El-P

The mere thought of Miz & Morrison being the signal of things getting "good" just makes me cringe, to be honest.

PPV 4 was the best of the four, with two good matches on the card. First was Jerry Lynn & AJ Styles vs Slash & Tempest (who's Devon Storm) for the tag titles, nice little match again showcasing AJ Styles as the white meat babyface with über cool (but sometimes sloppy) offense. Slash and Tempest are solid there, and so is Lynn, who isn't pleased with the attitude of his partner. Yes, one week into them winning the tag title, they have to put them against each other already, as Lynn actually brutally attacks Styles backstage. Yeah, this is ridiculous. The six-men elimination match to determine the X-division challenger rankings was much less a clusterfuck than I thought it would be, and apart from Lynn's weak elimination on a count out (to protect him I guess), this was actually quite good, with late WCW guys like Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo, former ECW's Tony Mamaluke and two indy darlings in Low-Ki and Chris Daniels. In a good booking move, these two end up the match together, and it's nice that they featured the less known guys instead of the former big2/3 workers. It seems like they were really building a brand with the X-division around AJ, Low-Ki, Daniels and Lynn as the veteran anchor. The main title scene still sucks though, as Shamrock works a dull match against Takao Omori, whose appearance here is just as random as showing up at the Rumble in 96. Plus the match never gets to end since Jarrett bust the two of them with chairshots on the head, then does the same thing to Harley Race and a bunch of security guys. Jarrett trying to act as a bad ass actually begins to crak up up, as he's involontarily funny, especially when he swears. We get a bizarre "shoot" interview from Brian Christopher who is sick of being in his daddy's shadow. Yes, in a classic Russo move, a guy cuts a promo on another one who's not working in the company. But hey, Christopher as a heel is an improvment. We also get to see 18 years old Mark & Jay Briscoe. And a bunch of bullshit that I didn't watch. And after four shows, Don West is already without a doubt one of the worst and most annoying color guy ever. Nice job. And Tenay is already overworking himself, he really needed a solid pbp man as an anchor. So yeah, not a good show by any mean, but the two good matches are worth watching. 2002.07.10 Jerry Lynn & AJ Styles vs Slash & Tempest 2002.07.10 Jerry Lynn vs Kid Romeo vs Elix Skipper vs Low-Ki vs Chris Daniels vs Tony Mamaluke

That's glorious. So I guess we owe Dixie Carter the TV character to Russo too. And we know why she loves him so much. Terrific.

Ok, the fourth episode would be enough for me to not even keep on at this point. Same crap with Kelly Kelly. Test looking roided as heel squashing Al Snow in twenty seconds, I guess to piss old ECW fans off. Then a lumbering Big Show overpowering RVD, whose spots just don't make the match interesting at all either (I expected something much better to be honest, on the strentghs of old matches with Bam Bam and Taz) with a stupid swerve at the end with Paul E. turning on RVD and the ECW fans. Best match was Mike Knox vs Guido, who sadly seems to be a JTTS. Not feeling the show at all. I'll probably still watch a bunch more, but the perspective of having to go Big Show vs Taker, Kane and Batista just renders the whole thing totally uninteresting to me. I'll watch the Flair match though, because I've never seen "garbage Flair".

That's a point that is really interesting to me, and it's actually why I'm watching early TA stuff these days, because I wanted to see where did that style come from. You know, the gazillion highspots and über convoluted/"cool" sequences that we can see basically everywhere now. The Young Bucks, and that kind of stuff. I really wonder when things too that (bad) turn. (ok boomer) And I do also think the RVD vs Lynn feud in ECW, as much as I do enjoy it, is probably one of the main influence for this stuff. To me Lynn, by catering to RVD's worse tendencies (because RVD wanted to work matches like that all the time) to get a "great" match out of him, kinda helped created a prototype of a match that had a terrible influence on the indie workers that came up later. (ok boomer) It's interesting to compare it with Tracey Smothers who by 2000 also got a really good match out of RVD, but by applying his own old-school wrestling science (a thing RVD absolutely didn't understand as showed by what he said in his ECW Timeline). Anyway. Although I really like Lynn and think he was one of the best workers in ECW in 98/00, his shortcomings keep him from being a really great worker. I want to say that the whole "cool sequences clap-clap-clap" bullshit actually began in the 90's with the Eddie vs Dean serie in ECW, which I always thought was overrated as hell, and RVD vs Lynn clearly followed that template, only adding the insane convoluted spots in the mix. (ok boomer)

Well, Corny said before and after the story that Shane was green and didn't know how things worked. Good stuff. And Corny looks in the best shape of his life too.

