WCW 2.0

I haven't posted on TNA in a while...I wanted to take in Hard Justice, The Whole F'N Show, and this weeks episode as a whole. So much is going on in TNA now that one show taken out of context doesn't give the whole picture. So, with that:

Hard Justice was by and large a good show. It was what it was: an ECW reunion show that really didn't do anything for TNA except make money. It did OK (by TNA standards) with it's buy-rate, and you basically had a bunch of guys almost my dad's age pull out all the stops to put on one last great show. In fact, most of these guys will probably not be on TV again anytime soon and that isn't a bad thing. Nostalgia factor was high and when all of these guys wrestle each other it looks OK. Throw a Jay Lethal or Kazarian in the mix and these dudes look every minute their age. If all this was what it appeared to be, I would have been fine with this trip down memory lane and ready to get on with the story, so to speak. But this is not all that it was...

The next weeks show, The Whole F'N show, delivered exactly what it said it would, a PPV quality show for free. Allow me to summarize in a long run-on sentence:

AJ and Angle solid not spectacular, Love wins title and looks really rusty, Asshole Anderson, Pope, and Morgan in a three-way, Morgan wins cheap in about 4 minutes, Shannon Moore fills in for someone TNA couldn't sign and gives Jeff Hardy a match, Beer Money brings the house down against MCMG 2 out of 3 falls (MCMG retain), and RVD beat Abyss in a hardcore match (Janice never really came into play in the match, despite it being a "Stairway to Janice" match. Thanks Mr. Russo!). The real story here was Tommy Dreamer and the ECW alumni coming out to give an emotional thank you and end up getting the beatdown from Fortune ft. Doug Williams and Matt Morgan. Real bloody like. Off camera, Abyss hits RVD with Janice and RVD is taken away in an ambulance. We need some help out here!!

And I mean with the storyline, because this past weeks Impact made little to no sense. Apparently, there is a tournament to crown a new champion, as RVD is too hurt to defend the belt (by the way, title vacations are the cheapest way to take a belt off a standing champ...they used RVD to bump up ratings and cast him aside). So, if Biscoffs "top ten" ranking system is a legitimate system, then why aren't #'s 1 and 2 (Jeff Hardy and Abyss) having a match to determine an interim champion? Instead it's unranked Doug Williams and Matt Morgan as two of the 8 finalists. Huh? And strangely enough, it's was Abyss v Hardy and his plumbers crack that kicked off the show. Why even have a ranking system at all?! Of course it's a booking tool, but you paint yourself into a corner when situations like this come up and you TOTALLY invalidated Kurt Angels climb up the rankings ladder (I believe he was at #5 when this tournament came up). This is poor writing/booking at it's finest...you spend 6 weeks building up this ranking system just to ignore it when it would make the most sense to use. Please save us, Paul!

Then Jay Lethal, the man you gave the super push to and used none other than Ric Fucking Flair to put over, loses clean and convincingly to Mr. Anderson. See you in the X Division, Jay. Your push is over. After the Knockouts make their weekly mess in the ring, Ric Flair and Fortune cut a promo that you could floss your teeth with. Generation to generation, none of this shit gets old. Of course, Dixie comes out and tries to ruin the party, and in doing so Ric Flair and Mick Foley engage in a shoot/improv promo that is out of control. Tommy, please don't embarrass yourself against AJ.(Spoiler alert: he loses, but looks pretty good doing it. More a credit to AJ than Dreamer, but I digress...) Golf claps all around, gentlemen.

Then Big Sexy comes to the ring with Sting. OK, I decided to time this...the Wolfpac took up 10 minutes of airtime while Nash gave everyone a lesson on backstage politics and referred repeatedly to shit that was happening on WCW probably 5 years before anyone even started watching TNA. This is what I don't get about WCW creative: they write as if their target auduience is me. And I remember DDP and Bill Goldberg, and ECW with Chris Jericho and Dean Malenko, but guess what? I am NOT your target audience. This is why all this shoot promo stuff is beyond me. Talk about what's going on with Samoa Joe and Desmond Wolfe "in the back" if you want to be "edgy". Nobody cares about what you were doing in 1998, Kev. Not even me.

Which brings me to todays breaking news, that there is turmoil in the TNA locker room and RVD isn't afraid to tell you all about it. It seems the younger guys aren't happy with the ECW guys getting facetime. Who can blame them? Pretty much the entire ECW roster couldn't have hung with Mr. PWI 500 even in their prime. My thought was always that EV 2.0 is only here to put guys over; established names to use as fodder to fatten the TNA roster on. And with wise booking choices, this could still be the case. But if these backstage rumors are to be believed, then TNA is turning into WCW all over again. Poor booking, a bloated and ageing roster and sensationalistic story angles get in the way of quality wrestling in a time when the market cries out for an alternative product. This is where I place the blame squarely on Vince Russo and his creative cronies. Their failure to see the writing on the wall and the insistance to stick with what THEY think is right and what THEY think the fans want slowly erodes a great roster and a dedicated fanbase. He was there when WCW went from industry leader to out of business in just under two years. You would think the powers that be wouldn't allow history to repeat itself...

PS. watching RAW tonight I saw randy orten perform his pathetic RKO on John Morrison and Ted DiBiase, and got to thinking about the Diamond Cutter. Watch this video, and see how it's done, son.
So vicious!