El-P

The Golden Age for hardcores maybe (and mostly if you're into indie style which has permeated WWE and NJ), but as far as being a thing in pop culture, pro-wrestling is as irrelevant as ever. As far as match quality goes, I'd absolutely argue that the bar has been lowered during the last 10 years, because of both workratism and post-Benoit workrate guilt, which is why now everything is *great* and *MOTYC*, on both sides of the spectrum. This is why I'm told today that Will Ospreay or Roman Reigns (the two opposite sides) are great wrestlers. And I agree with neither of these statements.

Has Meltz finally become the Robert Parker of pro-wrestling ?

Thanks. One hour draw ? Fuck that. I want to watch good 15-20 minutes stuff now.

And there goes my interest to even watch that match out of curiosity. I though the Dome match as an overblown spotfest, so… not spending the time for a match I feel I *have to* watch just to react to it. How long was that match ? The idea of Okada vs Cody fucking Rhodes and Tanahashi vs Billy fucking Gunn makes this whole NJ in USA deal a no-no to me.

Nakamura was not nearly as over or special after one year in NXT. He peaked with the Sami Zayn match. He was never as over and that was his best match by far. Maybe he'll get back to that level. Probably not. Cf that Ziggler match. Add to that fact, he's a main eventer in NXT. He's being featured as a star. He knows that the chances of him getting that same kind of treatment in the main roster are very slim (and honestly, I never bought Roode as a main eventer to begin with, so more power to him). The fact he learned stuff doesn't change the fact he's a 15 years veteran who showed up and was over because of his name and reputation from his TNA work (which kinda put in perspective the idea of TNA being a totally irrelevant company). I never said NXT was useless or had no purpose. But guys like Joe, Nak, Roode are not produced by the WWE system at all. They are stars from different territories thrown in the mix with their name and look being the same. Better production ? You'd hope for, that has been the thing of the WWE since Vince took over. That being said, the whole WWE machinery can also be a detriment to those guys to me (like I said, I find the Glorious bit god awful, cool to know Nak refused it). Especially the way they teach all the guys they sign to move like animatronics during their intros.

I never said I was fair. I dunno. Bobby Rhode is basically himself from TNA, the gimmick he's been doing for 10 years now. With that godawful and annoying Glorious bit. Nakamura's aura was arguably reduced by working a year in NXT (although nothing compared to that awful match with Ziggler). Samoa Joe came in a star from years in TNA & ROH. At this point, OVW still wins the award for turning up stars from scratch.

In the grand scheme of things, no. But as far as debunking WWE's ridiculous storytelling, yes.

NXT is a fantasy world so HHH get stroke his dick and show he can "manage a promotion" while getting lip service from smart marks because he's doing "old-school wrestling " with IndyDarlings™. It develops zilch. WWE is now buying talent all over the place, to the point of putting small women japanese promotions in difficult situations and trying to screw with the active UK indy scene. Of course, we get some damn cool stuff and cards out of it. But let's not be naive. It's a smoke screen for WWE's agressive expension strategy, much like the cruiser show (a huge failure) and the UK show (and a women show to come ?). The Main Brand is what matters. And whoever Vince wants to see succeed in it will be pushed. Others will get god awful bookings and get lost quickly. Cf the idiotic and useless booking of Bayley (and let's not even talk about American Alpha nor Sami Zayn).

Holy shit. By December of 2006, iMPACT was unwatchable. It's like they tried to cram a hundred sequences in a 40 minutes show. Insane. It's like the whole show is on speed. 20 seconds backstage angles, 2 minutes matches, tons of truthfully unfunny comedy, nonsensical drama, no replay no time to breath NEXT SEQUENCE NOW !!! Impressive. It's even worse than the weekly PPV era because there's no time for anything good to eventually happen and take place. Everything, even some stuff with potential interest, has to be done on fast forward. Insane.

Thankfully, Angle vs Joe totally delivered, a true MOTYC that's better than any bloated stuff Angle did in WWE. The whole PPV, the biggest ever for TNA, was actually quite good in the ring if you disregard the awful booking of the tag team (which got a nice "bullshit" chant) and world (which got apathy because of how stupid it was) titles. Sting working an IWA Japan match was great in its absurdity though So, I guess this show was the apex of TNA while at the same time wearing the clear sign of booking death. Oh, well. Good Joe has eventually found his way onto greener pastures. He should have been the Man in TNA. Also, too bad Christopher Daniels will never get the recognition as a worker, he was up there with him and AJ...

