El-P

TNA from 2004. And the promotion post awful-show with the ICP garbage brawl has been mostly pretty damn good (which is why I don't review it. I don't review good pro-wrestling promotions as a whole), despite Russo as a babyface character in which he's just as terrible but less obtrusive for obvious reasons (plus he wasn't booking by this point I believe). But yeah, pretty good stuff. They even manage to salvage what has been a terrible idea thus far, the American X Cup (well, it was not a terrible idea on paper, but the work of the first two had been pretty damn bad thanks to shitty indierrifc work, including by Juvy who's thankfully been replaced) with a brand new Team Canada which is now a fine heel faction. (Amazing how Bret Hart manage to make Canada a viable heel identity) Erik Watts still is pretty worthless, I have to say though.

SummerSlam : Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar - Urine sample on a pole. Make it happen. (can we have Lance Armstrong as a guest referee ?)

So, that MMA fight was a great idea, uh ? Hilarious.

You don't say. Won't happen until a new "Golden Age". Which probably never come at this rate. Not anytime soon anyway.

Final Deletion wasn't good. It was great (for reasons mentionned above). The fact WWE is copying it 6 days after it was showed demonstrates (if need be) how petty and uncreative these people are. What is their current big idea BTW ? Oh, yes, the stuff they did 12 years ago, which failed, with a McMahon on each side and more GMs. Genius.

Raven vs AJ Styles (NWA title match) So, Raven & AJ Styles decide they have a WCW Saturday Night circa 92 main event, with fat Raven working like Ole Anderson if Ole was a terrific seller (the knee, the knee !) and was feeding and bumping hard. Seriously, Raven's work is excellent here, relentless on working on the arm/shoulder of AJ with crisp stuff. I never thought that he would actually peak in 2003/2004, he's just an old-school guy with strong psychology. Since he's kinda turned back heel, he tries to cheat by using powder and it backfires. Screwy finish with a fake La Parka, which was kinda lame but at the same time protected Raven (see, AJ Styles didn't kick out of his finisher like Jarrett did in 2003) and was poetic justice since it was Chris Harris under the hood. Really good match and one of the strongest Raven performance as far as pure solid work goes.

What killed Brock to me was when the whole "Suplex City" became a marketing argument and his matches became basically a bunch of suplexes for the audience to count along. Like everything, when something organic turns into a gimmick, it usually turns into crap.

Jeff Jarrett vs AJ Styles (04/21/04 TNA) The conclusion to the quite good "Road to the cage" ends with AJ Styles taking the place of Chris Harris after Raven goes after him and fucks his shoulder up. Although the Russo promo was bad as always, this was a neat twist in that raven manipulated his way to that point but Russo refuses to give him the props and design AJ Styles, whom he "owned" one from their past history. Raven gets crazy of course and watches the match from afar (as does Ron Killings, but who the fuck cares ?). And the match is really good. They not only play familiarity, but they do it in a nice, subdued way (as opposed to super-obvious underlined way), just like they really don't use the cage much for the longest time until Jarrett takes advantage of a mistake to throw AJ around. Gotta say something about Jarrett here, for the last few weeks, he's been showing signs of trying new things, not relying on his own lazy formula (dating back from 2000 WCW), incorporing new moves, doing smarter stuff, for instance as he got small packaged on a figure-four attempt, he goes into a scorpion deathlock next. He also does a very nice looking (AJ bumping helped) triple back suplexes here. AJ is terrific as always. One could argue they could have used the cage more, but they weren't going for a bloodfest here, more a regular match worked inside a cage to prevent the bullshit. Plus when they finally did, it was creative and fresh, as AJ gets on top of this very high cage and Jarrett shoves the referee into it, making AJ lose his balance, take a bump on the jaw but still hanging on until Jarrett bumps himself into the cage and AJ goes flying outside. In a neat dick move (much like Jarrett went all Flair/Lawler with use of powder and foreign object before), Jarrett asks for a count out. Well, Jarrett goes outside to get AJ and... his guitar, goes back inside, and after an irrelevant Russo run-in, AJ kicks the guitar which explodes and pins Jarrett to win the title. I actually marked out a bit, that's how well they worked the whole finish. I have no idea what's happening with Jarrett, after months, hell, years of coasting and being lazy, he suddenly seems interested in doing new stuff to the point he's been interesting to watch. He also did of his his best promo in years before this match (as in : really solid). AJ, as always, was pretty much stellar here.

Well, they can go back to the old "Everything is fake, but Lesnar is real, he just won an MMA match". Always worked well in the past...

