The General Wrestling Thread

[IamMedellin]

Reptar 0rton
:reptar:

[JayDizzle]

FCW Alumni match going on on RAW right now...

Everyone in "Nexus," Yoshitatsu, the Hart Dynasty in one bout.

...unfortunately, Jerry "Burger King" Lawler is fighting as well

[Cody]

Nexus is kicking some butt

[SHOGUN]

I watched Smackdown last week after a long departure and didn't like it too much, but it was good enough for me to give the WWE another go, so I decided to watch Raw and it was decent. They built the main storylines up really well.

Anonymous GM FTL. My goodness is that annoying and it is only compounded by Michael Cole, who is annoying enough by himself.

I like the Usos, and Tamina could get it.

Speaking of Tamina, why are the shitty divas in the title picture and the ones that can actually wrestle are either valets or non-factors? Alicia Fox is terrible.

Randy Orton can act the exact same way as a heel and become a HUGE face, yet Mr. Anderson has to do a full 180 and become Mr. Nice Guy with a ridiculous Asshole gimmick? TNA is so fucking stupid.

I know it's Nexus and all, but goddamn did they get rid of Yoshitatsu, Evan Bourne, and the Hart Dynasty really fast in that tag match.

I'm sick of seeing about two dozen different variations of The Codebreaker. It's fucking everywhere.

[JayDizzle]

I watched Smackdown last week after a long departure and didn't like it too much, but it was good enough for me to give the WWE another go, so I decided to watch Raw and it was decent. They built the main storylines up really well.

I like what they were doing with Kane in the show opener (the man is fucking DUE) but they ruined it after the Mysterio/Swagger #1 Contender Match.

I get that Kane and Mysterio have history that spans a few years but dammit... either have Kane put Mysterio out for a while or have them go their separate ways.

Anonymous GM FTL. My goodness is that annoying and it is only compounded by Michael Cole, who is annoying enough by himself.

It's because they aren't going to have Celebrity GMs for a while... Uncle Vince is saving money for once.

Speaking of Tamina, why are the shitty divas in the title picture and the ones that can actually wrestle are either valets or non-factors? Alicia Fox is terrible.

Dunno.

Randy Orton can act the exact same way as a heel and become a HUGE face, yet Mr. Anderson has to do a full 180 and become Mr. Nice Guy with a ridiculous Asshole gimmick? TNA is so fucking stupid.

Mr. Kennedy..............Kennedy...................... .......Kennedy.... shouldn't have tried to put Orton out when he came back last.

I know it's Nexus and all, but goddamn did they get rid of Yoshitatsu, Evan Bourne, and the Hart Dynasty really fast in that tag match.

Yoshitatsu could be looked at as the new WWE ambassador for the Japanese people seeing as Funaki split.

The other three? Bourne's lost his rub from Cena ever since Mr. Hustle, Loyalty, Respect skipped over him to get The Great Fuckin' Khali... and the Hart Dynasty is the victim of bad tag team division booking.

I'm sick of seeing about two dozen different variations of The Codebreaker. It's fucking everywhere.

Blame the indie asshole who created/stole the Lungblower and allowed it to go mainstream (fuck you Carlito) and then had Jericho/another indie asshole invert it.

[Warner2BruceTD]

Yoshitatsu will go back to All Japan twice the star he was when he left, just for spending time here. He won the WM battle royal with Inoki in attendance, and it was a big deal over there.

He'll never get a serious push, despite being one of the most talented guys on the roster. And if Vince ever finds out he legit beat the shit out of Sheamus when they were both in Florida, Sheamus's push might be done.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Ok...spoilers from a future Impact! I don't watch this shizz anymore, but I do read the spoilers, and...wtf is this shit.

Paul E. is facepalming from Brock Lesnar's ranch in Minnesota over this shit.

Tommy Dreamer calls out Raven to explain his actions last week. Dreamer asks why he attacked him last week and said that his kids call him "Uncle Scotty" and now he has to explain to them what happened. Raven says he attacked Dreamer because he's been waiting to get at Dreamer since Dreamer stole his girl and married her.

Followed by the stunning announcement...

at the PPV it will be Dreamer vs. Raven in a Final Showdown

OMG!

So...in sum...

Tommy Dreamer is living in the real world where really, he and Raven are friends, ya know, all that drama in ECW was for show...

HOWEVER...

Raven is still living in kayfabe world where his relationship with Dreamer was all a facade, so he can get back at Dreamer eventually when, 15 years later, there would be a terrible reunion show for them to wrestle at?

oh lord

Fuggin' TNA.

Truth be told, I'd probably care about this match if Tommy Dreamer didn't actually beat Raven (finally) 10 years ago. Lets say Tommy never beat Raven...I'd kind of be intrigued by it, tbh. And would be, only to see Raven beat Dreamer again...10 years later...

