Ten Thoughts on The State of Wrestling |This Week

My erstwhile host on Inside Pulse Aaron Glazer, who had just started giving me guest space in his weekly bit there, (which is why I've neglected my blog here), has been going through some issues in his personal life and not writing. I won't share details, it's his business, not mine or yours, but until he feels up to writing again, I'll resume my ranting here.

10) TNA has booked RVD vs Abyss in a loser leaves TNA match for their next PPV. Okay.... so..... they can pay the lazy coasting bastard extra monjey for the blowoff to give him a "Storyline exit", but they couldn't be bothered to have him drop the belt to Abyss while he was still on his original term contract? TNA = Trainwreck Nimrod Authorship.

9) Golduswt and Regal last night showed the world how a comedy match should be done. Quick, to the point, gets the laughs with something that makes contextual sense for those involved, (Regal mocking Dust's mouthsnap gesture, Dust using Regal's knucks), and then get it over fast before it wears itself out and bores the audience. Of course this means next week we'll get Santino and Koslov having a dance-off with Dibiase. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong. I DARE you.

8) Sheamus is so bloody inconsistant. It gets on my nerves. One week he's cutting amazing promos that stay on point, get himself over, and sell the angle he's in the middle of while still leaving his co-workers room to play off him. The next his promos are generic cookie-cutter heel number 23, paint-by-numbers crap that does nothing to push the angle or get anyone over. And his rotating between cowardly heel and baqdass tough guy who likes to hurt people is getting seriously old.

7) Would it kill them to give us more than "My apprentice Alex Riley" from the Miz to explain why Riley isn't jumped by security every time he hops the gaurdrail? This is one area where the sledgehammer of plot would actually be a helpful tool.

6) When Jericho is consistantly pure gold every goddamn week no matter what he's doing, when he has the audience so completely in his hand that he's successfully doing 5 or 6 face/heel turns a night, when he is clearly the real MVP of the company, why oh why has the 'E still not busted their asses and bent over backward to lock him into a new contract? I garauntee the product will suffer noticably without him.

5) I actively contemplated suicide watching the R-Truth/Eve vs Dibiase/Dyed Frog Whore segment on Raw. I am publicly declaring, right now, with all of you as witnesses, that I, Penny Sautereau-Fife, a legally married lesbian, will publicly suck Vince McMahon's wrinkly old man cock if he signs legal documentation forbidding his company from EVER doing a segment like this EVER AGAIN.

4) New Raw guest host rule; NEVER HIRE FUCKING ATHLETES. Football players, basketball plaqyers, baseball players, Nascar drivers, their sports differ but they have one universal equalizer; NONE OF THEM CAN TALK FOR SHIT, except the ones Vince is too cheap to spring for. Every minute of that egotistal twonk talking last night is time on my life expectancy I can never get back. I have MAYBE 2 years left, wasting my time with this pointless celebrity circle-jerking is tantamount to slow homicide.

3) I will concede that Kandertaker have been cutting effective promos on each other, but I would still rather lick Ron Jeremy's asscrack than sit through their 84'000th PPV match. The Dead Man Walking is now the Old Man Limping. For the first time in his carreer he actually LOOKS dead. I do not want to see him and Kane trying to carry each other when both mens' best matches ALWAYS included a smaller, faster, vastly superior in talent opponent, ala Kurt Angle or Shawn Micheals, carrying them to a classic. Kanedertaker agaqinst each other have NEVER had an actual good match, they've at beswt coasted by on the cheese each encounter was draped in.

2) I read Scott Kieth's Smark Rant on the Hell in a Cell collection DVD, and I'm both impressed and mi8ldly disturbed that they left the one Benoit was in fully intact. We all assumed that one would be highlight reel only, showing some "Ooooo aqhhh" spots and carefully removing Benoit from the selection, as per the 'E's "Benoit? Who's that? we know not of any Benoit" policy since the Incident. Part of me wants to hope this means Benoit won't be excluded from Jericho's DVD, part of me is screaming to block out all memory of having known him personally.

1) I'm in the camp that hopes Heyman never comes to TNA. The product is damaged beyond all repair, and it's far too late for Heyman to save it, even if Dixie gave him full booking and hiring/firing control. Heyman would try his best, but ultimately Russo, Mantell, Bischoff, you name it, everyone booking for TNA has raped the company too many times. TNA is irrepairably traumatized by shitty selfish out of touch booking, and failing to turn it around would kill the last lingering shred of Paul's love for the business, garaunteeing we never experience his insane genius again.

That's my ranting done for this week. If I weren't allergic to alcohol I'd be pish't right now to burn that DiBiase/Truth segment out of my brain.

Actually I think I might go get drunk anyway. Massive stomach bleeding would still be more fun and pleasurable than that fucking segment was.

We now return you to whatever life you're living.

A Fan's Hope For Closure

So Tommy Dreamer cuts a promo on TNA and actually made me cry a little bit.



Now everyone and their dog who's following this TNA/ECW development has an opinion, ranging from hell yeah to please God fuck NO! about whether or not this One Last Stand idea for Hard Justice is a good idea or a trainwreck waiting to happen.

The feeling Im getting from this TNA/ECW thing is that Tommy wants one night to remind the fans what Vince spent three and a half years doing his damnedest to make people forget; The heart and spirit and creativity of the original ECW. One Night Stand SHOULD have been ECW's closure, it SHOULD have been their last stand. But then WWECW came along and while yes, a handful of new stars emerged from the wreckage, WWECW was a trainwreck from beginning to end. It made Paul Heyman so bitter he left wrestling altogether. His only wrestling connection now is occasionally ranting in Britain's the Sun paper, and he mostly runs Girls Gone Wild/Maxim type stuff now.

WWECW all but destroyed ECW's legacy. Up until late 06 you would still get ECW chants like wildfire when a badass spot was pulled off that reminded fans of ECW's heyday. But by early 07, the chants were dwindling. Younger fans disregarded WWECW as a B-Show and barely paid attention. Older fans migrated away with a sour taste in their mouths. And ECW was forever stained by the stink of Vince running it, and very few people believe that wasn't Vince's intention all along, to bury it.

Tommy Dreamer doesn't want the fans to remember zombies and vampires and Abraham Washington. He wants people to remember this.



And I can't fault him for that. The real ECW can't ever truly be revived nor should it, but as a hardcore ECW fan from as early as I could figure out which pub carried the MSG network on Sattelite, I do want the blasphemy that was WWECW (On SyFy!!!) to NOT be the last thing fans associate with ECW. If Tommy and company can pull off one night, and be at the top of their game and do the best they can to just entertain the fans without any agendas, they will have succeeded in providing a little syrup to sweeten the mouth after the bad taste Vince left in it.

So Tommy and his friends want one night to undo the damage and have the send-off that ONS was supposed to be. I can get behind that. And if it organically grows into better long-term booking for TNA and a stronger company direction, I'm all for it. And on the off chance it succeeds and Dreamer can cinvince Paul to come run the booking and convince Dixie to give Paul full unhindered creative control, we will see something new and exciting emerge from ECW's last smoldering ashes. Because Paul is smart enough to not try and recapture the past, like Bischoff and Hogan and Russo keep trying to do. Paul will look towards building the future. Will there be traces of ECW in anything Paul does? Of course, he was the force behind it. But Paul will not try to turn TNA into ECW Version 3. Paul will make TNA a better version of TNA.

IF Tommy can convince him to try.