Well, I was wrong. This is actually a very interesting look into the mind of a contemporary indie wrestler who hasn't been polluted by the WWE yet. Tons of sex stuff, obviously, but always in good spirit. It's kinda striking to see a pro-wrestler talk about being offended by a homophobic tirade and explaining his concept of intergender matches in today's wrestling world. Actually made me think about some stuff, including the way these guys view pro-wrestling. You can see the gap between this generation and the old-timers. I thought Ryan mostly came off very smart and likeable. The older Sean gets, the more snarky he gets too and his dry delivery gets even funnier (especially when he makes fun of former guests of his own shows).

Raven vs Chris Harris (04/14/04 TNA) For the right to get Jarrett in a cage for the NWA title. Talk about a selling clinic, this is one. Harris milks his left shoulder injury for all its worth and Raven always goes back to it. To even things up, at one point where they fight near the ropes, Harris tangles Raven's right leg in the ropes and goes after the knee, so it's knee vs shoulder. Raven's selling is wonderful, just not hobbling around but selling the pain and annoyance with excellent facials and body language. Some different kind of moves too, with Raven going for a japanese armbar as a counter with the announcers pointing out Harris is not familiar with this hold, and later on a chicken-wing which he "learned from Bob Backlund" which was a neat detail (although didn't make much sense considering his history) . A little bit of screwiness aside (James Storm and Sabu making run-ins, Russo having to put himself over as the authority too) which hurt the flow of the match, and the fact they sold their injury a little less in the finishing stretch, going for more efficiency on the action side, this was an excellent match with more than solid work. They did a really good job building up Harris as a N°1 contender and solo babyface, he does look like a breakout star. The run for Jarrett's title, with Raven putting the loss over strong, makes the title seem really important, like it should. This is the best TNA has looked on top since the Raven chase the previous year, but since Russo isn't booking anymore (although still an annoyance as an on-air character, just as bad as ever as a babyface) it's overall much better.

No wonder, Randy Orton is the death of all excitment, the black hole of interest, the void of worlds.

The "C" of the title is the font from the old WCW logo, or very similar to it. So the CWC strongly makes me think of it me anyway. Odd they would do something like that, it kinda subliminaly reminds everyone that the whole cruiserweight stuff was WCW's strong point (while WWE never was able to do anything with it).

Jeff Jarrett vs James Storm Non-title match, while Chris Harris has been built into a credible challenger over the last month. Hey, if this version of Jarrett showed up more often, I'd have no issue with him. Not the lazy formulaic Jarrett, although we get a Korakuen-style visit brawl early on, which was decently intense, as he busts out some big time offense including a superplex and an ace-crusher. Storm's best single match until this point, as he didn't overwork himself with too-fast sequences (the bad influence of the X-div style), keeping it simple and revengefull. Didn't turned into a Double J Special, barely a ref bump to give Storm a visual pinfall, and a good finish. Post match was quite efficient too with Jarrett viciously attacking Storm's knee until Harris showed up, then Raven, then Styles, the four challengers to Jarrett's crown. At this point, it's almost like Raven is getting toward heelish as he always attacks the babyfaces to "protect" Jarrett (rather save him for himself, but still). Vince Russo's giant clean-shaven dick-head showed up too, but it's irrelevant, like everything he's involved with. Really solid opener. Jarrett has looked better over the past few weeks, after a terrible end of 2003 and beginning of 2004.

"Evil owner" angle anyone ? 18 years straight of recycling.

Not to mention : they planted the seeds earlier on when Matt asked to put some gasoline around the place. The finish made sense !!! ***** MOTY Fuck that : MOTD Yes !

Ok,I know it's been overused but : What The Fuck did I just watched ? I lost my shit three times, first with the jump from the.... tree !!!! Then with the... fireworks battle !!! Then with the creature from the deep. When did Matt Hardy officially go crazy ? Say what you want, the finish actually made sense, they planted the seeds earlier on. ***** for the sheer insanity. Up there with the IWA Bathhouse Deathmatch. Why is this a promotion with barely any TV and ressource that is producing crazy shit like this, while the WWE is still plodding through KevinDunnMania drab production ? I've seen the future. I think I'm gonna drop the "Brother Nero" creepy drawl for no reasons in the days to come. I want this to go on in LU.

It was terrible. But Russo makes him look like Riki Choshu. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/19237-wcws-highway-to-hell/

Nope. There's no winking at the audience in LU. It's admitedly constructed as a fiction, with deaths and magic and shit, not a real "pro-wrestling promotion".

