODB, Consequences Creed, Petey Williams, Sojay Dutt and arguably Sting. So at the end of the day, TNA did beef up their roster with WWE rejects and did push a small handful notably the obvious Jeff Hardy, Ken “Mr. Kennedy” Anderson, and the Fairfield CT native Matt “The Blueprint” Morgan. But they weren’t trashy rejects, they were deserving rejects. But the roster problem is one that has plagued TNA for years, it’s really not the roster, it’s how they use it.

And in 2010 we saw TNA make the strangest and most unnecessary alliances in TNA history. One extremely logical and amazing stable formed was Fortune, headed by the legendary Ric Flair and featuring four TNA breakout stars in AJ Styles, Frankie Kazarian, and Beer Money Inc. Robert Roode and James Storm. The group was phenomenal (pun intended) and then they started adding other guys to beef up the ranks. Morgan was in there for a bit, as was the incredibly underutilized Douglas Williams. They are both good performers, but they don’t need Fortune, and the Fortune certainly didn’t need them. Then....on the overhyped 10-10-10 we saw the tides change. A new stable formed that Hogan and Bischoff thought would be like the nWo, a “cool” group of heels that everyone wanted to like. So who do they make it up with? Hogan, Bischoff, the out of shape and never over enough Abyss, Jeff Hardy, Jeff Jarrett AND the entirety of Fortune? Aside from Hardy, none of this absurd stable, called Immortal, was shocking or cool. And from October to last month the stable ran the place, capturing all of the titles in the process (though losing the heavyweight title to Mr. Anderson in the end). However, during that time Hardy got over as a heel (most notably walking down to the ring puffing a cigarette) and Jarrett reinvigorated his career with his MMA spoofing Double J Double M A tournaments, but the rest of the group kind of floundered. The tag titles were an easy win for Beer Money, the X title in Kazarian’s hands was almost a waste, as the X title has been as of late. TNA’s breakout star AJ Styles had no real push, Abyss won the Legends title (that title still exists?) and we were treated to boring TV. Great. Not a surprise. At all.

So then the Amazing Red’s kayfabe brother Crimson comes in telling tales of another “they” coming. He speaks of a group that will put Immortal in their places and restore peace to TNA. And then Kurt Angle brings in Scott Steiner. And we start seeing hints of the return of the Main Event Mafia. Okay where do you start here? Where does one begin to criticize this? Because Immortal is so stagnant and it’s clear they’re being carried by Flair’s Fortune, they want to bring in a group of wrestlers that was never over that tout a youngest member who is 42 and an oldest member who is 51? The entirety of Fortune is 35 and under (sans the manager of Flair) and most of the members of the rest of Immortal are in feuds. How could a feud be believably booked where a bunch of retirees face a bunch of peak wrestlers who are widely considered some of the best in the game? And why would I waste my time watching a retuning Kevin Nash, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sting and Kurt Angle wrestle Jeff Jarrett, Jeff Hardy and Abyss AGAIN. Who will the crowd get behind? The talented young guys? The overbooked guys? Or the old veterans? Clearly Fortune was the group to highlight and make babyfaces in this instance...but not according to their plan.

And what is perhaps the best part of this plan on TNA’s side is that after teasing the Mafia return, even putting a video together showing the group, they didn’t sign Sting, Booker and Nash to contracts! So when the WWE beefed up their Royal Rumble to 40 stars and wanted a few guys to get nostalgia pops, who would they go for? Kevin Nash and Booker T. So now TNA has re-signed Scott Steiner, booked a major angle, and then lost it all in the blink of an eye because of bad negotiations. The second that idea popped into their heads they should have had Booker, Nash and Sting in Orlando signing papers to ensure it would happen properly. Instead they assumed that these guys would want to wrestle in front of the rabid and unforgiving Impact Zone crowd for another several months, and then hang up their boots and call it a career. Little did they know that Booker and Nash had greater aspirations. So what does TNA do? After making a hype video for the MEM’s return they literally tell you “Anything is possible” and swerve Fortune to be faces. Great. In fact that is fantastic. That means that AJ Styles will go back to being a main event player and Flair can be the man again without Bischoff and Hogan on his side. But at what cost is this good news? TNA looks completely unprofessional, poorly booked, and entirely unbelievable. I am glad Fortune are the good guys, and I am glad that the members will not have to share the spotlight with Abyss and Jeff Jarrett, but I am completely offended as a viewer and as a one time super fan.

