Here at My Take Radio, we are all about indi­vid­ual opin­ions, hence the name. Fel­low staff writer Bryan wrote an arti­cle sim­i­lar to this one in late 2009 and this is just going to be my two cents on the issue of wrestling. His arti­cle was great and I hope you enjoy mine as well because the state of wrestling has just been both­er­ing me lately.

If you are one of the fans that gets to tune in every Thurs­day night, or even one of the down­load­ers, you know that the sec­ond seg­ment in the show han­dles wrestling. We even had an “impromptu guest” call in late dur­ing last week’s show to share his pas­sion for wrestling with us. The wrestling seg­ment rarely goes over five min­utes and is usu­ally more like two. That is not so cool on a show that has a one hun­dred and fifty minute time slot. Host Rich has him­self debated drop­ping the seg­ment from the show and it only still exists because lis­ten­ers like myself voted against it.

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TNA has been rid­ing the wave of Hulka­ma­nia recently, which while good in the­ory, has done noth­ing to improve TNA wrestling over­all. Like any fan that watches wrestling I am used to the good, the bad and the ugly pro­gram­ming that is cre­ated by wrestling pro­mo­tions. As such, this week proved to be the break­ing point for me as a fan — sim­ply because TNA is not fol­low­ing sim­ple logic which is “bad guys win” and “good guys try to get revenge”. The fans tune in to see this hap­pen. All their skits and BS in an attempt to be dif­fer­ent are just hurt­ing a poten­tially good product.

I am by no means a wrestling expert or an insider, but I have been a life­long wrestling fan and as such feel that I can appre­ci­ate good and bad equally. TNA as of late has run the gamut of shitty pro­gram­ming and good wrestling  and good pro­gram­ming with shitty wrestling. Here are a few things that have really frus­trated me in term of sto­ry­lines and booking.

The Good:

• TNA Rank­ing Sys­tem: A really good idea that removes the usual crop of tal­ent out of the main event scene and adds new and intrigu­ing matchups.
• The Pope: He has great pres­ence, is ath­letic and good on the mic.
• Matt Mor­gan: Matt Morgan’s heel turn has been a fun ride and opens up tons of poten­tial feuds.
• Samoa Joe: No face tat­toos, just straight ass-whooping which is what Joe needed to be doing from the get go.

The Bad:

• The Pope: Now, you may won­der why he’s here as well, and that is sim­ple. As soon as Pope gains momen­tum and the fans react strongly to him, TNA decides to job him out and have him lose. Pope should always be in con­tention and win on TV yet lose on PPV, sim­ply because when he does win on a PPV, the fans will then be more receptive.
• Mr. Ander­son: I’d clas­sify him as 50% bad sim­ply because even though he had a great match with Angle, he con­tin­ues to have 50/50 pro­mos. Some­times he’s on and sharp, and other times it’s a mish mash of juve­nile delivery.
• Mak­ing AJ Styles a chump and then try­ing to make him a threat to Rob Van Dam
• Crazy Ric Flair: While funny in the begin­ning, the shtick has worn out. Flair is a shadow of his for­mer self and looks ridicu­lous car­ry­ing on the way he does.
• X-Division: It’s not as preva­lent a divi­sion as it used to be and it’s sad because it was what sep­a­rated them from WWE
• Women’s wrestling: Not as good as it used to be and the matches have been short and sloppy
• Blood: The overuse of blood and blade jobs have watered down the sig­nif­i­cance of the prover­bial “crim­son mask”.

The Ugly:

• Abyss: Power ring, red & yel­low ring gear that makes him more Hogan flunky then “Monster”
• Hogan: If you are the author­ity fig­ure that’s fine, but hav­ing to see you at min­i­mum 5 times per broad­cast is a bit much.
• Lacey Von Erich: Easy on the eyes yet ter­ri­ble in the ring. Some­one please work with her so she doesn’t hurt her­self or any other Knockout.
• Let­ting Awe­some Kong & Daniels jump ship. Two tal­ented work­ers that were assets to their respec­tive classes
• Try­ing to com­pete against WWE early on instead of grow­ing and estab­lish­ing the brand.
• O-Zone: Weird, Androg­y­nous and not really mesh­ing well in the TNA uni­verse. Make him more like  Goldust circa-late 90’s and less like a joke
• The Old­siders: With their days long behind them, and now work­ing with EY since they clearly have no other way to make Young rel­e­vant. Nash makes a great author­ity guy or even Enforcer, but the need for these guys to wres­tle escapes me.

