My Take Radio

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.

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?

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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