The General Wrestling Thread

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

It looks pretty obvious that Callihan is heading to FCW, considering he's jobbing to everybody at home and abroad at this point.

[Warner2BruceTD]

So I watched TNA Lockdown last night.

So bad. Just, bad.

-OMG ERIC BISCHOFF IS GONE FOREVER!!! Does anybody believe this stip will stick? Any shock that the finish was flat?

-Austin Aries is awesome as the heel who is supposed to be a face, but is over so much with the smarks for being a heel that he's a de fac to face. Got that?

-MCMG's got squashed by Samoa Joe and whoever his partner is in the tag title match.

-The Jersey Shore guy got squashed by D-Von Dudley in the TV Title match.

-Some other stuff happened and I surfed the internet and just listened to the sound in the other window. Women wrestled, I think. Kurt Angle wrestled Abyss, I think.

-Booby Roode & James Storm, the mid carders who work the main event program but that nobody sees as more than mid carders, bled a lot and had another one of those matches that they always have, that there is technically nothing wrong with, but you come away feeling like it was totally meh. Neither of these guys do a thing for me, and never did, so I might be biased, but they are so bland and generic that it almost doesnt matter to me what they do. Roode is still TNA HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD, winning via fluke when Storm superkicked him out the door of the cage.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it's really sad what TNA has become. I mean, instead of doing a second rate copy of a bad product and just looking like a second rate copy, they could be doing something cool and different and probably do the same mediocre TV ratings and shitty PPV numbers that they do now.

They should just go full southern and become a TBS-era NWA redux. They might win back some lost wrestling fans who dont like WWE or the WWE-lite that TNA currently does. And we could have something cool to watch.

[Bigpapa42]

I avoided it last night. Read about it today. A few people commented that the psychology of the main event was messed up - that they didn't use the cage escape psychology at all, then used an "accidental" escape finished, which seemed out of place. Some fans tried to argue that Roode didn't try to escape several times when he could have because he wanted to "finish" Storm... but that doesn't really fit with his character, who has proven that he'll retain however he can. Typical TNA.

In a way, I have to hand it to TNA - they are amazingly consistent. The complaints I have against them are mostly the same as I had two years, which were mostly the same as I had by late 2008 (started watching them in early to mid 2008). The approach? The same. The results? The same. For all the suppose changes in creative and management, it's actually kind of impressive that nothing really changes. Not in any sort of positive way, of course. But still...

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

TNA has no leadership...

Sadly, they attempt to put young guys in the spotlight...they just suck at doing it and make you care about it. I've actually loved Bobby Roode since the Team Canada days, but fuck that if they think they can get me to watch by making Roode the champ with an awkward storyline.

Plus, the talent they bring in, outside of Aries and Joe...has been horrible. I mean, who gives a fuck about Crimson, Gunner, Garrett Bischoff...? They are awful.

[Liquidrob]

LOL

[JayDizzle]

Dicksword on his chest until the day he dies.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

The Jimmy Johns logo just brings it all together lol.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

OH MY GOD!

They've turned this Bryan thing into a thing of beauty.

LOL @ him calling it the YES Lock and yelling YES in Kofi's face. Awesome.

[Warner2BruceTD]

Brock should wrestle barefoot like Kevin Von Erich.

[krulmichael]

OH MY GOD!

They've turned this Bryan thing into a thing of beauty.

LOL @ him calling it the YES Lock and yelling YES in Kofi's face. Awesome.

Kofi had to resist laughing and when he was walking away you can hear him mumble, "You're an idiot."

And at Brock's ring gear...those boots look like something out of the 18th century.

[CrimsonGhost56]

killer boots man

[dave]

OH MY GOD!

They've turned this Bryan thing into a thing of beauty.

LOL @ him calling it the YES Lock and yelling YES in Kofi's face. Awesome.

I don't like it. It simply overwhelms Danielson the wrestler. It was cool at Wrestlemania, but now will be incredible overkill, like the "What?" chant.

As Warner2BruceTD said earlier, Danielson (Daniel Bryan) is meant to be a face ... and they somehow think they can pull off this YES thing with a heel no one wants to be a heel.

The yes thing is gonna get very old, very quickly.

