Corey_Lazarus

...and that had no bearing in the conversation whatsoever, since the Dickinson that covered "The Zoo" is the same one from Maiden.

The only pro I can think of for JJ/Mantel is that they don't rush things. They don't focus on the action, since there IS no action. Do you remember what TNA was like when Mantel and JJ were booking entirely, and Russo wasn't around because of the possibility of Hulk Hogan coming in? Boring shows, angles moved at a snail's pace, and nothing was happening. The only feuds were for the titles, and that's NEVER good booking when the only feuds on television are for the three titles (non-title feuds are ESSENTIAL for exciting programming and creating new title contenders). No, he's a lot better than Jeff, considering he has asked and begged Jeff to take him off of the show since he came back "a new man" (having found God and recognizing the necessity of traditional wrestling and whatnot). JJ is the reason Russo is on TV. Also, when Russo was booking himself as an on-air character in TNA? At least the angles he was involved with were interesting and didn't revolve around "who will do the J-O-B to Jarrett this week." The funny thing is that Jarrett was well on his way to being a recognized main eventer when TNA started. It's the fact that he booked himself over everybody that turned the fans against him. His face run after April 30th tanked, and his heel run since winning the title back from Styles last October has been terrible thanks to the fact that he's overexposed as all hell, and nobody gives a shit about him anymore. My ideal TNA booking crew, with the people they have, would be Russo for the writing of segments and different "entertainment" aspects of feuds, Mantel for the pacing, and Shane Douglas as a leeway between the two that gives his own ideas (it's common knowledge among every wrestling fan that the only quality XPW shows were booked by Douglas). Raven would give his insight as well, mostly on his own angles and such, and people like Jerry Lynn would be assigned to help younger, inexperienced workers develop. As for who would aid in the plotting out of matches? I dunno. You got any ideas?

Vyce, Mike isn't the only one on the "dark side." It took me a lot longer than it took Mike, but I'm there too. And I think the fact that I have little hope for TNA shows how bad of a state the company is in, considering I was with WCW until the bitter end (because at least they still put on a few really good matches each week).

DK, if you want a story of what happened one night with more smoking involved? You'd LOVE the stories of my nights, as long as you're a smoking mark. I guarantee you'd say each one was at least ***1/2 due to the smoking alone. Anyways, yeah. You got a free hook-up. What the FUCK is your problem?

London's bigger and has a "boy next door" feel to him. If he develops some cocky persona, he could definitely get over big, even if he just acts like that asshole that sat in the back of class during English and hassled everybody else. Also, while I don't doubt London can tell a great story and sell like a bastard, I do have to critique his seemingly complete lack of intensity with the way he does his moves. It's hard to explain what I don't like about him, but it's just the way he seems to let his limbs dangle when he's not doing anything with them. For instance, look at him while he runs. He doesn't move his arms at all, just kinda lets them flop about like Jim Carrey did in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls after being shot with the blowgun three times.

I think the coolest looking belt to never get a replica made of it has to be the WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team title belts. If you can find pictures of it, just admire them. So simplistic, yet so cool. Also, anybody remember the American Gladiators rip-off show Battle Dome? The Battle Dome Championship was pretty cool looking, too.

Well, I guess this is proof that DDP is physically fit to wrestle. And WHY isn't he in TNA? He's a bigger name than everybody in the company, and although it would add to that whole "TNA is just WCW in a smaller venue" stigma, it would also get a huge pop and maybe liven up the main event by putting a GOOD wrestler in the mix (save for Styles and Truth, nobody in the TNA main event scene has ever been truly good in the ring).

"TNA Impact! is going to focus on the X-Division." I see two of the seven matches are X-Division. And they involved the same people that are ALWAYS in the token X-Division matches: Styles, XXX, Team Canada, Kazarian, and Shane. Half of the roster is/was X-Division. What happened? Looks like a skipper this week...again.

Because you said it all as one large, run-on sentence, and everything was so mushed together I couldn't pull apart anything. Your prior post was like a Sabu match: some nice parts, but overall lacking fulfillment or understanding.

He and Mantel suck. The show even without Jarrett wasn't worth shit until Russo was brought back in, and even then, I was still bored with the show as a whole. When you're used to ***-**** matches each week, and then suddenly the best match for three months is **3/4? That's fucking SAD. I say again: Fuck Jeff Jarrett, and Fuck Dutch Mantel.