And by week 4 and the debut on prime time you get Abyss, N°1 challenger for already heatless World Title match (since Sting barely ever appears, just like he did during the build to BFG), taps out clean to Kurt Angle (who also managed to kick out of the Black Hole Slam, so there goes your Abyss vs Angle match for the future). And the VKM stuff, which was brutal. Russo and his amazingly idiotic "smart" acronyms. What the fuck does Voodo Kin Mafia even means ? And that shooty shooty stuff, rehashing angles from 8 years before, from another context and when these guys were actually relevant. Anyway, this is complete shit and the Russo bingo is now almost complete, only the "swerve" hasn't appeared yet. Damn. How to ruin a promotion in less than a month.

Good match, the best of a feud that never clicked in the ring for me. I disagree with the finish, it was totally unexpected and spectacular and the fact Christian "won" the match was irrelevant since Rhino was all about destroying him, which he did. The whole concussion stuff has been stupid since day one, with Rhino kicking out of Christian's finisher several times, so by that point it was not even a technicality. Good stuff and hot finish. Not only that, but the post-match was completely idiotic and made no sense. I gotta say one thing, after years of hearing Cornette blabbing about how great and classic the first Joe vs Angle build was, with them waiting until the PPV to fight, when you actually watch the thing it's another story. They fough *every fucking time* they got together. Since the very first appearance to that post-match which saw 1/Joe reversing the ankle lock 2/Joe hitting Angle with a chair 3/Joe choking out a bleeding Angle. So much for keeping all the tension for the big match. Not saying it was Mantell's fault, as the whole promotion has Russo idiotic fingers on it, and this last segment was totally Russorrific with Joe, accepted as a babyface per say by the TNA crowd for months now, *teaming up with Abyss* to beat on Angle. Still, this was far from the classic, no-touch before PPV match Corny is talking about. No idea how he handled the stupidity of Russo's booking though.

Very interesting to see Schiavone's take on the first Russo PPV in Mayhem 99. As always, I find Tony very balanced in his views. The last story he tells about how some dipshit online actually threatened his daughter and asked people online to beat her up if they saw her in Toronto at the PPV is quite disgusting. I think the dipshit in question was Chris Hyatte. Don't know why I remember the name of this idiot. Probably because his columns was some of the first stuff I was reading when I got online in 97. Still, quite a fucked-up situation there.

And week 3, we get heel manager Tracy, well Miss Brooks, whose act with Robert Roode hasn't been established as successful yet (after three weeks of being together), made out to look like an idiot, basically costing her man the match and having a glass of water thrown to her face. Then she get yelled at backstage while she complains about having "broken a nail". There you go.

It's actually amazing. After just two weeks of Vince Russo booking in 2006, we already got : _infamous dumbfuckery of a gimmick match in the Reversed Battle Royal, as part of a super convoluted tournament for the N°1 challenger to the World Title _hotshoting of the X-div title from Sabin (who won his biggest match at BFG) to AJ Styles (who was out of the division at this point) in a throwaway TV match *as part of said convoluted tournament to crown a N°1 contender for the World Title* _a shooty shooty promo by The James Gang, infering to them going back to WWE _an "item on a pole match" to set up a barb-wire cage match on free TV with idiotic and convoluted rules I mean, you'd write a basic parody of Russo's shit and you couldn't do better. I guess the mysoginic stuff and swerves are incoming too, that's the only two "creative ideas" he's known for missing thus far. That's litteraly it. Seeing as this was probably gonna get worse in the months to follow, it's understandable that despite the really good D'Amore stint, by February of 2007 people here would throw around that question, considering the awful PPV & iMPACT on Fox few years (which weren't as bad as 2000 WCW, nothing is, but still pretty wretched).

Well, yes, but I just don't think Sabin was very good. Still basically a spot monkey by that point. Senshi was much more interesting (and talented). Well, all of this was pretty much rendered irrelevant anyway since two weeks after, AJ got the title back in a throwaway TV match which was also part of a tournament to eventually challenge for the world title against an heelish out of nowhere Sabin, just before AJ would himself turn heel for no reason a few weeks after. Oh, yeah. Russo just got the book and it took one week to make things all fucked up and nonsensical.