So what does the future hold for this company of fools (on the booking and writing side, not in the ring)? Well they have to do something really good to clean up this huge mistake. Turning Fortune face is a good move. But now that we have Scott Steiner under contract does that mean we have to be subjected to his god awful matches? And are Angle and Steiner part of Fortune now? I don’t know. TNA has unlimited potential and perhaps the best roster in the business but these mistakes they keep making are what is making them lose fans that at one time would do anything for them (myself included, I was on a street team for a little while). It is a common and upsetting question, but once again I find myself asking WTF TNA

TNA Critique 1/5

Okay before I start let me say something. Some people smoke cigarettes, some people drink, some people do drugs…I watch professional wrestling. It’s one of those things my parents go, “You’re still doing that?” when they see me watching, and it’s something I’ve tried to drop in every way, replace it with something else, go cold turkey, but at the end of the day I’m still a fan. It’s not like I’m a child who believes it’s all real, nor do I idolize any of these wrestlers, I just appreciate it as a form of entertainment. I think it’s a very interesting style of entertainment, that given the physical limitations of how it can pay off for fans, is blessed to have lasted this long.



And if there is one thing that I think wrestling fans and non-fans can agree upon it’s that a lot of the stuff that’s put on TV, especially with the biggest company, World Wrestling Entertainment, is stupid. Most of it has been done before in some shape or form, so as a fan that actually wanted to see something original, I spent a few years in the early 00’s trying to find an alternative. And then, like magic, I found one. An indie promotion that was quickly making it’s way up the ranks, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. It was owned by ex-WWF Intercontinental Champion Jeff Jarrett, and it featured a lot of guys I loved that had been given the axe by the WWE over the years. So as soon as they got a cable deal on Spike TV, I tuned in every week to see what was up, and for the first couple of years what they were giving me was awesome. We had new and original characters, fantastic matches and good booking. I mean it all seemed perfect, but slowly, as TNA grew as a company, it started to do something that any company looking to make a profit does; it started to sell out. Jarrett started bringing in “names,” or older wrestlers who at one point had a name for themselves, but as they aged well into their 40’s lost it for the obvious reason that they couldn’t keep up with the young guns who had been tearing down the roof since TNA’s birth. Guys like “Big Poppa Pump” Scott Steiner, whose arms are so grotesquely huge, they make my Christmas ham look like kitchen scraps, and Kevin “Big Sexy” Nash, whose ankles were as brittle as a twig were consuming more television time than some of TNA’s originals, some of whom have been more or less driven from the company due to these politics.


"We've all become members of the AARP!"

Now, I’m not saying the entire place is run by 40-50 year old wash ups, I mean there are a handful of 40+ wrestlers in TNA that can definitely hold their own among the young guys, people like Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle, Booker T, and the biggest name never to sign with Vince McMahon, Sting. But over the past few years, TNA has dropped the ball so many times that as a fan, I feel betrayed. I feel like I watched them grow from nothing to something over a period of a few years and now that they have lukewarm ratings and a slowly growing fan base, they have merely taken the easy route rather than continue to put out innovative matches with fascinating storylines.

So, as a fan, I’m going to write five pieces, this being the first, on the state of Total Nonstop Action wrestling and the product they are making. The five topics will be as follows:
1) Match Gimmicks- How they went from giving the fans new and cool ideas, to repeating the same old stuff over and over just to try and be different.
2) The Knockout Division- TNA has attempted to re-vitalize women’s wrestling by starting a “Knockout” division that showcases women’s wrestling as opposed to the WWE, whose women’s roster is made up of 90% pretty blondes.
3) The X-Division- Perhaps TNA’s biggest asset, high risk matches, high risk performers, and probably the most potential in the world.
4) The Tag Teams- Tag Team wrestling is an art that many, including the WWE, have seemingly forgotten how to utilize. TNA is far from perfect too.
5) The Main Event- What people pay for, the main event wrestlers are expected to perform better, but do they?

