RedJed

http://culturecrossfire.com/trtsmchat/ board will be back up sometime tuesday

Anyone bothering ordering this tonight? Looks ok on paper, the idea of two KOTM matches makes me think "why?" but I guess they figure since WWE does two Elimination Chambers every year, they are going to start doing the same? I would imagine the X division one (which most certainly should be better than the world title one, although who knows) will open the show off. Also, we have the return of Douglas and Raven to working ppvs here.......Douglas looked ok, if not a bit ring rusty though, in there against Styles a few weeks ago and Raven and Trevor Murdoch had a short but fun hardcore match on Impact this past week. More than anything on the card, I'm kind of interested to see where they go with these two guys on this show. The rest of the card looks alright, and feels more like a stacked card than normal. Morgan/Sting had a very rushed feud started, with a really weird and noneffective promo on Impact on Thursday with the stip that Morgan gets into the Mafia if he beats Sting. It wasn't clear, as it typical with TNA stips, if this means that Sting loses his MEM spot completely if he jobs out to Morgan. Chances are that Morgan will probably go over, as that just seems to be the logical direction they should go. Beer Money/Duds should be good and I expect a title change there. Beer Money is easily the number one act in the company right now. Also expect Victoria to beat Angelina Love for the women's title too, since you can tell they want to do Kong/Victoria ASAP. I'm having low expectations for the main event KOTM, part in fact to the lackluster main event last month on Sacrifice, and three of those four guys that were in this match are in this one. Styles being in the mix should make the match much better than I expect, though. And Samoa Joe is apparently injured, so if he works this match (which seems to be a question mark), he probably will be very limited in what he does. Expect them to actually do an injury angle either before or during the match to Joe to explain for him having to miss some time here. Foley really should just retain at this point and keep the belt a little longer to keep building heat for a significant title switch in due time.

Yeah its definately Taz as the guy Joe is talking to, that has been been the plan all along, but he can't debut until the non-compete clause is up in early July with WWE. WON and other places have all pretty much confirmed it. With that said, its not to say they still may do Styles/Daniels v. Joe/Taz feud though, I could see it happen. Taz could be protected to do just a little bit of working at a time and Joe could easily be the workhorse of that team. I do kind of somewhat expect Taz to work an occasional match here and there for some reason.

The two world title matches were pretty good, glad they didn't throw the belt on Show, that's for sure. Jericho/Mysterio was also awesome once again. I'm willing to give this Trump as "owner" a chance, I think it might lead to some unintentionally funny stuff from Trump at least, and I'm willing to bet he will probably end up a heel authority in no time (then bringing back Vince somehow too down the road) since he will get heat I'm sure. Wouldn't be surprised to hear this Trump storyline was an idea pushed by the NBC/Universal heads to get ratings up or something, since he is their guy for the Apprentice show that (surprisingly) did decent ratings for them last time out. So to them, he's basically a "draw" of sorts and they can tie-in his show too down the road (if this is a long term plan at least). I certainly didn't expect him to be used as an on screen character "owner" of the company before, I'll say that much. Figured at the end Trump was going to announce either Flair was GM or was just being completely reinstated as an active wrestler, leading to a huge pop for Flair coming out at the end, but instead we get assurance of HHH/Orton being next week and not at the ppv. Oh boy. Something tells me there is going to be some double-KO spot in the LMS match (they did this once during Foley/Rock's series of matches for the title) that leads to another big match right after such at the Bash, since that is the only logical reasoning for them to book stuff like this, as if HHH/Orton wasn't still happening at the ppv, they wouldn't throw a different opponent for whoever the champion was just six days later. I hope, then, that does it for Orton/HHH, as I've just had it with that program for good. We're going to have to suffer some more, though, before it's done. I think someone already said it, but I can see them doing Hell in a Cell to HHH/Orton at the Bash for sure, after a no-decision in LMS, Trump will announce that more than likely. I'm sure they feel like they have to rely on a gimmick to sell that show (and honestly given how they have booked things, I don't blame them), especially given how little time is left to build to it all. The show as a whole definately didn't need to be three hours though, as it drag on in spots, and that battle royal felt like a letdown compared to the good title matches and really good opener they did.

Wow, pretty blown away by this news. He was certainly one of the all time greats in my eyes, and his bouts with Kawada was easily the best pro wrestling feud as a whole I've ever seen in terms of pure wrestling quality. What makes it even more tragic is that his death appears to have occured as a complete result of his style. Makes you question the worth of the puro style a bit in the long term when this goes down. At least in terms of being dropped on your head pretty much consistently. I would imagine the remaining people on this board, more than not, probably don't know of him. All the same though, its extremely tragic to see a death of a legend happen in the ring like this.