What I feel TNA needs to become better: -Take off the limitations on the workers. It's obvious to any fan that was around before Mantel joined the booking crew that Jeff Jarrett is one of the members of the lower-half of quality workers on the roster, so don't make everybody else dumb their work down just to make him seem better. WWE does this, and this is a big reason why many members of the IWC (read: TNA's only true fanbase) stopped watching Vinnie Mac's company. -Few people buy Jarrett as a main eventer. He was a believable main eventer for the first year or so of TNA's existence, but afterwords he became overexposed as the limited worker and personality he is. -Do not overbook every match to death. WCW lost its fanbase because every match seemed to have a dumb stipulation (Judy Bagwell on a Pole might have been funny as hell during Positively Kanyon's promo, but the stipulation is undeniably idiotic) or too many run-in's. Some people (Marty2Hotty and his crew) enjoy the "Sports Entertainment" finishes, but the vast majority feel as though they have been cheated. -Gimmick matches should be saved. If you feel the need to build the feud up with some sort of gimmick match, make it something that is common but also not your average match, ie. Falls Count Anywhere or simple No DQ matches. -Find the workers on your roster who cannot talk very well on the microphone, and either book them into feuds that don't rely upon interview time or give them managers. This is a basic that EVERY promotion needs to learn, not just TNA. (IMO, the only company that actually did learn this was ECW, and that's because Paul Heyman is a booking genius.) -Have some contests now and then. WWE does them here and there, but instead of offering free stuff, offer something like a guest commentator for your favorite wrestler's match, or be the guest backstage interviewer. They did this during 2002 when they had an auction for the Tennessee Tornado Fund, or whatever it's called, and I thought it was pretty cool. -Do NOT tell your fans who you want them to cheer and who you want them to jeer. Instead, book angles as you feel right, and if the fans react the opposite way you thought they would do, re-write the feuds properly. Lynn/Styles, the best TNA feud yet (IMO) to have more than one match (thus discounting Raven/Jarrett, which was great until the match), was originally going to have Lynn as a heel and Styles as a face (you can easily tell, because Lynn attacked Styles first, and Lynn cut a heel promo on Styles the next week). The fans reacted to Lynn in a more favorable manner, since at that time TNA's sole fanbase were the smarks (who respected Lynn for his years of being one of the more innovative high-flyer's in America, and also just being an all-around nice guy), and they boo'd Styles. Styles became TNA's #2 heel (right behind Jarrett, who was slowly turning face due to how good the character actually was), and Lynn became one of the company's top faces (dare I say THE top face). -GET RID OF KAZARIAN. 'Nuff said? 'Nuff said.

I'm still fuzzy on this...but is the producer supposed to be the same Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden fame? There can't be too many people with that name in the world, can there?

Yes, he did. Oh well. Misfits (Graves-era with be marked with a *, and Misfits 25 will be marked with a ~) "We Are 138" "Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?" "Descending Angel"* "Great Balls Of Fire"~ "Where Eagles Dare" "Die, Die My Darling" "Bullet" "TV Casualty" "Scream!"* "Donna"~ "Saturday Night"* "Dig Up Her Bones"* "Abominable Dr. Phibes"* "Come Back" "Static Age" "Green Hell" "Last Caress" "She" "Them"* "Monster Mash" (I don't know when they covered it, but I'm willing to believe it's Misfits 25)

The last Parking Lot Brawl was Summer '03, correct? The last Iron Man was this past Raw, and the one before that was (I believe) Fall '03 (Angle/Lesnar). So we've had two Iron Man matches since the last Parking Lot Brawl. There is one aspect of the Acclaim wrestling games (Warzone to Anarchy Rulz, anyway) that I loved: the longer the time limit of the match, the longer it took for you and your opponent to wear each other down. I liked that because it actually DID make the match go on longer, and part of the reason I prefer playing No Mercy and other Aki games is that I like playing longer matches. I think THQ and Yukes would be wise to implement a similar system into one of their future WWE games.

Nowhere do I see a mention of the murderer even PLAYING the game, or even saying he wanted to carry out the actions of the game. So, tell me...how does a game influence the murderer if said murderer didn't play it? That's like saying The Passion is the sole reason that there are anti-semitic groups.

Then there would be competition for WWE, (hopefully) forcing both companies to provide a better product. TNA = WCW. Their heart is in the right place, but the brain still hasn't caught up.

...that last post does not make a whole lot of sense...

I wonder if the shirt he was wearing said "Bitch, Please"...

I gave him a second chance when he dropped the title to AJ in the cage. I'm not giving him any more chances, and I'm standing by my decision to not order again until JJ drops the belt. I don't even care if it's only for one week, I will not order while JJ is champion.

I'd like to be able to wipe the slate clean...but when the sole reason I stopped ordering the PPVs was Jarrett? I can't.

Of course Benoit could get away with murder. He'd drag his victim kicking and screaming to **** easily, maybe even *****.