So without any further ado, I shall start.

TNA Critique #1: Match Gimmicks

If you ask anybody if they remember Mankind being thrown off the top of the Hell in a Cell some ten years ago, they’ll probably have at least heard of the incident, if not seen it. That was an epic moment in the pro wrestling world, and it can mainly be attributed to the fact that the gimmick match, the Hell in a Cell, was in place. If it weren’t for those steel walls, there would be no elevation, no fun added to the match, it’d just be an ordinary match. And TNA has been attempting to create their own gimmicks, and some have failed and some have succeeded. Let’s take a look.

There’s the Ultimate X match, a match in which two wires are suspended from two ring posts (oh did I mention the ring in TNA is six sided?) and competitors have to shimmy across the wire to a giant red X at the crossing of the two wires. It’s cool and original, and there is the Ultimate X’s cousin the Elevation X, a match in which instead of wire above the ring there is a small scaffold, and the match ends when someone takes a dive from the scaffolding. A good match idea in theory, but we all know how it’s going to end, no way to really surprise the fans. There’s also the Terrordome, which took a new name, but because I haven’t been following so much, I don’t know what it is. Escape match maybe? This is a really cool match that has yet to be truly milked. The ring is surrounded by a cage and a dome is placed on top with a small opening. The goal, like a classic cage match, is to escape the cage from the small hole in the dome. A very cool concept, but the match has been booked as a 8+ man battle royale, which completely takes away any intimacy the match can offer, just to give a spot fest for rabid fans (definition of a spot fest-a match which is filled with big flashy moves to wow the fans quickly). It is a great take on the cage match, it just needs to be utilized better. But TNA focuses more on Ultimate X and the their two big retrieval type matches than this, so I wouldn’t be surprised to either see the Terrordome disappear, or continue to be booked disastrously.


How "fake" is that?

The two retrieval matches that TNA has prided itself in, aside from Ultimate X, which really is their child, are the King of the Mountain match and the Feast or Fired battle royale. Bad concept first. Feast or Fired; this match is booked as a battle royale in which four briefcases hang from four of the six corners of the ring, three briefcases contain title shots and one contains a pink slip, firing the superstar who gets it. While this is an interesting concept, poor booking has ultimately yielded the results of it to be lackluster and unworthy performers won cases while deserving ones were fired in order to bring in new gimmicks (definition in the wrestling world of gimmicks- characters, usually predictable one trick pony people that make an easy few dollars before fizzling out and losing their popularity). I haven’t really been satisfied with the way that Feast or Fired has worked in the two years it’s been in tact. From the booking of the match to the culmination of each case being cashed in, there has never been a great moment provided by Feast or Fired. And then there is the King of the Mountain, the heavyweight division’s Ultimate X. This match is a very interesting twist on the classic ladder match, while historically in ladder matches the object is to retrieve a belt from hanging above the ring, in this match the goal is to take the belt from the ground and hang it above the ring. It sounds corny, but I’ve watched a few of these matches and they are really cool to see.


Ouch

So these are gimmick matches, easy overs on the crowd that boost buyrates on Pay-Per-View’s. But I don’t have problems with those, right? Well first let me say that I think relying on so many gimmicks is sad. WWE has a few gimmick matches every year, the Elimination Chamber, the Royal Rumble (which may be the best gimmick ever to exist), the Survivor Series 10-man tag team matches, and a few cage, ladder, and cell matches thrown in. These gimmick matches are hardly spot fests, and they are seen as classics in the company. A year without one of these matches would be disappointing to fans. In TNA, aside from Ultimate X and King of the Mountain, there really is no great match to look forward to, since these other gimmicks either suck, or are too predictable to enjoy. It is impressive that TNA has built up a repertoire of original match types, but with a six sided ring, matches already have an interesting feel that no other company can deliver.

And TNA not only has too many gimmick matches, but they have a gimmick Pay-Per-View, called Lockdown, in which all the matches are battled in a cage. So they take a gimmick I find to be entirely played out, and spend 3-4 hours of my time trying to make forget that I’ve seen it too many times. While I’m not saying that the Lockdown matches are bad, it’s just unoriginal, and I wish that there were better things they would be spending their time and talent on.