There was about a twenty minute to a half hour period of the show that just had goofy segment after segment over and over, all none of which had anything to do with in-ring except one brief 3 minute match. I think it all started out with the Lauren gets beat down by Daffney in the bathroom segment (which we saw none of, apparently Lauren can't get "beatdown?") which was then immediately followed by Taylor then beat down by Daffney, then one of the most bizzare promos for (I think) Slammiversary with just about every cliche line about TNA that is heard from the IWC (such as "second rate" "independant" and so forth and then concluded by the word "Redeption." Did anyone even understand what the point of THAT was? I guess Slammiversary is supposed to be the show to prove everyone wrong that the company is for real or something, I just didn't understand why they needed to even go there. Then from there, the Beautiful People segment with Borash, which was actually pretty legitimately funny, but my god, keep Madison Rayne off the mic please. Then we got the ODB-Deaner segment, and some incoherant promo by Angle. By the time this whole period was over, I almost forgot this was an actual wrestling show and more like a wrestling parody show, since Tara and Madison Rayne then had a match which was preceded by entrances that made me think we were about to watch two former pornstars go at it. Did anyone see the washed out trashy look of both of their face closeups when they entered the ring? Whoa. Made me laugh my ass off though. Then following that match, Borash gets slapped by Eric Young in a very quick interview spot. Always gotta love it when Borash gets beat up a bit. It was just all really weird and a bit surreal and actually pretty funny (be it unintentional or not), but that's TNA for ya, kind of like a parody of wrestling 75 percent of the time. Don West is getting really good in the heel role though, more towards being a funny heel announcer like Heenan, which isnt a bad thing. Otherwise, the rest of the show was ok, seemed more wrestling heavy than is the norm for once. That was a plus. Some of the matches were alright, Douglas/Styles was surprisingly decent (although you could tell Douglas is not near in wrestling shape at all) as was the Joe stuff. The Sting/Angle match was a letdown though, and hopefully this will be the last match we see between those two as they just don't have that spark together that they once had in some of their matches. The Foley/Jarrett stuff was really "vanilla" on this show also, it seemed like. I'm just not very interested in any sort of match with those two, but a while back I sure would have. That's showing the staying power of their segments I guess. Jarrett also wore the worst ppv advertisement of a t-shirt as well, did anyone catch that?

This apparent injury of his may be a godsend, if it keeps him out until, say, Bound for Glory. If he can't work any further at this point, it ended on a strong note as basically he took out Nash, Booker, and Steiner all by himself, also is gunning for Angle and Sting at the same time. So conceivably, he could come back strong because of these things, build to something significant at Bound for Glory against either of those guys or whoever the world champ would be, Foley possibly would be a possibility too, be it Foley as champion or not. The problem is that they have totally killed off any potential with this new gimmick, not so much the gimmick as the accessories with it. The tattoo....the pajama pants.....buzzed haircut that makes him look even MORE like a 5 year old fat kid.........and of course the knife/machete/weapon of killing. Some of his interviews are really off the mark now too in how fans are supposed to get behind him, and its making it hard to do so. If they wouldn't have tried to give him this ridiculous makeover along with his weird promos, the gimmick itself might have actually worked tons better than it has as it's basically just an offshoot of Taz anyway when you break it down a bit. Speaking of Taz, he's really going to be the litmus test if he can save this Joe pseudo push that is more burial than not as he's "pushed." Knowing the history of the company to dull down any significant name that comes into the company these past 3-4 years, chances are more likely than not that it won't work having Taz either as his manager/etc or even in working a program with him eventually, at least in terms of actually getting Joe over strong in the long haul. It could potentially be a really cool idea either having them paired up or working a program against each other, though, if done properly. Especially considering Taz hasn't done shit except mundane WWE announcing for almost a whole decade, he may really be motivated to make this work. The damage may have already been done too much for anything to matter at this point, but if they could take him off TV, at least until Taz is ready to show up (which is going to be in about a month apparently) and then have both of them show up at the same time as kind of non-company vigilantes that randomly come out from the crowd to attack guys for awhile and plan their strikes on whoever without even having to wrestle matches for months, that might work. But whatever the case, upon a return, they need to turn Joe away from the really awful look they have him doing right now and, if anything, just have him dress like a common fighter, much like you would just see a UFC fighter outside the ring. That is step one. Joe never needed a flashy look, that was the whole point in why whatever gimmick he had (which was basically just a really tough bigman who was no frills) worked. Things sometime happen for a reason in this sport we all love in very ironic ways, Think of the ways, particularly, that a guy like Steve Austin just fell into two significant moments of his career - the KOTR win and his famous speech after (which was all supposed to be for HHH), as well as his match and the bloody image of him at Mania 13 against Bret Hart (which was of course supposed to be Shawn Michaels) and I think the wrestling gods above demanded a Joe injury right now to save his career, so the company can take a step back and push him right, upon a return. Time will tell, I guess.