In an era where the WWE has gone the PG route and shed the “atti­tude” that made them a phe­nom­e­non, one con­stant has remained — and that is the love/hate rela­tion­ship between the WWE uni­verse and John Cena. From the freestyling, throwback-wearing street sol­dier, to a modern-day Hulk Hogan, John Cena has had a very inter­est­ing jour­ney. Since he burst on the scene as the blue chip­per that pushed Kurt Angle to the limit, Cena has always had a unique fol­low­ing. Most feel his Hip-Hop per­sona was his best run, while oth­ers feel that his work as “Pro­to­type” and web-maniac “Brubaker” are what he should be doing.

Vince McMa­hon knows that the best way to sep­a­rate money from fans is through the kids, and look­ing at the cur­rent crop of WWE super­stars, the most main­stream guy really is John Cena. Many feel that Rey is the one that kids flock to — but kids can relate to the GI Joe-esque, pos­i­tive mes­sage throw­ing Cena a whole lot more. Not to men­tion the ladies like him as well, and that is a demo­graphic the WWE is try­ing to gain favor with. If the moms and the kids like Cena then they will gladly drop dough on his mer­chan­dise. The brash WWE pre­sen­ta­tion, while awe­some dur­ing the 90’s and bet­ter part of 2000, has run it’s course and Amer­ica has become more pussy-whipped and soft, so WWE was forced to adapt.

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On March 28, 2010,  the world got to see the “last match” in the leg­endary career of Shawn Michaels. As a wrestling fan, I truly feel old watch­ing it all unfold. I’ve been watch­ing wrestling since I was a kid and I remem­ber The Rock­ers vs. The Hart Foun­da­tion, Michaels turn­ing on Jan­netty, his first WWF title win, Mon­treal and many other mem­o­ries. To watch it all end, while unfor­tu­nate, is the right thing since it now allows a “new face’” to move up the rung.

Shawn Michael’s last match was against The Under­taker, whom he faced for the sec­ond time after los­ing to him at Wrestle­ma­nia 25. Their pre­vi­ous match was awe­some from start to fin­ish and quite frankly, is the mea­sur­ing stick of in-ring sto­ry­telling. Their sec­ond match was more of the same, but this match had “the career” of HBK and “the streak” of the ‘Taker on the line. Both guys deliv­ered what will be remem­bered as one of the best matches in recent memory.

Here is a video pack­age cap­tur­ing some of HBK’s best moments, as well as high­lights from this past weekend’s Wrestle­ma­nia 26.

Who do you think has the right com­bi­na­tion of tal­ent and ath­leti­cism to carry on the HBK legacy?

If you haven’t been watch­ing TNA either because of Hogan & Bischoff or because the pro­mo­tion hasn’t got you atten­tion then check out some of the bet­ter seg­ments from this past Monday’s impact. I think TNA is mov­ing in the right direc­tion and start­ing to place a smidge more faith in their home­grown stars. What did you guys think of Monday’s Impact?

Grow­ing up I watched a lot of wrestling. Over the past ten years or so I’d drift in and out of it, watch­ing for sev­eral weeks in a row and then not, mostly because the prod­uct was not con­sis­tent. Clearly, dif­fer­ent peo­ple watch wrestling for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Some watch for a cer­tain wrestler, oth­ers love the amaz­ing high-risk moves, and peo­ple like me enjoy a good story mixed with good performances.