But all grand gimmicks aside, TNA has a huge problem with overbooking basic gimmick matches on their weekly Impact program. A night without gimmicks would basically consist of a series of single matches, and maybe one tag team match and one women’s match. TNA can’t do that. They have to overhaul the fans with 6-8 man tag team matches, inter-gender tag team matches, and handicapped matches, in which two men will take on one man, or three men will take on two, etc.. The fact that there are so many gimmick matches on their weekly show means they are shying away from raw matches that got them their fans in an effort to bring in people that want to see more interesting matches. They are appealing to those with low attention spans, who think that singles matches are boring, when in actuality these gimmicks are what are boring me and many other loyal fans the most. Here is my dream Impact, I’ll be generous and give it six matches. Tell me if this is overly gimmicky.

Match 1: Singles match, #1 Contender for the X-Title
Chris Sabin vs. Sonjay Dutt

Match 2: Singles match
Matt Morgan vs. Kip James

Match 3: Tag Team Title Match
Robert Roode and James Storm vs. Scott Steiner and Booker T

Match 4: Knockout Match
Angelina Love vs. Sojourner Bolt

Match 5: Number one contender for the TNA title
A.J. Styles vs. Abyss

Match 6: Main Event
Kurt Angle vs. Rhino

And that is a weak card. That is just the bottom of the barrel for what they can do, and I even put wrestlers I don’t think are that great, just to prove that it’s possible to accommodate these older names. But TNA has stacked these Impact episodes where there are multiple handicapped matches, and several no DQ, weapons matches and other such gimmicks to try and increase their ratings.


TOO MANY PEOPLE!

So the bottom line is this. On the pay-per-view’s, don’t worry so much. Don’t throw battle royals just to put Wrestler X on the bill and have him deliver one huge spot before disappearing into the abyss of the rest of your roster. Develop these great gimmicks in Ultimate X and King of the Mountain to the level in which they are talked about all year until they return, and why not throw a surprise one onto an episode of Impact, like then WWF did with their classic TLC match on Smackdown, a match I’ll never forget. And on Impact, less is more. Stop booking weak matches with a little asterisk just to attempt to draw in fans, it’s clearly not working. Stick to the basics and all can be well.

Thank you for reading this, leave comments if you want.

My critique of the Office

SPOILER WARNING: The following piece contains spoilers regarding the current season of NBC’s The Office.

Let me begin by saying I am a lover of comedy, I can enjoy the humor of Frasier one moment, and mere hours later get a good chuckle out of MTV’s Jackass. I like to think of comedy as a spectrum, each television show, movie, blog, article, sketch bit and stand-up a separate blip on that spectrum. While many blips may appear similar, the point of the matter is that comedy in itself is diverse, and rarely is there one piece of comedy that unites fans in the entire spectrum.

And then along came the Office, a re-make of the British series pioneered by comedy mastermind Ricky Gervais. The first season was a mere six episodes that introduced the world to the employees of Dunder Miflin paper company, I could scroll through the characters and give them each one line biographies, but since most of you have watched the show I will spare you the trouble of reading something like that. The first two seasons were classic, they had elements of slapstick, parody, wit and a whole load of great characters to bat. And the drama, it was so tense, we all were so curious as to what would happen with Jim and Pam and Roy. And Michael kissing Jan! That was so intense! Season three was no failure either, as the first half of the season, split between Jim’s transfer in lovely Stamford, Connecticut, and the usual antics of Scranton. We were introduced to the angry Andy Bernard and the attractive and sharp witted Karen Fillipelli. All seemed well, and once the Stamford and Scranton branch merged, the comedy and the drama remained constant. The love triangle warped, and we got some great comedic chemistry from Dwight and Andy, kudos to Rainn Wilson and Ed Helms. But then came Season 4…the writers strike season.


I truly am a douchebag.

