Mecha Mummy

this could only appeal to smarks. marks like yourself would have to have a storyline involved to be interested. ... wow, no. That's... no. Really very no. I suppose all of pro wrestling everywhere is "sports entertainment," then.

Like... "Danny Davis potential" or...? Actually, he looked surprisingly good in his match against Tajiri years ago (of course, this might have been because I expected him to just trip over his feet a lot and he didn't, but). Obviously he wasn't going to reinvent the wheel or anything, but he knew what he was doing and did a great job of effectively working a match against a trained guy where he got a lot of offense in without making Tajiri look weak (which would be an easy, easy pitfall considering it's Coach and he shouldn't look like he can actually beat anyone in a fight) and sold Tajiri's kicks incredibly effectively. I almost wish that Coach had worked more matches, he had potential in this bizarre way where he could have, if he wanted, probably become a decent chickenshit heel worker. I liked Coach as an on-screen personality, but not as an announcer. Honestly, I'll miss him in the sense that I would sooner have him still on as a heel lackey/authority figure than not have him in WWE at all, but if the options are Jonathan Coachman, commentator or nothing in WWE, I'll take the latter option.

I love Regal and think it's great he won, and the way it was booked made both men look good, but that. Really should have been longer than it was. Did any of the KOTR matches go past ten minutes?

"Even though your last big win was against the Road Warriors in 1975 with your idiot brother." Zing.

Was that the one Bulldog interfered in? I thought he was the special guest referee for the bull rope match and he turned on The Rock there.

Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Pretty much the entire first six or seven volumes are really, really Takahashi-esque comedy which sort of wears thin after a while, but then the actual serious plot kicks in and it's pretty good shounen. It's worth a try, anyway.

Bossman. He was 'fired' the week or two before that show, and the next night on Raw he was 'hired' back. Probably one of the subtler Russo angles actually. Golddust, as it was originally named GDTV and the first few times it focused on people related to Golddust. He gets canned, it gets switched to GTV and the rest is extremely loopy history. On the other hand, I don't believe anyone was ever outed later on as being behind GTV, so I actually didn't answer your question. My bad. I think one of Headbangers actually ended up being behind GTV. The one that wasn't Chaz... Nah, Thrasher just did it once, to expose Mariana or whoever as having faked the allegations of Chaz beating her. And so then the Headbangers reformed and proceeded to job for the next year, or something.

I think my favorite quick joke in that one was the cops showing up and Dwight attempting to take initiative but just getting dismissed with "not now, Dwight." Incredibly weird episode, but I dug it.

Fuck that shit, I love the fanboy outrage that stems from his terrible movies. He can keep on ruining game-to-film adaptations for all I care.

Judd Winick is a successful comic writer. Now, whether he's good or not, you can perhaps debate that. But definitely successful. Apparently he created an animated series also, which I wasn't aware about until I Wiki'd his name.