No, he wears a kilt. Plus, most crossdressers are straight anyway. The only crossdressers that aren't are called drag queens.

That was certainly (un)informative. Why won't TNA have more of these great (shitty and stupid and time waisting) interviews?

I don't know if you read my earlier post or not but as I already said that was probably going to be Raven's last night in TNA. You wanted them to make an outgoing guy appear stronger than the champion? Jarrett was the only top face those days as both Raven and AJ were heels(I think). So obviously TNA wanted their top face and biggest draw to look strong against a departing guy. And when they saw the kind of reaction Raven got that night they extended his contract and turned him face. Raven was getting bigger face pops than Jarrett since the night he debuted, so that gets rid of that part of your argument (and it makes sense, since Raven was the top draw for ECW when it was growing from regional Pennsylvania promotion to America's #3 promotion). AJ turned face during the World title match vs. JJ in Feb. 2003, so that takes care of that. And hey, I don't care if TNA (read: Jerry Jarrett and Vince Russo) wanted to make their World champion (read: Jeff Jarrett, the boss's son and the booker's best friend) look strong. But there's a difference between looking strong and looking invulnerable. Taking the offense JJ did and bouncing back for a win, shaking all of the "punishment" he took like it was nothing? That made the fans turn on him, because it showed how selfish, idiotic, and uncaring of a worker he really is. So...the worst feud Raven has been in (Raven/Gathering, which was pretty much CM Punk being forced to just do punch/kick for 7 minutes a night with workers that aren't nearly as good as he is, and Julio botching spots left and right, all the while Raven was nowhere to be seen) is one of the best feuds in TNA history? Wow...you really don't think too highly of TNA at all, do you? I'll give you Raven/New Church, as that feud was strongly booked...until the Hair vs. Hair match. That match was terrible, and the subsequent feud of Raven/Redshirts was terrible. And I didn't know going from the focus of the show each week to being an afterthought was being pushed to the main event... No. AJ in the heavyweight division will kill the X-Division and casual fans remember Truth as K-Kwik "Jobber Extraordinaire". On the other hand casual fans recognize Jarrett and know that he has been a main-eventer/uppercarder in the big two (5 times WCW champion, 5 times intercontinental champion, multi times tag-team champion) so he brings instant credibility to the title. AJ in the Heavyweight division didn't affect the X-Division one bit. The only thing hampering the X-Division is TNA's insistance upon putting workers in it that do NOT work X-Style (Michael Shane works WWE Style and always has, and Frankie Kazarian works SUCK Style). If Jarrett didn't personally dislike Jerry Lynn so much? I guarantee you that the focus of the X-Division would be Lynn and Sabin and all of the fun matches they would have together, since both can go spot-spot-spot-spot without slowing down, and all the while actually selling each spot and building it up. But no, they put untalented shits in there and expect people to react simply because No Name Indy Cruiser #47 did a moonsault. And casual fans remember Truth as K-Kwik? First off, casual fans probably don't even remember K-Kwik. Fuck, I watch wrestling religiously (or at least used to until a few months ago), and I didn't know who K-Kwik was until his third month in the WWF. I think it's a safe bet to say that casual fans don't remember who the shit K-Kwik was, and it's not like it would matter anyway. They would see Ron Killings, The Truth, showing off why he should be a main event player in TNA (and why he was TNA's first superstar). He's incredibly charismatic, has good timing on his comebacks, has a diverse enough moveset while not abandoning a basic repertoire of signature maneuvers, and can sell very well. Besides, if casual fans remember Truth as K-Kwik? Then they remember Jarrett as J-E-double F, J-A-double R-E-double T! Let's see...rapping black man that would do 450 Splashes and tagged with one half of the most popular tag team in the WWF of the 1990's, or a country singer that turned into a beater of women and lost his final WWF match to a woman in a "Good Housekeeping" match...I think they'd take the NWA (and I don't mean the wrestling company) over a good ol' boy. Remember, casual fans are also the "popular" people, and what's "popular" today, and has been for the last 8 or so years, is "urban culture." Just read my earlier posts. I did. You were being a dumb prick. Now you're just being dumb.

Almost. I have a few wrestling shirts and a few plain white shirts, too. Just two of 'em, actually. Actually, I stopped growing. I'm 5'11", 225 lbs., and I don't think I'll get any taller in the near future (although the waist and gut will expand within a few years). True. I'm starting to get sick of Metallica altogether. And, God help me, I'm starting to like more mellow stuff a lot more lately, like Mogwai, and simpler stuff, like all punk ever. Ummm...is this good or bad? I don't think the term "sexual speedbump" is too tempting... This is entirely true. I have pictures of me wearing a suit and tie, and I look entirely different (although my hair was styled differently).