However, I got over any Raven-Dreamer match 10 years ago, especially a match that ends up with Dreamer beating Raven...should never happen...eva. That is called good booking.

Oh, and to top it off...


After they went off the air, they played "Enter Sandman" and all the ECW guys and Hulk Hogan had a beer bash in the ring.

Uh...what?

Are you fuggin kidding me?

W2B, you have to see the ridiculousness of it all, especially that last little scene...

oy vey.

[FedEx227]

I just read results/reviews of TNA shows, I refuse to watch them.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

Ok...spoilers from a future Impact! I don't watch this shizz anymore, but I do read the spoilers, and...wtf is this shit.

Paul E. is facepalming from Brock Lesnar's ranch in Minnesota over this shit.

Tommy Dreamer calls out Raven to explain his actions last week. Dreamer asks why he attacked him last week and said that his kids call him "Uncle Scotty" and now he has to explain to them what happened. Raven says he attacked Dreamer because he's been waiting to get at Dreamer since Dreamer stole his girl and married her.

Followed by the stunning announcement...

at the PPV it will be Dreamer vs. Raven in a Final Showdown

OMG!

So...in sum...

Tommy Dreamer is living in the real world where really, he and Raven are friends, ya know, all that drama in ECW was for show...

HOWEVER...

Raven is still living in kayfabe world where his relationship with Dreamer was all a facade, so he can get back at Dreamer eventually when, 15 years later, there would be a terrible reunion show for them to wrestle at?

oh lord

Fuggin' TNA.

Truth be told, I'd probably care about this match if Tommy Dreamer didn't actually beat Raven (finally) 10 years ago. Lets say Tommy never beat Raven...I'd kind of be intrigued by it, tbh. And would be, only to see Raven beat Dreamer again...10 years later...

However, I got over any Raven-Dreamer match 10 years ago, especially a match that ends up with Dreamer beating Raven...should never happen...eva. That is called good booking.

Oh, and to top it off...


After they went off the air, they played "Enter Sandman" and all the ECW guys and Hulk Hogan had a beer bash in the ring.

Uh...what?

Are you fuggin kidding me?

W2B, you have to see the ridiculousness of it all, especially that last little scene...

oy vey.

[SHOGUN]

Ok...spoilers from a future Impact! I don't watch this shizz anymore, but I do read the spoilers, and...wtf is this shit.

Paul E. is facepalming from Brock Lesnar's ranch in Minnesota over this shit.

Tommy Dreamer calls out Raven to explain his actions last week. Dreamer asks why he attacked him last week and said that his kids call him "Uncle Scotty" and now he has to explain to them what happened. Raven says he attacked Dreamer because he's been waiting to get at Dreamer since Dreamer stole his girl and married her.

Followed by the stunning announcement...

at the PPV it will be Dreamer vs. Raven in a Final Showdown

OMG!

So...in sum...

Tommy Dreamer is living in the real world where really, he and Raven are friends, ya know, all that drama in ECW was for show...

HOWEVER...

Raven is still living in kayfabe world where his relationship with Dreamer was all a facade, so he can get back at Dreamer eventually when, 15 years later, there would be a terrible reunion show for them to wrestle at?

oh lord

Fuggin' TNA.

Truth be told, I'd probably care about this match if Tommy Dreamer didn't actually beat Raven (finally) 10 years ago. Lets say Tommy never beat Raven...I'd kind of be intrigued by it, tbh. And would be, only to see Raven beat Dreamer again...10 years later...

However, I got over any Raven-Dreamer match 10 years ago, especially a match that ends up with Dreamer beating Raven...should never happen...eva. That is called good booking.

Oh, and to top it off...


After they went off the air, they played "Enter Sandman" and all the ECW guys and Hulk Hogan had a beer bash in the ring.

Uh...what?

Are you fuggin kidding me?

W2B, you have to see the ridiculousness of it all, especially that last little scene...

oy vey.

[JayDizzle]

I didn't know ECW still existed before the "ECW on TNN" deal...

For real though, we can all thank Dixie Carter and Co. for creating an old folks home for wrestlers way past their prime.

Addendum: Is it bad for me to have wanted Dreamer to retire before Uncle Vince made him eat hair and urinal cakes on live television?

[SHOGUN]

Random and out of order thoughts on tonight's TNA...

The best thing about TNA lately has been the MCMG/Beer Money tag matches. They've been putting on phenomenal matches the last few weeks. It almost makes it worth it to sit through so much garbage.

Raven is absolutely shot. He can barely get to the ring. I knew he wasn't the freshest chicken, but holy shit. I think Dreamer with his torn MCL could get around better. Oh yeah, an unsurprising swerve that sets up Raven/Dreamer at the PPV.