Since TNA is pretty much dead soon (right ? RIGHT ?), I figured I'd go through a bunch of the old weekly PPV's to see how this mess began. I fast-forward a lot, I'm not watching the Johnsons, the midgets, the "celebrities", the catfight and other shit of the same ilk. Was Russo already booking at the beginning ? An awful lot of terrible gimmicks, the Rainbow Express being the most offensive. Lane & Bruce are the worst Adrian Street ever. Jeff Jarrett works exacty like he did in WCW in 2000, by that I mean solid at very best, and totally unimpressive. He still cuts boring promos where he fumbles a bit and try his best to act like a tough guy. Which still doesn't suit him one bit. And I can't understand how a veteran like him just doesn't see how his finisher looks like complete shit, and it's not like it's over either. Well, at least he doesn't use the guitar gimmick…. That's good… Anyway, him and Scott Hall work a bunch of single and tag matches (with K-Krush & Brian Christopher), which could be decent Thunder 2000 main events. Christopher is still doing the Grand Master Sexay routine, which means he's unbearable and a shit worker. Monty Brown debuted on the third show. I had no idea he was there so early. The stand out is very clearly AJ Styles, and that from the very beginning. ALthough he's still pretty indieriffic in the way he uses his incredible offense (but has he really progressed a whole lot ?), he's quite impressive to watch and shows a good white meat acrobatic babyface charisma. He gets both the X division title and the tag division titles in a matter of two weeks, which seems a bit much, but he was clearly the future star of the company. Jerry Lynn would be close second, despite the few usual annoying things about his work (Malenkoesque jerkoff sequence worker + shitty punches, mostly). The X division appears to be the main appeal of the promotion, with all the best matches coming from there thus far. Ken Shamrock is totally dull and has some terrible facial hairs. As far as managers go, Joel Gertner is complete crap (he's been useless since 99 or so anyway), Bobcat, well, I don't even know what the point is… Her guy David Young seems pretty decent though, if nondescript (oh, now I know why they gave him a girl). At least we get James Mitchell who's managing Malice (aka The Wall with a much better look and some actual progress in the ring) and Slash (who I believe is Wolfie D). What was the point of the cage dancers BTW ? I guess the name of the promotion directly derives from them. Only really good match so far : 2002.06.26 Jerry Lynn vs AJ Styles vs Psicosis vs Low-Ki

DNA Wrestling.

I probably wouldn't, but he's a much better candidate than tons of guys already nominated to me.

As showed by the Batista push last year. And the Roman Reigns push this year.

I never thought of it that way, but it's an hilarious and very fitting way of presenting things. WAR was such a fun promotion.

I am totally unable to find the reviews of the weekly PPV that had been posted somewhere around here. Where are those already ?

Nominating Jerry Lynn. I mean come on.

Debbie is the best Malenko.

Holy shit indeed. This company… I need to watch it at some point… Really… But maybe not... Anyway. Hopefully this marks the End, once and for all. Now GFW can pick up the remainders. Because we need TNA 2.0...

So no one should try. Ever. Even in 2015.

Hot 39 years old blonde with tight body, great legs and big fake boobs. That was basically it. Although her promos as airhead-southern-beauty-pagent-trophy-wife Queen Debra in WCW were quite decent actually, she played her part pretty good and it was all her own doing apparently.

Remember when Sable got more and more over ? After Mero hurt his knee.

Of course. But it has nothing to do with the representation of "minis" on WWE TV. Well, midgets. Oh fuck it, dwarves. Still. Women represent half of the human race. So, just a little bit of equality should not even be a debate at this point, especially when they have some really talented girls on the roster, that's all.

Holyshit. Really ? (It sounds like something Vince Russo would say, no offense, but still)

Yeah, please let's not go into "we're discovering Akira Taue in 2015" mode. It was embarrassing enough with Tenryu a few years back...

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!! Mongolian chop.

His Kobashi hommage with the shotgun chops is one of the most annoying spot in wrestling. Used to be very good at one time (still is in 2021, so there). I really didn't follow his career that much in All Japan, but he was involved in some pretty hot stuff I believe (so basically talking out of my ass, not having watched nearly enough). Still, he had some really annoying tendency. Choshu he ain't. Hell, he's not even Kensuke

Wrong thread. This is for Joe Malenko, not Dory Funk Jr. This one was so obvious. Yeah, Joe had even less charisma than Dean. But was he or was he not a better worker ? I dunno. Dean is overrated as hell, so... A bit too harsh.

I loved Spivey. Looked like a total psycho, had an odd, semi-clumsy yet dangerous looking way of working. Too bad he started late, as his knees went south pretty early, but damn, Spivey could be good. And the Waylon Mercy gimmick remains an all-time favourite "what if ?" of mine.