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ECW broad­cast it’s last show tonight, and while I was sad­dened at the end of an era for extreme wrestling, I was glad to see it end. ECW was the antithe­sis of WWE and WCW. ECW gave us some very mem­o­rable and his­toric moments - such as invad­ing WWF the first time, Shane Dou­glas toss­ing the NWA belt in the trash, The Mass Tran­sit inci­dent and many oth­ers. ECW also intro­duced many of the iconic and leg­endary super­stars of today. Super­stars like Rey Mys­te­rio, Chris Jeri­cho, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guer­rero, Dean Malenko, Tazz, Mike Awe­some, Raven, Sand­man, Sabu and of course The “Whole Fuckin’ Show” Rob Van Dam. But after ECW went under, many of these super­stars went to the remain­ing 2 pro­mo­tions. Some flour­ished and oth­ers didn’t get far enough to make sig­nif­i­cant impact. However, their matches and mem­o­ries lived on as the var­i­ous pro­mo­tions heard that iconic chant “E-C-Dub, E-C-Dub,E-C-Dub” in every arena- keep­ing ECW alive amongst fans.

The sum­mer of 2005 saw a resur­gence of ECW, thanks in part to WWE cre­at­ing the One Night Stand PPV, which besides bring­ing nos­tal­gia to fans showed WWE that ECW was still alive but with a faint pulse. WWE saw dol­lar signs and in June of 2006 decided to hold another One Night Stand, but this time, it would lead to the rebirth of ECW on the SciFi chan­nel. For­mer ECW owner Paul Hey­man was put in charge of this new/old upstart brand and with that WWE’s ver­sion of ECW was born. Com­ing off the his vic­tory over John Cena at One Night Stand 2, it was a no brainer that The “Whole Dam Show” Rob Van Dam would be the re-launched brands’ Cham­pion.  Alas, the magic of One Night Stand slowly faded and WWECW became more and more preva­lent with each pass­ing week. Slowly but surely ECW Orig­i­nals quit or were released, and the mem­o­ries and super­stars of old were replaced with young WWE new­com­ers that needed a place to hone their craft. This was by many con­sid­ered the end, but to me this paved the way for a new gen­er­a­tion of wrestlers such as Monty Brown, Eli­jah Burke, Evan Bourne, CM Punk, Zack Ryder and Ezekiel Jack­son that would carry the flag of ECW in it’s final days with Tommy Dreamer still there as the last sol­dier fight­ing the good fight. Tommy Dreamer recently left the WWE and while he did say his good­byes, the fans knew that Tommy couldn’t carry this torch any further.

To me, ECW should have ended with Tommy Dreamer win­ning the belt one last time and retir­ing with the belt to put a happy end­ing on this leg­endary brand. But sadly that was wish­ful think­ing. ECW ended with it’s last cham­pion Chris­t­ian being defeated by Ezekiel Jack­son in an “extreme rules” match leav­ing Ezekiel as your last ECW cham­pion. I believe ECW died the day Tommy Dreamer left the WWE and what ended tonight was just another WWE brand.

Shed no tears for ECW wrestling fans, because the mem­o­ries we have can never be taken away. You can change the logo, the style and the wrestlers, but at the end of the day there was and will always be one ECW. The ECW that was owned by Paul Hey­man and had wrestlers like Dreamer, Sand­man, Funk, Cac­tus Jack, New Jack, Raven, Sabu and many oth­ers bleed­ing and wrestling for our entertainment.

Rest In Peace ECW.

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When TNA first started, I knew they were a spe­cial orga­ni­za­tion. They had a unique and inno­v­a­tive prod­uct that intro­duced us to guys like AJ Styles, Christo­pher Daniels, CM Punk, Abyss, Beer Money, Triple X, Amaz­ing Red and count­less other bright young tal­ents. Over time TNA evolved from a niche com­pany to an estab­lished brand. They went from weekly PPV’s to TNA Impact on Spike TV and have been grow­ing ever since. Over the course of this growth, we have seen some great vet­eran tal­ent come through TNA’s doors. Super­stars like Raven, Sabu, D-Lo Brown, Kid Kash, Chris­t­ian Cage and of course, their best acqui­si­tion was Olympic gold medal­ist Kurt Angle. Most of these vet­er­ans came in and helped the orga­ni­za­tion as well as helped make stars out of TNA’s young talent.

