El-P

I was not blown away by the Hennig matches at all. Very good stuff, yes, and I love Buddy in AWA with Sommers, but it will take a lot more to convince me he's a top 20-15 workers. Way too much people over there already.

PPV 9 The first hour or so just was crap. More stupidity with Jarrett and the NWA authority, and it seems Steamboat is out, replaced by Bullet Bob Armstrong, which I can live with since Bullet was so good in the role in SMW. But the, some indy clusterfuck with SAT vs Kid Kash (who looked the best of all, unsurprisingly), Shark Boy and some 17 year old kid doing a terrible Eminem gimmick and flippy floppy stuff. Dupps, Bruce as Miss TNA, the last Jive Talking, all of this is ff material. Then, you get two brawls in a row, always a sign of bad booking, the first of which involving Malice vs Don Harris. Like the previous week, it was watchable, which is more than I can say for most Harris match, but the main thing here is good old Donny wearing a nazi T-shirt, with the SS symbol. That company is run by dumbfucks. Was Jerry Jarrett already gone by this point ? When did Dixie Carter got involved ? A mean, they let this guy wear a NAZI T-shirt on TV. Not that we didn't remember the nazi tattoos him and his brothers proudly wore in the mid 90's, before they drowned it under other tattoos. The second garbage brawl was Elix Skipper vs Monty Brown, and it wasn't bad either. For the X-division title, Low-Ki vs Sonny Siaki vs Jimmy Yang vs Jose Estrada in a four corners elimination match. Ok, this is more like it, as I enjoy the Elvis' antics (depsite the low rate gimmick and Rock's impersonation by Siaki on promos), and the format of the match keep things way more logical and simple. Low-Ki fights against all olds before we get Yang vs Estrada for a while. Siaki plays his egoistical self, to the point of betraying his own partners. Good stuff here. Main event of Jarrett & Truth vs Lynn & Styles was pretty good too. Interesting to see Lynn & Styles working against non X division guys. Lynn kinda shows his limitations as he doesn't have much in term of low grade offense to make his comebacks, and his punches don't look too good. AJ Styles shines against Jarrett, but he also badly blows one tag team spot. Truth basically does his stuff and gets out of the way. Bad finish *again* with the old "two referees count a different guy for the pinfall" with the added shitty bonus of the belt being held up. Damn, they are doing every bad old-school finishes to add with the modern Russoesque shitty booking. I should add that the announcing is really exhausting. Just cut Don West's mic, please. 2002.08.14 Low-Ki vs Sonny Siaki vs Jimmy Yang vs Jose Estrada 2002.08.14 Jeff Jarrett & Ron Killings vs Jerry Lynn & AJ Styles

I actually almost went into an WWECW watch a few weeks ago, beginning with this show. The Angle vs Orton match was so everything I hate about mid-00's modern WWE style, with Orton being a fucking black hole of dullness and boredom already and Angle being all about stupid anklelock reversals and shitty suplexes, that I stopped my WWECW watch right there. Well, and I'm at this point where Angle has actually been the best worker on WWECW TV thus far. Well, maybe not, I'd probably say Sabu has been, but I certainly warmed up a lot on Angle just by the virtue of him delivering those rare worthwhile wrestling moment on this awful TV show.

Konnan was hanging around in WWF then?! Max Moon was designed for him.

Episode 9 finally has a really good match. And no surprise to me, it's Sabu vs Kurt Angle. It's too bad Angle is leaving, as I really learned to enjoy him again here. Sabu is always fascinating to me, as he does so much little things right, like throwing a good looking punch just to fill space and time like Hansen would, or his facials when he's throwing elbows on Angle who's on his back, or selling a bodypart just to make things looks better when a transition is coming. Plus this was work non-extreme rule, and Sabu is absolutely not hurt by this. He doesn't need any gimmick. And he busts out a 2 Cold Scorpio like reverse splash from the tope rope which I don't thin I've seen him do before. I love Sabu. His stock is still rising with me. However, I don't like RVD, and he ruins the match with a shitty run-in (worst looking Vandaminator ever) where he attacks both guys. Still, very good match until then. The rest of the show was garbage. A three minute match between Dreamer and Knox, ending with Heyman, his security guards, Sandman and Test all showing up. Okay, can we get Kelly's exposé back, please ? A boring WWE promo by Big Show. Kevin Thorne looking like the least freakish vampire ever. The jury's out on his in-ring talent, but he doesn't show me much thus far. Ariel's bat rope routine and slutty gothic behaviour is easily the only worthy thing in this outfit. And then, more promising debut, with Rene Dupree, doing some sort of self-absorbed bodybuilder-like gimmick. I have no idea what those "french" words he uttered were BTW. Made no sense to me. Yawn. Well, CM Punk dropped a quote by Voltaire, so I guess French culture was well represented after all. 2006.08.08 Sabu vs Kurt Angle

Windham.