I remember hearing it was supposed to be Best of women's TNA matches (so probably alot of Kong/Gail Kim in other words) so I don't think it's cancelled. Maybe postponed or moved to a different time or something?

So Vicki returns to Smackdown to manage someone against Edge? I'm not getting where to go from here with all of that Edge/Vicki nonsense. Or perhaps Vicki just plain stays off TV? Please? I know I'm in the minority, but her act went stale months ago to me, perhaps years ago. I wouldn't mind seeing her just moving on from the company completely and being a regular person again, particularly a widow of a former star. There is no reason to keep this up with her when it's pretty much reached the farthest it can (and should) go with her character if you ask me. In other words, I don't see the investment in having Vicki managing a guy to try to take out Edge, the story just isn't there for me since you have to turn either one of them babyface basically and I think turning Vicki babyface may be borderline impossible and turning Edge is just a bad idea. It never really made sense how Orton could basically win back the title tonight via countout, essentially. The best reasoning is "by forfeit" but just because a wrestler would no-show a match shouldn't mean he loses a title. In most cases, it just means that "injured" person would be stripped of the belt and its vacated, more often than not leading to a tournament or something. I'm sure this angle has been used TO transition back to a heel champion before in history, but lets just say it's not a good idea to repeat it, if that's the case. It's a bad idea. It just devalues the title and the guy you are trying to put heat on doesn't really get the kind of credibility you ideally would like to have as world champion, especially after getting his ass kicked the night prior. Right now, what is probably the best idea (and what I'm still betting they will do) is having a tournament spanning the next few weeks of Raw, leading to the finals at GAB for the vacant belt. And I would imagine Orton just gets the belt back again in that fashion, to make up for Batista and HHH getting over on him these last two nights. And hopefully by the time Batista returns, they don't even go back to Orton/Batista at all and instead focus on him returning and immediately turning heel on HHH for not being there two hours earlier when he needed his help against Legacy during the beatdown/injury angle. With that said now, HHH returning and getting his revenge to the nth degree on Orton now hopefully means we can move on from that feud, better yet, not even go back to it at all. What is left other than HHH getting the title back, I guess. But this has already happened just months ago, and this actually came off like a strong finish to the feud instead of going any further. I'm sure it won't be that easy and more than likely, they will do HHH/Orton for the title upcoming as that final match of a title tournament. But I've seen what I've wanted to see from all of that HHH/Orton stuff to never really want to see anymore of it again. It's just far too old and rehashed at this point. It was like watching WrestleMania all over again, only more defiantly with an exclamation point that HHH is king of the yard when push comes to shove. And that Orton still needs to be champion again, just with a different and fresh set of babyfaces against him. Kind of up and down show, but felt like one of those shows that they did do more than usual to help move storylines along, or end them in some cases. The Edge/Vicki segment was somewhat comical, and I was a bit baffled at whats going on with this Miz push. At least he's not getting buried but they got to jump the gun on something here instead of continuing with Show/Cena, I really want them to just end the Cena/Show program already (and they seem to be building to one last match with them for some reason) and see if they could actually do a legitimately competitive Miz/Cena feud. I still can't tell if they even want to push Miz or not, but I will definately say he's cutting great promos right now, so they are letting him try to get over that way first and foremost.

I'm still very baffled why Batista got the belt last night, if only to job it back out tonight, but it almost seems like they have to do it that way if he's really supposed to have surgery tomorrow. But rewarding someone with the title, even as a one day transition deal, is pretty strange at this point when he's already injured. Not getting why Batista couldn't have just done the job last night and sold an injury from that match as explanation why he will be out (again).

I'm betting he may have failed a drug test or something, he had been suspended before because of that, and if this was his third consequence, by their own rules and regulations, he must be let go. Otherwise, it's very confusing why they would let him go.