Recently though, some­thing hap­pened that has made TNA stand­out to a larger audi­ence - that being the involve­ment of Hulk Hogan & Eric Bischoff. While I appre­ci­ated the fact that Hogan was involved in grow­ing a new pro­mo­tion and even adding some main­stream media expo­sure to the brand, I was con­cerned about the appear­ances of some less than desir­able wrestlers that would jeop­ar­dize the growth of TNA’s home grown tal­ent. Hogan suc­ceeded in bring­ing in some new blood, but, mixed in with the old were Hogan flunkies and older wrestlers that frankly have no place in the pro­mo­tion. Over the last few weeks, TNA has become a mish mosh of 1990 WWE Atti­tude Era + WCW/NWO, which has turned me off from the prod­uct a bit. Now, often times I hear wrestlers say that “marks” know noth­ing about the busi­ness and should stop try­ing to know every­thing. Sadly in some cases they have a point. Nonethe­less, I wanted to take the chance to do a lit­tle arm­chair book­ing and give my own take on how I’d change TNA. Enjoy.

• Keep Hogan as an on-air, non-wrestling tal­ent but keep the TV time minimal.
• Eric Bischoff is best suited to work behind the scenes and help grow the prod­uct with­out hog­ging the spotlight.
• Kevin Nash should be involved with Hogan in a GM-type role.
• Mick Foley should work back­stage with the tal­ent and help them improve. His TV appear­ances should be few and far between.
• Ric Flair should con­tinue with AJ Styles as I see that part­ner­ship hav­ing potential.
• Christo­pher Daniels needs to be in the main event scene and even hold the title at some point.
• Samoa Joe should be in the title pic­ture often, as his matches with AJ & Daniels are without-a-doubt classics.
• Pope D’Angelo Dinero is ready for the main event - let’s move him up a few pegs.
• There should be a TV Title to free up space in the X-Division.
• Build your X-Division around Amaz­ing Red, Homi­cide, Doug Williams, Syxx Pac (If he’s going to stay clean) and Suicide.
• I would not have released Petey Williams.
• Main­tain the seri­ous edge in the Knockout’s divi­sion. Avoid going into WWE ter­ri­tory with gim­mick matches.
• No Scott Hall – Huge fan but he adds noth­ing to the product.
• Raven needs to be in TNA for his great mic work and also for those extreme matches with Abyss & Rhino.
• Don’t lose sight of your Tag Divi­sion and make the best in the world. That means no Nasty Boys!!!
• Why is Orlando Jor­dan there? Boot him.
• Sign Rob Van Dam to add some spice to the X-Division and World Title scene.
• Estab­lish a work­ing rela­tion­ship with for­eign pro­mo­tions and show­case their tal­ent against TNA tal­ent. Great way to learn things
• Keep the 6-sided ring to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­selves from the competition.
• Cre­ate a devel­op­men­tal pro­gram to help cur­rent tal­ent improve and younger tal­ent become better.
• Macho Man should man­age Jay Lethal. Makes for a com­pelling sto­ry­line but it needs to have a solid pay­off to ele­vate Jay.

If I con­tinue this post will be way too long. Nonethe­less, these things are but small steps toward mak­ing TNA a legit threat to WWE.

What do you folks think?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the com­ments below.

Too often I com­plain about the things I dis­like in pro­fes­sional wrestling, but instead of rant­ing and rav­ing about these things, I decided to write about how I would fix some things. Some of you may agree or dis­agree with my sce­nar­ios and are wel­come to comment.

Wel­come to the first col­umn of The Arm­chair Booker!

Let’s start with the num­ber one WWE show:

RAW

• Do away with the guest host­ing and either intro­duce a GM or some author­ity fig­ure to run the show.