I shouldn't be excited for the Jay Lethal/Ric Flair street fight next week, but I am.

Tommy Dreamer wearing MMA gloves. Enough said.

Dreamer/Abyss was about as cringeworthy as you would expect. If this match was supposed to be a teaser of what the ECW guys have to offer then Hardcore Justice will not end well. But this would surprise no one.

Matt Morgan/Mr. Anderson has potential for a pretty good feud.

They re-branded the Global Championship to the TV Championship. Good move.

Sarita in black....

Rob Terry literally squashes Kazarian in 24 seconds. No joke. I timed it. What's funny is that the match wasn't far removed from the whole Fortune promo where they call themselves the best in the industry.

:obama:

[Nature Boy]

Spike TV issued a press release this morning announcing the full line-up for TNA's special edition of Impact on August 12, headlined by TNA World Hvt. champion Rob Van Dam vs. Abyss.

Spike and TNA are presenting the line-up as the matches that would have aired on the August 8 Hard Justice PPV before TNA changed the event to the ECW-themed Hardcore Justice PPV.

Spike's big theme for the event reads like a UFC/sporting event to sell the idea of the show being strictly matches. "Network to televise TNA Wrestling's action-packed fight card originally slated for pay-per-view," reads the headline.

"The special August 12 edition of TNA Impact will be two hours of nonstop wrestling, featuring only matches originally slated for pay-per-view," said Spike, adding that "pop culture icon" Hulk Hogan will be overseeing the event.

TNA president Dixie Carter said in the release: "The change to 'Hardcore Justice' provided TNA with the opportunity to take the original August pay-per-view card and move it to Spike TV. This will allow TNA fans a pay-per-view type experience on TNA Impact. If you’ve never seen a TNA pay-per-view event before, this is your chance to see what you've been missing."

[Nature Boy]

I saw this on twitter this afternoon. It's pretty long article so I will put spoiler tags on it.

 

To Be Determined – ECW should die, TNA is a Leech and Tommy Dreamer is a Sellout
By Raffi Shamir - August 2, 2010.

TNA will present its wecannotcalitecwsowehopethefanswillchantev2 tribute Pay Per View event, Hard(core) Justice. Now, my love/hate relationship with TNA has been well documented here in the past, but with this concept, I think that TNA has hit a new low.

My main beef with this is the whole idea of reviving ECW in the first place. I know that I’m in the minority here, and I’ll probably earn some hateful comments from the ECW diehards, but it’s time to let the corpse of this huge failure known as ECW rot in peace. The only thing that ECW had going for itself back in the nineties was a tribe of diehard vocal fans that gave ECW an image that was much bigger and better than the promotion ever was. Sure, ECW fans love to throw out names like Benoit, Jericho and Guerrero when talking about ECW, but they were never the focus of ECW. The true wrestling legacy of ECW is a bunch of garbage matches and too much blood. But ECW knew how to market itself as the bad boy rebel (Despite being secretly funded by Vince McMahon for years) to the internet wrestling community, which was only emerging in this period, and thus became a popular cult phenomenon. Just don’t forget that one of the prerequisites for something to become a cult phenomenon is that it has to fail first.

And ECW was a failure. I’ve heard some people say that “ECW failed because it was too good for the masses”, and to that I say bulls**t. Yes, good quality products do fail sometimes, and crappy things succeed. It’s the same in many fields – music, film, literature, you name it. But nothing ever fails because it’s good. Things fail due to bad management (And everyone knows ECW had tons of that), bad marketing, bad human relations and there are tons of other reasons. The fact of the matter is ECW could never reach a real audience other than its internet fan base. They had a few local TV deals (Which they had to pay for) but when they finally got a national cable deal with TNN, they could not deliver the goods. Granted, the timeslot was crappy and the network (real one, not the one that Don Callis represent) didn’t seem to believe in ECW, but ECW earned that treatment by trying to antagonize the suits as much as they could. That’s smart management; turn on the only broadcaster that actually paid money for your product.

