Death From Above

Way too easy new joke about the team called "The Saints" getting busted by the Commish for secretly putting out bounties on their competition, revealing themselves as the Higher Power.

If I remember the Jamie Dundee shoot right, they were supposed to show up for a USWA vs. WWF tag team champions match at the Royal Rumble, but got themselves in some shit and ended up giving up the spot to someone else.

The fact that they are so blatantly making it clear with the way they have Eric right there on screen with him that he's on TV because of his daddy... I mean, they have to know that's going to create an automatic backlash even if he was actually good, right? It is a recipe for failure. Fans tend to hate that kind of thing in every form of entertainment.

Wrestling is not a sport (I'm saying this to avoid getting sucked into THAT Meltzer point, again), but in some ways it has to be promoted more like one than it does like a regular TV show. It's very difficult for me to imagine someone just plunking down some cash and founding a real competitor because wrestling fans are generally fairly loyal to their company of choice. WCW didn't just spring up one day, it had a loyal, and in many ways fanatical anti-WWF fanbase that was established generations-deep. There's no way to just replicate that kind of support using raw resources, unless you REALLY have a lot of cash. I mean... maybe if you could somehow talk The Rock into being your ace, and if you also stole a top current WWE star (well, if there were any). Similar to how if you buy an expansion team in sports but plunk it in the wrong market, the only way to draw is to win a title. Otherwise you end up with the Atlanta Thrashers. Honestly the lack of any meaningful independents in America these days suggests to me that indeed Vince has won. He hasn't done nearly what I would have liked to see with that position, but none the less. I honestly don't see a challenger coming any time in the next decade. I can see companies succeeding on a level where they are clearly the minor leagues. In another universe with TNA's level of recources and overall talent level, there could be a perfectly viable B-federation there. There's nothing wrong with a good AAA baseball game. That's probably a more viable goal, for my money. Trying to go after Vince shouldn't even be a question until after you have yourself awfully well established. Only other option I see is if, for some unforseen reason, a company were to totally take off in Europe outside of Vince's main market. Japanese wrestling was hot within its own borders but I think it had certain cultural limitations to a lot of American fans. If a company sprung up in England? Maybe they'd have a chance. They wouldn't have quite the direct head to head heat but they'd also not have to fight the language barrier. Again, that's a big longshot, but I can at least conceive of it.

He didn't have stockholders to explain a money-losing PPV to back then, did he?

Lex's parents were both academia types. He was always the black sheep in his own family for going down the path he did, which must wear on a guy over an entire lifetime.

Surely they can build some sort of temporary ring roof dealie in the 21st century that is, essentially, a glorified giant carnival tent. It would probably be worth the one time investment in one if you could roll it out for the odd baseball stadium show, or something.

Ha, that's the same guy that had his DVDVR account hacked not long ago by some spammer too. I think they shut down his account, or its possible he's just been quiet there lately and I haven't seen him.

It blows my mind that Rey Mysterio Jr. is still only 37. I know he started young but it's incredible just how young when you look at how long he's been active in this business. I wonder how many years he will keep going. He's had a LOT of work done on those knees.

Plus his last name is Jarrett. You have to know that even if TNA loses a million bajillion dollars, somehow someone named Jarrett is still going to end up holding a bag of money at the end. I would be surprised if it turned out he wasn't one of the guys ok going forward on that front. Kidman came to mind but I don't know how much more his run could have been. I guess in some bizarro universe I could envision CM Punk and Kidman wrestling, but that's getting into pretty serious goofy supposition. It is a match I'd watch in fantasy land, though. I'd say as a character Scott Steiner got done really bad in WWE, as a wrestling run that was so disappointing compared to the crazy run he got on in WCW when he was just about the one saving grace for their heavyweight division. But Scott has always been pretty well paid so he's not going to suffer in the end probably either. I don't see DDP ever having a long WWE run, but what he got to do was also really disappointing. The stalker gimmick was just unworkable.

I'm of the opinion the case has gotten kind of air tight, in terms of long term companies. There have been plenty of crummy promotions over the years, or major companies that have had crummy/disastrous periods. The difference with TNA is that you really have a huge collection of bullet points, any of which you could probably break down into a thesis if you were really willing to subject yourself to total immersion in TNA: - A lot of the wrestling has stunk. - TNA couldn't execute an angle from start to finish to save their lives. Someone here once said they'd never done an angle successfully from start to finish in the history of the company. It is possible years later that the point still stands. Those are both bad, but really I find them secondary, or symptomatic, of the other weight you can pile on. - The company has a distinct minor league feel of being built around either old guys, or WWE rejects. - The name is really stupid, and clearly pegs the company into a niche that doesn't sound bigtime. - Inability to sign talent that is supposedly liked by wrestling fans that are not seen as nostalgia acts and build any lasting momentum. Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe. Etc. - Ineffective, clueless ownership in over its head due to a lack of understanding about the wrestling business. Manipulation of said ownership by professional con artists. - Related to a couple of the above, massive amounts of money being sunk into guys that are clearly nostalgia acts. I have nothing against nostalgia acts in wrestling at all but you can't really build a company around them long term. - Infighting among the staff resulting in a sub-par product. Lack of overall direction. - Lack of influx of new ideas. Rehashing of a now long-dead era. - Handling of substance problems by employees that stands out a lot more in the 21st century, in some cases directly impacting the quality of the product. - Inability to move TV ratings in a positive direction no matter how much stuff is thrown at the wall. - A baffling business model that, at best, is difficult to decipher exactly how the company expects to be viable in the long term. - TNA employee Ric Flair's growing list of legal shenanigans would be hard to dismiss in most other industries. Doesn't really reflect on TNA to the average fan but you add it to the file for the know-it-alls. - Kurt Angle being insane seems like it could be its own thing, though again I don't think it reflects badly on the company publicly to anyone but the hardcores. I feel like I missed something really noteworthy, but even trying to get TNA straight in my head is hard work. There's probably a long post on any of those in relation to TNA (other than the name being a bad high school joke which is a self evident one liner), due to the fact that through whatever means the company has simply outlasted a lot of other novelty acts that weren't very good. There are companies that you could take some of these points and apply them to. I don't think there's been one where all ring true beyond TNA. I would love there to be a tell all, objective book about TNA someday once it all implodes. But wrestling being full of the characters that it is I am not sure that is possible.