• John Cena-Needs a heel turn to freshen up his char­ac­ter. Bring back the freestyles and street swag. Fans will enjoy the turn I’m sure. I would have also aligned him with Cryme Tyme for a solid faction.

• Bret Hart– Should have had the Hart Dynasty with him when he appeared on Raw and align DX with Vince. Would have ele­vated The Hart Dynasty and taken advan­tage of exist­ing beef between Bret,HBK & HHH.
• Bring in the other Dib­i­ase brother and make a Tag Team in Legacy. That way you could have the Dib­i­ase broth­ers for the tag belts, Cody for IC/US title, and Orton for the World Title. I’d call the Dib­i­ase broth­ers Money Inc. as an homage to their dad.
• Reunite the Colon Boithers, Car­l­ito & Primo, since solo they are struggling.
• Ele­vate Evan Bourne into a stronger mid-card feud with Swag­ger and MVP as your core guys.
• No more Hornswoggle!
• Would make San­tino a legit threat and cap­i­tal­ize on his pop­u­lar­ity by putting him in the IC/US title hunt as well.

Smack­down

• Cre­ate a sta­ble with Finlay,Drew McIn­tyre and Shea­mus. Have a vet­eran work with both of these young tal­ents and also cre­ate a tag team as well.
• Push Edge as your num­ber one heel.

• Con­tinue build­ing CM Punk’s Straight Edge Society.
• Move Khali to an enforcer role and limit his ring work.
• Build you Women’s Divi­sion around Beth Phoenix.
• Make Dolph Zig­gler, John Mor­ri­son and Matt Hardy your main mid-card guys for the US title, but ele­vate them into the main event often. This will allow you to both gauge crowd response and inject new blood into the main event scene.
• Chris Jeri­cho & Rey Mys­te­rio need to feud at the main event level.
• Keep and Kane & The Under­taker together and have them be the cen­ter of your Tag Team Division.

ECW

• Bring back the Hard­core Matches.
• Intro­duce a TV Title to give the mid-card guys a title to feud over.
• Shel­ton Ben­jamin needs some sort of mouth piece that can help him get over as a heel. I’d go with him, Zeke and Regal.
• Koslov needs to work on not look­ing so robotic in the ring.
• Align Baretta & Croft with Zack Ryder.
• Chris­t­ian needs to leave ECW in the Draft. Bring in a new vet­eran to carry the brand.
• I would move Char­lie Haas to ECW.
• Con­tinue push­ing Yoshi Tatsu.
• Use ECW to build new tal­ent and keep call­ing up new ros­ter mem­bers to keep the brand fresh.

This is just a sam­pling of how I’d change things. I am sure many of  you will have thoughts and sug­ges­tions of your own. Feel free to share them.

As much as I love wrestling and their spin-off prod­ucts, there are times that you really need to go “What The Fuck”!!!! My dear read­ers - this is one of those times. WWE has decided to launch a series of comic books enti­tled “WWE Heroes” which cen­ters around the WWE ros­ter and their adven­tures. The back­story for the series cen­ters around an age-old feud between “The Shadow King” and “The King Of Kings” (which prob­a­bly means HHH and The Under­taker or some­thing along those lines).

While I appre­ci­ate cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion, WWE Heroes to me is just another WWE attempt to cash in on a new medium. Not to be a total douche but are any comic fans really read­ing this? Do they even care?

I admire what WWE is try­ing to do but I feel that they are spread­ing them­selves thin with so many projects. Between films and comics and poor attempts at main­stream­ing (Raw guest hosts I am look­ing at you), WWE is pro­vid­ing var­ied prod­ucts but none are par­tic­u­larly inno­v­a­tive or engag­ing. I think that the most suc­cess­ful thing that they have done thus far in terms of new projects was the flick “See No Evil” and while it was orig­i­nal, at least used a gen­uine scary lead char­ac­ter in the form of Kane.

I really would like WWE to reach that pin­na­cle of pop­u­lar­ity, but with all these hokey attempts at main­stream­ing they are tak­ing three steps back instead of mov­ing for­ward. That’s my take! What’s yours?

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