Yeah, Bayley doesn't want to hurt Alexa. She still did a fucking backdrop suplex on the floor. How's that for not hurting anyone ? I mean, ok, I get it, character work, storyline, yaddi yadi yadda. But even with the storyline of Bayley not wanting to use the stick, you can work an actual good and interesting match around that. There Bayley basically got squashed. It's no news that these people have jackshit notion about pushing a babyface. Or they believe they actually got Daniel Bryan over, who knows... Ok, gimme Alexa vs Sasha now.

I kinda thought about checking it out, because it's fun to watch a whole thing that has a beginning and an end, but what stro describes is exactly what I feared, and it sounds like a personal pro-wrestling nightmare to me. So I'll pass and wait for the next big NJ show to check them out.

Up there with "The new F'N show" in ECW. Or "Bite me !" in WCW.

Sabin still does nothing for me. He's all spots, works too fast, isn't a good seller. This is typically the kind of X div match I don't care about. Spot spot spot spot spot. Ki does manage to drag me into the match for the last stretch and I did enjoy the finish which was a nice touch instead of just keeping on overdrive and overkill, but Sabin as champ feels like such a setback after those great AJ vs Daniels vs Joe matches the previous year. The concussion angle was stupid especially when Rhino kicked out of Christian's finisher on their last match. Concussion = nothing. Really a tedious match too, as Rhino isn't someone you want for long control segments, in or out of the ring. He had such a terrific out of control brawling match with Monty & Samoe Joe before, this was just going nowhere with boring crowd brawling, useless vehicule use and such. Christian has worked much better as an underdog solid babyface than vicious heel. Plunder match felt like nothing after the crazy (and stupid) garbage brawl earlier on with Abyss, Raven, Joe and some human dart. Finish was idiotic (always hated those "stack a bunch of stuff on a body then hit them with a chair, it hurts less than a simple chair shotso why would you do that ?). A few spots here and there, but really a nothing match. Jarrett & Sting had a more satisfying one despite the flat work. Very good match. Those two spots were kinda insane. What the fuck was Hernandez thinking ? He also shows his greenness at points, but it's mostly what it should be. These guys have been carrying the promotion in the last few months, as you can feel the momentum slowly doing and the booking getting worse and worse. This show really felt flat overall. It's quite fitting as it was the ending of TNA as an alternative. The first year of Spike was super easy and fun to watch until Slammiversary 96. Since that point you can see booking becoming tired. Sure, Angle was a coup and would get them their best PPV score ever, but it wouldn't last. It would be the last successful one-shot for a company that would now be booked by Vince Russo into oblivion and irrelevancy. After storylines that made sense, simple and solid booking with regular great matches, it would be time for fucked-up shit, pushing Joe, Daniels & AJ styles back from the top spots and pushing every WWE rejects ever. Then would come Bischoff and Hogan with even more stupid shit. In 2005 & for most part of 2006, TNA looked like a hot promotion still full of promises. Russo coming in was the end of the party. It never recovered, at no point. From this point on, I guess it's cherry picking only... Was fun while it lasted. D'Amore deserves credits for making it work for a while.

Terrific Ultimate X match. This gimmick delivers almost every time. Nice twist with the tag team dynamic, although it was indeed a bomb throwing fest. Great chaotic feel like in every LAX match. The final bump was insane and Daniels deserves so much props for attempting it. It should be noted that it was a spot that *made sense* too, unlike 99% of the stupid stunts from most gimmick matches since the awful Hardy's "classic" matches. It was not a regular X either of course, as this time the crossing of the ropes was attached solidly to the roof. Excellent match with an all-time memorable finish.

No, because he was a guy from another promotion, not "evil boss".

Not hard to be better than Trip, Stephy or, gasp, Dixie. But it's a role that has totally hampered my enjoyment of US pro-wrestling. Blame Bischoff I guess (gotta give the devil its due, he did it before Vince and was quite good at it too). Wait. The expection being of course DARIO MF CUETO, who's not even in the same league.

For a few months facing Austin. And then it jumped the shark quickly. Vince was awesome at the beginning of the Austin feud. By "It was me all along !", I was already dead tired of him. When he was still around a few years later facing Hulk Hogan on an equal footing, it was completely ridiculous.

Thanks for the clarifications and infos ! I totally agree by Slammiversary you can feel the first signs of burnout. The King of the Mountain finish being the first real bad stain on the booking. The Jackass stuff was so bad you could almost think Russo was already writing, although I believe he was not given the reigns before the move to prime time after BFG that year (2006).