1. How often did you buy the weekly PPVs? More than the monthly PPVs? Less? More simply by virtue of the fact that I've only ever bought one of the monthly PPVs ever. Basically, I discovered TNA in August 2002, ordered my first show in September and ordered them off and on for the next few months until May when I started ordering them every week until about October when the product started to grow less interesting. 2. What were the benefits of the weekly PPVs compared to the monthly ones? Drawbacks? One thing I loved about TNA when it was at its best was that they had to find ways to make every show special. They didn't quite put this together in the early days, but by summer '03, which I still feel was by far one of the best periods in the company's history, they had figured it out. THIS WEEK you're getting Raven vs. AJ Styles and then order NEXT WEEK for America's Most Wanted vs. Triple X in a steel cage and Frankie Kazarian vs. Chris Sabin for the X Division title and THEN TWO WEEKS FROM NOW you're getting an AJ Styles vs. D'Lo Brown best of three series and so on. They had good wrestlers wrestling, and for all of the shit I found to be lame, the fact that they'd always assuredly at least have one or two matches that looked incredibly good on paper with a solid undercard The drawbacks? Jeff Jarrett, for one, especially during the aforementioned summer period where he was pretty much booked as Superman in interminable feuds against the likes of Joe E. Legend and Christopher Daniels where the heel more or less got no victories whatsoever and as a result looked like a complete chump. There were always dumb ideas along with the good ones; Glenn Gilbertti's short-lived uppercard push, some of the more over-the-top Russo angles, and the existence of Goldilocks, to name a few. And, well. It was still ultimately a weekly PPV. If the show sucked, well, you spent ten bucks on it so sucks to be you. 3. Do you think a promotion could ever successfully use the weekly PPV format? I... don't know. I kind of don't think so, especially with Youtube. Half of the time I don't even watch Raw anymore because I can just find the things I actually want to watch as individual segments on Youtube without having to sit through the stuff I hate. It was an interesting concept but I doubt it'll ever truly work. 4. What are some of your fondest memories of that era? Oh god, where to start. Raven; his feud with Jarrett until its unfortunate ending, The Gathering vs. The Disciples of the New Church, his matches with the likes of Styles. AJ Styles, Low Ki, Jerry Lynn, Frankie Kazarian, Chris Sabin, the Amazing Red, Michael Shane, and the X-Division in general opening my eyes to a style of wrestling that was entirely new to me at the time. Their awesome tag feuds with AMW as a fantastic centerpiece, with the likes of the New Church and Triple X hovering around. And really, the feeling, especially at that time for me as a wrestling fan who was just then becoming more aware of promotions out there that weren't WWE, that anything could happen and that anyone, as long as they weren't a WWE employee at the time, could show up; D'Lo Brown's debut, in particular, I remember being an absolutely amazing moment which is hilarious in retrospect because it was D'Lo Brown and he ultimately wouldn't really do that much and yet the crowd was red hot for his debut. Then there was just stuff like the Shark Boy/New Jack segments, which remain the best utilization of Shark Boy in his TNA tenure. 5. Do you think the weekly PPVs have any impact ( no pun intended) on TNA today? Well, from a content standpoint, sure, I guess. Guys like James Storm I definitely doubt would be around and successful on this level if not for that era, probably AJ Styles too. From what the product and the business model looks like, though... I dunno. The TNA now doesn't particularly resemble the TNA of 2002 - 2004 at all to me, and that's really kind of unfortunate. However, what they were doing with the PPVs they can't do with Impact because you have to make the monthly PPV more important so what I liked about TNA in summer '03 can't really be replicated exactly now.

Yup, looks like it's time for a filler arc. Huge disappointment because I've pretty much been sitting out of watching Shippuden because the Sasuke arc bored the hell out of me and I was looking forward to Hidan and Kakuzu, but, well.

Honestly, I'm glad James Storm is still around and successful enough. He's a solid worker who has pretty much taken everything TNA's given to him and made it work, from the original goofy happy-go-lucky cowboy character he had (I really did enjoy early Harris and Storm when Harris was the straight man and Storm was comic relief; they were an example of the "tag partners who clash as characters but work as a team well" routine that actually WORKED), to the serious, straight-laced tag team wrestler he was when AMW became the focus of the tag division in '03, to the drunken cowboy thing he does now. I doubt he'll ever headline, but he's a solid worker with good charisma who can easily work in either an uppercard, more serious role or lowercard comedy and not feel forced into either position. It's cool to see a guy who's been around since day one, really does feel like an out and out TNA guy, and is still doing well for himself.

I think my favorite moment in that Rumble was Doug Gilbert running out to what sounding like cheery polka music or something, flapping his arms and puffing his cheeks like a complete goof, and then getting murdered by Vader in short order after he hit the ring. It wasn't the best Rumble or anything, but it was entertaining enough, and everyone having entrance music was a definite plus.

When did these start happening? Yeah, that was a top contender in the WORST Royal Rumble poll a couple of months ago. The short window between entrances really kind of killed it for me.

Facebook's applications are annoying sometimes, but at least I'm not getting friend requests from terrible music artists and Random Uninteresting "Hot" Girls. If just between the two, Facebook wins by a mile for me.

According to his shoot interview, as I seem to recall, he was already pretty much planning on quitting anyway and that was just the final straw, wasn't he? I know he said he absolutely loathed being on Raw and that was a contributing factor to his decision, or something like that.

The Sandman or maybe Raven if he could get into shape.

Holy shit that was cold. Great, intense segment.

PPV: KOTR '99. No, really. Live: Wrestlemania XIX

Yeah, the insinuation that R.O.B. is useless is ridiculous because he's awesome. Not my favorite character to play as but I really dig him.

Well. I guess it could have been worse; he could have lost, I suppose. Still, huge disappointment. I would have liked to have seen him bring back the Anaconda Vice for this instead of the usual copout victory.

Yeah, this was a waste of Burke. At least he got a good deal of offense in, I guess.

CHIKARA's Mike Knox! God, they're trying to push him again?

... poor Stevie Richards. EDIT: Oh COME ON.