There's a possibility. But there's no probability.

Oh yeah, that was brutal. In matches he usually hits them pretty damn good, but this one just was totally off.

I could get someone taping out with PPV 8. Much more problematic stuff here, and quite a bit of crap too. I never cared much for triple threat matches, especially without elimination. It always makes everything convoluted, and that was the case here with Low-Ki vs AJ Styles vs Jerry Lynn, a total spotfest match with some spots that were kinda cool but also kinda ridiculous, with one body triggering the move that the other two would normally do on their own. Plus the match can only be about breaking pinfall attempts all the time, which really prevents any build of any sort. It's a spotfu. Okay. A pretty good one of course with these three, and AJ acting clearly heelish now. So problem is that it really became way too cute at the end, especially when each would use another guy's finisher, with the requisite kickout, of course. Then it got really stupid when the ref counted two for Low-Ki on Lynn, then AJ fell straight on the top of them, rolled around, and the ref still counted the three to give Ki the win. No idea if that was a timing fuck-up, but it was a completely absurd finish which pretty much negated the entire match too, which already had a million break-ups by that point. So yeah, awful title change for a decent but way too cutesy match overall. I think that I actually enjoyed Jeff Jarrett vs Apolo more than the triple threat, as it was a pretty solid match overall. Better than some vaunted Jarrett vs Booker T stuff from late WCW. Well, this one got a bad finish too, the classic "one guy lifted his shoulder during a double pin", but at least that was not totally illogical. Jarret worked his unspectacular self and Apolo was decent in an agile power kinda guy, bleeding of course since he's puerto-rican. The post match had a swerve aspect to it, as Steamboat would give The Truth to Jarrett, but only as his tag team partner. Okay. Yeah, because The Truth won NWA title from faceless champion Ken Shamrock, who I'm glad is going away from my TV, as he's really been bland and not good in the ring. I'm curious to see how they manage this Truth title reign, but at least they put it on a guy with heat. The Flying Elvis' vs Amazing Red & SAT was a pretty good opener, and probably the best match of the night after all. Very indy-like, especially with SAT whose team name and outfits scream INDY. The Spanish Announce Team, come on. I guess it's funny in a meta kind of way, but they look like a bunch of Amazing Red minions. The storyline was that Siaki wanted to work the match alone, so his partners finally abandonned him for a while. Fun opener with in retrospect much less cuteness than in the main event, and I enjoy the Elvis' dynamics. Apart from a good interview segment with Monty Brown, who got attacked by Skipper (and yellow paint), Malice vs Don Harris was actually quite watchable, although I have no idea how Don got blood. Didn't make sense either. But there was an awful and long segment with Gilberti and the Dupps (and Ed Ferrara) and another embarrassing Bruce vs Miss TNA match. Add to that the retarded ending of the main event and you got the most unsatisfying PPV since the very earliest ones. 2002.08.07 Flying Elvis' vs Amazing Red & SAT

Rick "The Model" Martel hailed from Cocoa Beach, Fl.

To the Canadian fans, yeah. But do most Americans really know the difference between, say, Toronto and Quebec? I'm not talking necessarily about the educated people on this forum, but rather the general masses who watch Raw. Absolutely. Anglophone Canadians can easily pass for Americans (recall the hilarious "USA" chants during the Bret/Yoko match at WM9). Francophone Canadians are more clearly foreign. Yep. Rick Martel. Dino Bravo. The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers. The Quebecers. La Resistance (ok, this gimmick was dumb as fuck). The thing is, Kevin Steen isn't presented as a Quebecer per say like Dino or the Rougeaus were. But at some point, Steen could very weel speak french just to draw heat. Hell, picture a PPV main event in Montreal between Steen & Zayn (although I do think Zayn is part of the anglophone community of Montreal). Could they could do a Mania over there in a few years, with the induction of Carpentier, the Rougeaus and Martel ?

Yeah, but he's not only from Canada. He's from Quebec. That's different...

