LFG on A&E

[The Thread Killer]

I get the distinct impression that I am going to regret starting this topic for a couple of reasons. Either everybody is going to ignore it, and I am going to be the only person posting in this thread, or as per new tradition, this thread will immediately veer horribly off-topic and become yet another forum for airing grievances about the current political climate in the United States.

However, being the eternal optimist that I am, I figured I would see if anybody has actually bothered to watch the new network TV series on A&E called “LFG” and actually felt like discussing it? If you have seen it, I wondered if anybody had an opinion? 

For those of you that might not be aware, this show is replacing Biography in the A&E Sunday Night lineup. It is basically a reboot and revamp of “Tough Enough” concept.

The show takes place at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, and all of the participants are current trainees who have been signed to developmental deals, but have not shown up on TV yet. Some of them have been in training for as long as a year and some of them have only been there for a couple of weeks. They are divided into four teams with the coaches being Mickie James, Bully Ray, Booker T and The Undertaker. Shawn Michaels, Matt Bloom, Fit Finlay and Terry Taylor have appeared on screen so far as well.

I guess the idea is that they will show the participants training every week, and at the end of each show there will be a match at the PC, which will be called by Jeremy Borash and Vic Joseph. Then the judges will decide who looked better in the match and that person will move on in the competition. They are also doing skills, competitions, for example, on the first episode they did promos. Some of the trainees did surprisingly well with their promos, and some of them were extremely cringeworthy, as you might expect.

One of the interesting trainees is the son of legendary boxer Evander Holyfield. They also have a former Olympic gold medallist in Greco-Roman wrestling, a young lady whose name I forget, but she seems to have a ton of charisma and raw athletic talent.

One thing that surprised me in the first episode is that a lot of these trainees are much older than you would expect, some of them are in their late 20s and early 30s already.

Whoever wins this whole deal is apparently getting upgraded from a developmental contract to a full NXT deal which means they will end up on TV. The main problem with the original Tough Enough concept to me seemed to be that they were taking people with absolutely no athletic background or real interest in the business and then putting them on TV which was a recipe for disaster for the most part. I know we got John Morrison, Chris Nowinski and Jackie Gayda out of the deal, but for the most part, it seemed to be pointless.

This show may actually work better because the coaches seem willing to work with the talent in the PC and the main roster talent will probably be more likely to accept people that came through that system, since a lot of of them did.

Anybody see it? Any thoughts?