Care to give any details ? Corgan's TNA sounds fascinating.

Totally disagree. The DeMott General Rection stuff was mediocre at very best, and he always was the worst involved in any of his angles and matches. He sucked on promos too, trying to emulate a Duggan-like personna. Hugh Morrus was the perfect use for him, he was a fat guy who could bump well and make other people look good. He never was useful in any other way. Russo used him for two reasons : the roster was depleted and he tried to show he could be successful with anyone by giving him a "new idendity and character", which was a stupid gimmick name with horrible sexual pun and bad half-baked military costume. DeMott was at his exact right place as a JTTS. Lot of people who were "underutilized" really weren't (aka Brad Armstrong syndrome).

It has nothing to do with Russo, I don't even understand what you are arguing about anymore. Austin was a cool heel in an era where the audiences wanted to cheer cool heels, so he was turned babyface de facto by the audience. The same audiences who wanted to cheer for the nWo. And if you want to argue about more complex characters, there's only one, really, in this period : Bret Hart. And it all happened before the Attitude Era (when Cornette was still in the booking team, mind you). And he was not about shades of grey, really, he was straight on about his beliefs which made him a heel in the US and a babyface in Canada. This is the only angle WWF ran which approached some level of "complex" characterization, which makes it the highest point of US pro-wrestling to me along with the early nWo angle, on an "artistic" level. Austin vs McMahon was tons of fun for the first few months (until the fall of 98) but was straight on babyface vs heel. (As far as babyface acting like heels, Hulk Hogan was a complete shithead, kayfabe-wise)

Complete bullshit. Mr. McMahon was a complete heel. Austin was a complete babyface (he saved Stephy from evil Taker, for fuck's sake). Mick Foley was total babyface. The Rock was total heel, then total babyface. DX were total babyfaces, the Nation were total heels. Taker was a babyface for the longest time, then turned heel. Every act that was really over on top was either heel of faces. You can go on and on. There was no actual "shades of grey". However, in the undercard, there was some confusion (as illustrated by the Venis vs Goldust feud), but it was irrelevant when you had the hottest act in 20 years on top, which were the biggest babyface in Austin feuding with the biggest heel McMahon basically.

Except he really doesn't. It struck me when I was doing the WCW Highway to Hell, how few actual ideas Russo had, and that the narrative of him being really creative was another myth. He has a few ideas which are always the same : shoot-promos / abuse of women / self-reference to glory years of WWF / pilling up gimmick matches. He's never wrote any good, creative, compelling angle and always resort to the same shit. And when he showed up in TNA, it was back to the same stuff yet again, no matter who he's working with. He's really not much of a creative guy at all. The premise was better than Corny's, who stuck in the 80's in a bad way. But there's a point where Sean asks him : "But who's the babyface and ho's a heel ?" to which Russo answers "It doesn't matter.", and it's exactly at this point you realize that this guy just doesn't get it at all and that it would be shit. The most glorious WWF Vince Russo feud that illustrates this exact point (among other things like his amazing misoginy) is Dustin Runnels/Goldust vs Val Venis. The characters all go seemingly from heel to faces to heel to faces from week to week with the only really purely negative traits being put on Terri's back during the whole feud (she's basically called a whore by babyface announcers for flirting with a porn star while forgetting that she was dumped and humiliated on TV by Runnels months before, while Venis is portrayed as the crowd pleasing babyface until he's not really anymore when Goldust comes back, Terri being humiliated by everyone at the end and portrayed like a manipulating slut for faking a miscarriage, then turning somewhat "babyface" by going all "female empowerment" in a faction called PMS… )

AJ Styles vs Abyss (Ladder match - TNA 03/17/04) So, Abyss is a good vehicule for a great worker to have a very good match ? Well, at least, his series of gimmick match against AJ (they had a good falls count anywhere the previous week, ending i a schmooz) is prooving to me that he is actually more valuable than Kane, after all. Maybe I just got used to his ridiculous looks and maneurisms and to the fact is character is less "crazy monster" and more "goofy mofo playing crazy monster". Again, AJ is so good here, bumping, putting together spots that don't take forever, working teases and using the ladder gimmick in logical way. The only time he tried to show off and waste time trying to hurt Abyss instead of going for the contract actually cost him and Don West pointed out it was a mistake. Really good stuff with seeds planted earlier for spots later on, fine offense and a fuck finish that played into the fact Raven wanted to screw AJ out of his title shot just to get Russo's attention. AJ Styles was a great worker already. Abyss may be more useful than I thought.