[LiquidLarry2GhostWF]

laff laff laff

Ten days ago, TNA announced that they had signed a multi-year contract extension with Spike TV. Dave Meltzer in this week's subscriber only Wrestling Observer Newsletter claimed that it was a two year deal which would end in October 2014. The negotiations weren't a formality, not due to any concern about TNA's ratings, which continue to hover in the 1.0 - 1.2 range well above the station's prime time average, but because of rumours that Eric Bischoff was trying to steal the programming contract for himself and set up a new promotion in opposition to WWE, mainly with TNA's talent, because without television the Carter family would be forced out of the wrestling business. Apparently, Spike TV decided that the headaches and uncertainty that would come with booting TNA off their network, including a possible contract tampering lawsuit from the Carters, wasn't worth the hassle. So we're stuck with the status quo.

You may be wondering how Eric Bischoff keeps his job with TNA after such flagrant treachery, but Spike would rather work with him than Dixie Carter, after she lost face with their executives when she promised them the return of Booker T and Kevin Nash in January 2011, only for them to turn up at that year's WWE Royal Rumble instead. Also, if Bischoff was forced out of TNA, then his best buddy Hulk Hogan would likely bail out on the promotion in protest, whose star power Spike TV is still in thrall of. So Dixie is in the rather uncomfortable position of having to work closely with people she cannot trust.

Indeed, when she met with Spike TV executives earlier this week to formulate a battle plan for the future, her backstabber Eric Bischoff was in tow. Bischoff was crowing on his facebook page before the meeting took place about how Impact's ratings are currently kicking UFC's The Ultimate Fighter in the ass, which likely played well before that audience, given that Viacom bought Bellator Fighting Championships last October and are in a bitter promotional war with Dana White:

Think we came close to hitting these numbers with a couple episodes of ReAction at 11pm on Spike: http://www.fighters.com/04/09/ultima...'s-episode

Tons of promotion on Fox and FX, a budget 3x bigger than Impact and 500,000 less viewers? Impact has a larger audience than ever, and is going to have a great season with new elements following Lockdown. Can't wait!

However, his schadenfreude is completely misplaced when TNA would be over the moon with a fraction of UFC's big profits or being able to nab such a lucrative television contract. Impact may have better ratings than TUF at the moment, but their ad rates are minuscule in comparison. He's still a ratings mark after all these years, despite that doing him a fat lot of good in the long run as President of WCW.

So what changes can we expect from the strengthened alliance between Spike and TNA. According to Meltzer, it sounds like they will be mainly window dressing than the radical overhaul that TNA's product badly needs:

Dixie Carter spoke with us earlier today, saying there would be a lot of changes in the next few weeks as far as the presentation of the shows after her meetings yesterday with Spike TV. She wasn't specific, only saying it would play out soon and would include format changes and new elements to the show. She said the company is making a very conscious decision to focus now on young talent.

A fresh lick of paint to the production of Impact can't do any harm, but is unlikely to significantly boost ratings on their own. Pushing new stars would be a definite positive, but TNA have given lip service regarding that many times before. With Hogan, Bischoff, Sting, Kurt Angle, Jeff Hardy and Jeff Jarrett still kicking around, I'll believe that when I see it. It also may be too little too late, as TNA has sent the message throughout its existence that the real stars are the ones that came from WWE or WCW, and it will be tough to make their fans see differently after being indoctrinated otherwise.

There are also rumours that Spike will add new TNA programming as part of the deal, but given that their documentary style post game show for Impact, TNA ReACTION, was an expensive ratings bust, I don't have confidence that they have any good ideas to fill more television time outside of rare specials like the one off shows where they aired matches of TNA talent working New Japan Pro Wrestling's annual January 4th Tokyo Dome mega event.

We will see what happens from here, but with the same crew in charge, I don't foresee TNA getting out of the business rut they're stuck in any time soon.

[Warner2BruceTD]

Claudio Castagnoli did an angle on Smackdown where he was escorted by Regal to the ring to sign a contract with Laurinaitis.

About time. What a joke it is that he had to spend time in FCW at all when he was a better worker and more complete package than most of the roster from day one.

[s@ppisgod]

So I watched TNA Lockdown last night.

So bad. Just, bad.

-OMG ERIC BISCHOFF IS GONE FOREVER!!! Does anybody believe this stip will stick? Any shock that the finish was flat?

-Austin Aries is awesome as the heel who is supposed to be a face, but is over so much with the smarks for being a heel that he's a de fac to face. Got that?

-MCMG's got squashed by Samoa Joe and whoever his partner is in the tag title match.

-The Jersey Shore guy got squashed by D-Von Dudley in the TV Title match.

-Some other stuff happened and I surfed the internet and just listened to the sound in the other window. Women wrestled, I think. Kurt Angle wrestled Abyss, I think.