I'm not as surprised by it as you are to be honest. It seems every few months I stumble onto a wrestling discussion that involves a fan being made fun of for finding a woman working in the wrestling business attractive, and having that played for comedy by (usually the same) self-loathing wrestling dorks who find it hilarious that anyone could have different taste in women than them. 11-year olds in a boy's only treehouse club, and all that. Actually liking A GURL on a wrestling forum being played as an embarrassing incident fits pretty well into that culture.

Hogan's Metallica story is fine in the same universe where Undertaker dropped him on his head in 1974 and Hogan really is immortal just by flying against the earth's rotation to Japan causing him to live over 400 days a year.

I have developed a bizarre fandom of Nash because he turned being a dude that can frame a slow motion elbow smash, and pretend to be cool while dropping an Eddie Money reference in 1998, into millions of dollars. Plus he didn't turn out like Scott Hall.

I've always wondered how WWE decides who gets to be the character they want to be and who has to change. I mean, what is the possible reason to turn Byran Danielson into Daniel Bryan, yet CM Punk is still CM Punk? There doesn't seem to be a ton of logic to it.

I know I brought this up before on this board, but I see the lack of new, solid young behind the scenes talent as a huge reason that wrestling overall has dipped so badly. You have that whole creative group with guys from the major companies through the 80's and 90's... and really, Bischoff, Russo and Heyman are probably the youngest of that group. And after that? Nobody, really. There is a real void where there should be some guys in their 30's, or early 40's, who could bring some revitalized ideas behind the scenes. That is one of the real lasting legacies of the death of the territories, because guys that want to break in really have almost no credible career path into that top level inner circle anymore. So instead Vince is hiring soap opera writers and TNA is just recycling the same people doing the same old thing. Something has to give there in the next decade, you would think.

My favourite all time Dixie story is when she said if she heard another "Fire Russo" chant, she would fire someone else for being responsible.

That goofy Yorke Foundation thing happened too soon. "How do we beat these guys, hold on. I think there is an app for that."

Honestly I hear the show has been better in recent weeks but I hear about Hogan, Eric, and Garret "my dad is in wrestling, you know" Bischoff being one of the big storylines and I just roll my eyes. It feels like an exchange of one brand of bad wrestling trope for another. I hope the show improves, really, but I keep wanting to make a "Where is David Flair when you need him" joke about where they seem to be going.

It's hard not to think that any random "Bret doesn't leave WWF" scenario wouldn't turn out more entertaining than his abysmal time in WCW. What an amazing waste that was.

Kaufman making friends in the south:

Kamala's complaints weren't so much about weekly pay, but more about when they did the Summerslam PPV in terms of the bonus Undertaker got for a PPV vs. him basically getting nothing extra. Only promoter I remember him saying anything nice about on the pay front was Watts, who he said honored all their deals and would even pay bonuses that were outside of that. Other than him I think he knocked everyone else he ever worked for. Which, still, sounds like grain of salt stuff.

That's kind of an interesting sub-point. There's also the thought that a lot of the raunchy/offensive stuff Brett didn't like has seemingly been assigned to Russo, you wonder if at some point it would have come to a head before October of '99. And if Bret was still working and involved in anything hot, it would have been much easier to cut Russo loose than Bret. WWF were willing to let Russo leave by October of 1999 anyway, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to think they'd have fired Bret over Russo if Bret had been willing to stay. And WCW would have very likely still wanted Russo regardless. You look at the lack of depth on a card like Wrestlemania XV and it's not as if they couldn't have used another guy in a top slot at the time.

Is this the one with Regal's antics where he's not sure who to interfere on behalf of, Vince's daughter or his girlfriend? Because that match was indeed so much more awesome than it had any right to be. The ladies brought so much hate (for a WWE women's match). And the post match promo where Vince is losing it and Regal makes Regal faces was gold too. Really solid sort of "filler" between bigger matches.

I'll also throw out the obvious of "Every big match in Stampede Wrestling ever". Pretty much everything was clipped to hell, with God only knows how much good stuff left on a cutting room floor and probably swept into a trash can. Bloody shame that, even if you have to put up with Ed awful Whalen on commentary because he was such a big local media figure. I don't know how exactly Stampede would have measured up to the other major territories, but sadly we'll never even really have the footage to properly make a judgement call.