Much better show that I thought it would be, to say the least. I ended up checking it out at a local sportsbar and the crowd was super into most of the show, but people were bitching all over the place about how slow Cena/Show was, and how ridiculous that finish was too, how it made no sense because if a guy's leg is caught up in the rope, that doesn't mean you can try to make the guy submit, if anything it should have forced the hold to be broken, or did I miss the stip of supposedly no dq? Plus to go with it, Show's boot actually WASNT hanging in the rope most of the time, but they made sure to cover that up with the cameras. Other than that match and the short nonsense of Vicki and Chavo, this was a pretty solid show though. Batista/Orton was strange however, and by cage match standards not very good at all. And by how simple and straight forward, almost nonchalant that the cage match was, it explains how Batista is working through an injury. But if he's having surgery this week, why then give him the belt, only for him having to job it out likely tomorrow? Doesn't really help anyone out. I dont get this booking desicion whatsoever, but will give it a chance until tomorrow night to see where they go with it. Jericho/Rey and Hardy/Edge were both really damn good matches, and the Punk thing at the end literally caught me off guard, although clued in a bit by wondering why Jim Ross is in the ring, thinking smokescreen for something else to happen. It was funny seeing people already leaving the bar right as they were cutting to a replay of Hardy winning the title, and then stopping in midwalk when Punk's music came on. Pretty much everyone watching it was surprised. If the idea wasn't to turn Punk heel there, I think it would be a great idea for them to consider given how the reaction was for him cashing in his shot there against Hardy. That could be a great program in itself actually, Hardy/Punk. And the storyline with Jericho/Rey is some of the best stuff by far the company is doing lately. Really simple yet compelling storytelling there. And I definately admit marking a bit out over the Dreamer win. I guess since it was too obvious this was setting up to be his last match (and still might be) they thought to go with the unexpected for once with him, Dreamer FINALLY getting a title win, lasting longer than just literally minutes later losing it as he did back almost ten years ago (ironically what they did later in the night with Hardy then). I'm betting he is going to retire as champion and they will get a tournament going on ECW for the belt (building to the finals at the next ppv) but then again, I'd be all for Dreamer to actually hold the belt for a few months or so, and say he will retire when someone finally beats him, probably Swagger or someone. Damn, WWE is on a good streak of pay per views, none this year have really been bad or even just ok, everyone of them have been solid and/or well worth throwing down on. Lots of really surprising booking moves tonight, changing things up a bit more unpredictably. Didn't expect so many titles changes, that is for sure. And really liking the idea of a heel CM Punk.

Yeah you two, if he comes back at all (which he may not as he's been suspended) please don't even respond to any sort of flame baiting stuff he tries to pull. Or anyone else for that matter. If I see one more instance of it upon his suspension being lifted, he will be out, for good. The best way to deal with it is to ignore it, and if it keeps up, just get that shit out of here for good. That's really the only way things will pick up here, if posters who just want to start ridiculous arguments on a message board is totally eliminated. Then I think certain folks will stop back or show up and stay. I do agree that the real problem here is people "acting out" so to speak, that has been the entire issue with this board is as it is right now, if you know of the history that lead up to the mass exodus out of here. The issue here has always dealt with certain people just making it pointless to be here when they are around and/or alllowed to keep up with their childish bullshit. If you aren't familiar with it all, I won't get into it, but lets just say so many people left here BECAUSE of other posters (one in particular in fact) doing that sort of thing. At least that is at the core of the whole issue there. By the way, Matt and I are trying to find out how to give you mod privileges. I think we have to try and reach Mike as far as that goes.

I'm kind of torn on this show.......not sure if I will get it or maybe finally go ahead and go down to a local bar here in town and check it out instead for free. I'm starting to think more of the latter. Even though this is alot of the same lineup as last month's great ppv, some of the gimmicks attached to these matches seem to make me scratch my head, such as Show/Cena in a submission match. What is so "extreme" about that? Same with the hog pen gimmick. The Batista/Orton match has dull written all over it, and adding a cage match gimmick doesn't help it. I don't get what makes the three way ECW title match and the four way US title match "extreme rules" when it sounds like just a normal multi-man match for both of them, or is it just that both have no DQ? So what makes that different than Rey/Jericho then. With that said though, I expect Rey/Jericho NHB, Punk/Umaga strap match, and the Edge/Hardy ladder match to be pretty good. I'm fearing them giving Cena/Show way too much time for their match, though, just to try to showcase the submissions like crazy.

Yeah, Smackdown is really good right now, more wrestling heavy than it has been in years, particularly reminiscent of some of the strong runs Smackdown was under Heyman booking the show. I hadn't been able to keep up with the show since it moved from the other channel quite a while ago now, but hulu.com has Smackdown on there archived every week, so been watching it on there.