I can go on and on about the undead ECW, but enough about them. I’m pretty sure its fans already wrote me and this column off 400 words ago. When TNA announced the Pay Per View, the face and speaker of the this group was Tommy Dreamer. Dreamer is widely considered the heart and soul of the original ECW and this might be true. But watching his promo 10 days ago made me sick. I still remember hundreds of ECW fans chanting “sellout” at wrestlers who left the company in the late nineties, but you know what? Tommy Dreamer is the biggest sellout of them all. He talked about the ECW name being bastardized and seeing his friends fired, and how he only stayed with WWE because he wanted the job security. Yes, he had to provide for his family and I can’t fault him for that, but the way he washed his hands off of everything that happens? Dreamer wasn’t just a wrestler in WWE, we kept reading about him working backstage in one capacity or the other. And when he left he got a heroes’ farewell. He finally had a real run as champion, even if this was the “bastardized” ECW championship and he was featured as one of the top faces of this brand. If it wasn’t for WWE, Dreamer would have never known what it’s like to wrestle in front of real, major sold-out arenas and he would have never received the farewell that he did. In his professional relationship with Vince McMahon both sides benefited and WWE showed Dreamer the respect that he’s earned in his years in the business. And let’s not forget that Vince McMahon actually paid Dreamer’s paycheck in the original ECW also, since if it wasn’t for him pumping money to ECW and keeping it on life support, ECW would have folded long before it did. But watching him shed those crocodile tears on Impact and encourage the guy who yelled “Vince Sucks” was just low. No one forced him to work for Vince; other wrestlers did find satisfying jobs wither in the business or outside of it. Hell, Dreamer is so old that TNA would have jumped at the opportunity to sign him and make him a main-eventer. And truth be told, if Vince hadn’t fired his ass, Dreamer would still be kissing up to him today. So excuse me if I don’t cry with Dreamer.

And just another side note about the so called “bastardization” of ECW by WWE. I think that having the EV2 (yes, that’s the name) guys show Hulk Hogan tremendous respect, with Devon even doing the gesture universally known as “We’re not worthy” is a bigger travesty to what ECW allegedly stood for. The original ECW positioned itself as the antithesis to everything that Hulk Hogan represented. But now in TNA they look up to him and Dreamer even asked Hogan for his permission to fight Abyss (Or for that matter, asking any authority figure for permission to fight someone)? That’s how you bastardize ECW, not by putting Mark Henry on it.

And then there’s TNA, the company that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. For eight years TNA has been trying to leech off the glory of other promotions. When they first started they were a poor man’s version of WCW. Then they started getting some big name wrestlers from WWE and used them to try and portray the promotion as an equal to WWE. Don’t get me wrong, if I ran a wrestling promotion and people like Christian or Kurt Angle were available I’d sign them in a heartbeat, it would have been foolish not to do so. But having them go out and trash WWE was bush league. TNA did not look like an equal or even a close second place to WWE. They looked like a minor league organization that clings to the name of the leading promotion in order to catch some of its residual heat. TNA never realized that by focusing their energy on its so called war with WWE (A war that WWE was and is wise enough not to acknowledge or tape part in), they diluted their own brand. They never tried to build themselves as TNA Wrestling and succeed on their own; they were nothing more than “the other wrestling promotion that isn’t WWE”. They repeated that same mistake with the pathetic promos that Hulk Hogan cut early this year.

But now they have taken things a step further. They actually put the TNA brand on the back burner in order to leech off whatever value the ECW brand might still have. TNA already draws a lot more viewers than ECW ever did to its weekly shows (In actual numbers, not in rating points) so they’re catering to the fringe of the wrestling world in a move that will probably will not bring any benefit to TNa in the long run. Don’t compare it to One Night Stand in 2005 – that Pay Per View did not come at the expense of any of WWE’s traditional events and the WWE brand was a big part of it, even during the confrontation between JBL and Paul Heyman. Most of the wrestlers in that event were with WWE for many years that they were already identified with WWE. In that context, their participation at ONS, actually helped the WWE brand and its wrestlers. Here TNA is putting the spotlight on wrestlers that are either coming in for a one-off paycheck or guys that are identified with other promotions. Dreamer’s promo even went a step further towards hurting TNA by mentioning that whatever TNA is doing today, ECW already did in the past. It would have been one thing if he said that TNA wrestlers are the successors or the new generation of the ECW veterans. Instead he said “Long Before Samoa Joe, there was Taz”, and the same about the Beautiful People and Beulah/Francine. It’s like saying that the TNA stars are knockoffs of ECW people. He then went on to say that TNA is like ECW in the sense that this is where stars are made and veterans came to help create new stars. If that were true, then how come only four of the TNA champions since 2002 are TNA originals and the others were people who made their name in other promotions? It’s another example of TNA leeching off others – they have one of the most talented roster that any wrestling promotion ever had, yet they keep putting over the people from other promotions! How is that helping TNA? How does that help drive the TNA brand into people’s minds?

TNA can and should succeed. TNA has all the elements it needs in order to do that. I love most of the TNA wrestlers, Impact has been mostlly very good the past two months, but I hate the ECW revival. TNA lacks the most important ingredient in order to succeed – confidence in itself and its wrestlers. As long as TNA will show no faith in its own brand, the wider audience outside the Impact Zone will never do that. You can change things TNA, just believe in yourself.

[IamMedellin]

god damn Melina has a butta face