The first big bang of the season was the removal of Karen. Rather than keep her in the mix to add some tension to Jim and Pam having a public relationship, they merely wrote her off, saying she couldn’t stand to work around Jim anymore. They could’ve filmed a little vignette about it, but nope, just a talking head of Jim. Putting Ryan as Michael’s superior seemed destined for laughs, but it flopped miserably, peaking in an episode where Michael, Dwight and Ryan go clubbing and Dwight hooks up with a college volleyball player. Another season low to me was the episode “Dinner Party” in which Michael and Jan invite over Jim, Pam, Andy and Angela for dinner just to have the night implode. While skeptics of the season praised this as one of the greater episodes, introducing Dwight into the mix with a homeless woman was so completely ridiculous that it negated any other memorable piece of entertainment from the episode. What made the first three seasons classic was their believability, while the antics of Dunder Miflin were a bit off the wall, they could be happening somewhere. But season 4 really pushed that concept to the very limit. I mean would Michael really drive his car into a pond just to prove that machines are flawed? And would he live in the forest just to prove he was a man? That’s stupid.

However, towards the end of the season, the show seemed on a comeback, fresh back from the writers strike, the season ended on an incredibly high note. Ryan got busted for fraud and was arrested, Andy proposed to Angela, Toby left to go to Costa Rica, and the icing on the cake was Holly, played brilliantly by Amy Ryan. The character was perfect, she was cute, quirky and entirely original to the series, and the chemistry between her and Michael was just so entertaining. It looked as if instead of falling back into the classic mold of seasons 1-3, we were going to have the show go in a brand new terrain without two major characters of prior seasons and with one incredible new character.


"Thank you for saving our show! Please don't get written off!"

And then the season premier came on and all seemed to be so well and wait a minute. Ryan is a temp. He’s back to where he was in the beginning. Great. But the Michael/Holly relationship was so much fun to see unravel, as it seemed there was someone as zany as Micahel. If there is one thing on the Office that makes me smile it’s when they make Michael out to be a real person, like when you really feel his emotions rather than laugh at his idiocy. But a mere few episodes in what did they have to do? Pull the plug. Send Holly away and end the story as simply as that. Destroy a great sub plot that made Jim and Pam’s stale relationship feel as boring as it really has become. And who did they replace Holly with? A fresh face to add another fun dimension to a show that needs a fresh new face? Nope. It’s Toby. Great. Okay so where are we? Back to Season 2 with the Andy/Angela/Dwight love triangle replacing the Roy/Pam/Jim one. Hooray! Now this re-incarnation of the past has both ups and downs. It’s good in a sense that the writers have a canvas to paint all over and try and make new things, and it’s bad because it seems as if they have no way of really surprising us anymore. The episodes seemed pretty stagnant as far as quality was concerned. They were entertaining to a degree, but never challenging to the audience, and none were really engaging.

The one big reveal was the ending of the Andy and Angela relationship, as well as the Dwight and Angela relationship. Making Phyllis give the reveal was a great addition of depth to her character, and making everyone in the office but Andy aware of it made for a brief bit of good comedy. The culmination of these events in “The Duel” were solid both in the comedy and drama departments. The whole bit of running Dwight over was a bit crazy, but given the past season it wasn’t the lowest the show had gone. The end of that episode tore at my heart strings, and that’s another thing I love about the Office. But surely enough the most recent episode came along and now it’s as if the whole thing had never even occurred. Okay, I hate this, but the season is not over so maybe they can resurrect it. And “Prince Family Paper” on a whole was one of the most riveting episodes I’ve seen. The subplot of Michael and Dwight at the competitor was so heartwrenching that I really felt the pain Michael did as he gave the numbers to David Wallace. Things like that truly make the show stand out.

So where can the Office go from here? My advice is somewhere new, bring in someone new, and the key-the one golden rule that I think the show should follow-keep it rooted in reality. No dumb gags just to get laughs. I would like to see a bit more character development from Stanley and Creed, who have been whittled down to simple one note gimmicks. Maybe bring back Holly for an episode or two to fully complete that story, and give Darryl a prominent role, as he is easily one of the funniest people on the show. The Jim/Pam wedding is looming in the distance, so that could prove to be fun. The show is by no means bad, it’s just a bit tired and in need of re-fueling. I pray the writers are able to truly bring new life to this show that I love so much. Please writers, do it for lowly Dave Winchell.


"I am funnier than Jim, no doubt!"

So that’s all I have to say.