-Booby Roode & James Storm, the mid carders who work the main event program but that nobody sees as more than mid carders, bled a lot and had another one of those matches that they always have, that there is technically nothing wrong with, but you come away feeling like it was totally meh. Neither of these guys do a thing for me, and never did, so I might be biased, but they are so bland and generic that it almost doesnt matter to me what they do. Roode is still TNA HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD, winning via fluke when Storm superkicked him out the door of the cage.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it's really sad what TNA has become. I mean, instead of doing a second rate copy of a bad product and just looking like a second rate copy, they could be doing something cool and different and probably do the same mediocre TV ratings and shitty PPV numbers that they do now.

They should just go full southern and become a TBS-era NWA redux. They might win back some lost wrestling fans who dont like WWE or the WWE-lite that TNA currently does. And we could have something cool to watch.

The odd thing is, this is how bad they were made out to be in 06. They weren't that bad, even though they were on the bad side of watchable. Now, they're trash. Aries is one of maybe 5 guys on the entire roster who get a reaction that isn't piped in. And he's on TEAM GARRETT BISCHOFF?! Just shut it down, already. I didn't see the WCW 2000 comparisons until this last 2 years. It's ridiculously apparent now. Just have some of the X guys form a boy band, have KISS do a concert, and turn the lights out.

The Southern thing is something I covered during the Beer Money/MCMGs feud. Yeah, go with guys like Storm cursing and talking about Tennessee and his family and drinking beer while wearing a cowboy hat. You've gone back and forth from Tennessee and Florida, while touring mostly the south-southeast. It's kind of a lay-up.

I avoided it last night. Read about it today. A few people commented that the psychology of the main event was messed up - that they didn't use the cage escape psychology at all, then used an "accidental" escape finished, which seemed out of place. Some fans tried to argue that Roode didn't try to escape several times when he could have because he wanted to "finish" Storm... but that doesn't really fit with his character, who has proven that he'll retain however he can. Typical TNA.

In a way, I have to hand it to TNA - they are amazingly consistent. The complaints I have against them are mostly the same as I had two years, which were mostly the same as I had by late 2008 (started watching them in early to mid 2008). The approach? The same. The results? The same. For all the suppose changes in creative and management, it's actually kind of impressive that nothing really changes. Not in any sort of positive way, of course. But still...

I disagree. TNA went from guilty pleasure to just plain sh!thole when Hogan showed up. They can't get anybody STARTED on getting over anymore!! At least before, you had Joe, Angle, MCMGs, the Pope, even Tomko. They could get guys over, they just never stuck with it and made them stars. Joe was on the cusp of becoming a star for a while, and they fumbled him down the drain. Pope had a ton of steam before he got injured and they forgot he was even on the roster. Tomko got over with barely any speaking lines. I bought a few PPVs between 05-07, and now, I couldn't even tell you more than 5-10 guys on their roster. And the ones I'm sure of are from reading on places like here. They still have the same dumbasses they've always had doing the same big, dumbass mistakes. But I don't think the consistency is there. I think their product pre-Hogan was at least partially defend-able. Now, it's just a trash heap with a few good pieces waiting for someone to dumpster-dive them out.

TNA has no leadership...

Sadly, they attempt to put young guys in the spotlight...they just suck at doing it and make you care about it. I've actually loved Bobby Roode since the Team Canada days, but fuck that if they think they can get me to watch by making Roode the champ with an awkward storyline.

Plus, the talent they bring in, outside of Aries and Joe...has been horrible. I mean, who gives a fuck about Crimson, Gunner, Garrett Bischoff...? They are awful.

When fucking SCOTT STEINER can see what's wrong with the company/their thinking, then you know you're in trouble. I remember hearing about the Hogan comments right before that PPV that they had built Roode up to win. Of course, he didn't. Of course, that dig from Hogan about him not being THE guy (who he said should be JEFF HARDY) undermined the work they did to try to make him legitimate. Of course, Hogan played the politics card to get his way. Of course, whoever is calling the shots let him. That's them in a nutshell. One bad decision after another, with people around not having 3/4ths of half a brain to say "that's a bad idea".

I mean, Scott Steiner!!!!!

laff laff laff

TNA has always been a sad promotion. Now, they're just pathetic. I wish Spike would just cut them off. I don't get Bischoff. From everything that he did from the start of taking over WCW until the ship started sinking, people made him out to be a sharp guy. The moves he made seemed logical, and he always had decent explanations when talking about them in interviews or DVDs. What, is he just still smelling his own farts over the heights WCW reached 15 years ago?