It gets some buzz. That's all they want at this point.

I don't take this seriously enough to whine about anything. It's just funny to me that Bob Sapp or Paul Jones would even be discussed in a top 100 GWE poll. I mean, Bob Sapp. Really ? At this rate people will name Yingling the Erotic Terrorist soon.

Well you got a laugh out of me, so that was worth it. I dunno. Good power worker when he was part of Doom, which was probably his peak as a worker. I like Doom quite a bit. Amounted to not much in single sadly. A few good matches there and there. His Faarooq stint was dull as hell in the ring, with shitloads of boring matches. The APA is ridiculously overrated, like every WWF team of that period. The New Blackjacks were better. To me he's an underachiever ocnsidering his athletic ability. Pretty good worker.

No. And I love Kanyon. Mid-card guy. Still underpushed for his talent though.

The lesser half of Doom.

Quite frankly, at this point, this has become a "name anyone you want" game anyway, so why not Ron Simmons.

Because Kane had been introduced after months of a major storyline involving the Undertaker and was a huge "7 feet" jacked up monster, with big time production effects, while La Parka had been a goofy luchador wearing a skeleton outfit and doing insane dives in six-men time filler lucha matches for one year by that point. At this rate, fucking Wrath had more chance of getting over, and he kinda did actually in late 98 before getting squashed by Nash, just because. Come on people, La Parka in WCW. Should he have been pushed a lot more into a player in the mid card ? Without a doubt. But a main event guy in that company during those years ? Not a chance. Rey on the other hand ? Without a doubt.

Cena is the best Hulk Hogan ever, basically (in the ring I mean).

I actually like Batista way more than I like Orton (not hard), and I remember thinking that HHH match at Mania was really good and one of HHH's best performance. But the whole presentation is stereotypical from the mid'00's WWE, which I really don't care for. Big Show has actively sucked thus far, so yeah, not a good deal for Batista I guess.

DDP. Raven. Jericho. Scott Steiner. Benoit. Eddie. Rey Jr. (yeah, he could and should).

Ok, this TV show has to be a giant troll. Episode 8 takes place at the Hammerstein Ballroom, with a bunch of ECW mutants. So you know they'll shit on a main event like Big Show vs Batista, rightfully so, as it's a terrible match. And even in a 8 minutes or so TV match, they are so bad that the only way they try to work a "good match" is, yeah, you guessed it, spamming nearfalls and kickouts. Well, spamming in a lumbering, very deliberate way. Batista reminds me why this era of WWE is so terrible on every aspect, the generic roided look with tribal tatoos on the trunks, the robotic style. Anyway, match ends on a DQ (in an ECW title match) and Sabu proceeds to do a bunch of chair spots on Show who then falls down through a table, so I guess that was their way on redeeming themselves. Anyway. Kurt Angle squashed the Brooklyn Brawler. Yeah, WWE hilarity here and not a waste of time at all. Kevin Thorne cuts a typical WWE promo, devoid of any character. This promotion is lifeless. And then there's this Tommy Dreamer & Sandman vs Mike Knox & Test match, which is pretty much useless too, the worst Nakamaki & Ohno vs Leatherface 1 & 2 match ever. The highlight is Sandman throwing a dropkick. We get Dreamer sexually assaulting Kelly. You know, even in ECW, I don't see the purpose of a babyface spanking a girl who really hasn't been portrayed as a heel at all and never did anything bad to begin with. That was pretty appaling to be honest. Then we get Heyman's security running in and Test throwing Dreamer in the barb wire board twice. The ECW originals are pictured as complete jobbers again. The only saving grace of this show was the debut of CM Punk against Justin Credible, in a pretty good short match. Punk got over big time in front of this audience of course, and Credible looked decent, busting out a cool Lance Storm leg roll up. But really, this show… Oh yeah, and Sabu talks too now, because those WWE dialogues are so good.

This. And I do enjoy Cena more than any other 00's WWE manufactured big match worker, Lesnar expected (but he's a special case). And really, there are some other issues like execution (sorry, but it does matter). To get back to that Owens match (which I liked quite a bit before the overlong finishing stretch), finisher kickouts spamming does not a great match (or work) make.

Watching the early PPV's, TNA had some pretty good wrestling content from the beginning. It's much much better than the last 1 1/2 year of WCW (then again, everything is), and also murders early WWECW which I happen to watch at the same time.