Fro

Vince is probably throwing a tantrum backstage now that he's found out he's been bleeped out.

Pretty safe bet we see Joe or Abyss in a quickie squash. I also don't think Hardy v.s. Rhino is going to be the main event of the actual show. That's going to seem like a Sunday Night Heat main event for the new fans without a wrinkle added to it. It's really going to be tough to shoehorn everyone into two weeks of shows, try to establish guys for the Spike TV audience, spring the "surprises", and get over the angles for Bound for Glory. Hopefully the creative team is up to it.

It's a corporation set up by the Dudleys probably to handle the business end of things for them.

http://www.tnawrestling.com/impact/index.html Check out the "History of Impact" video (upper right corner)... I'm guessing this will be shown on the first Impact. It appears we've got a couple other famous names coming to the roster since it looks like they definitely shot new footage of them for the opening.

http://www.tnawrestling.com/sahadi/index.html This would be the link... they're *VERY* good. Abyss, AJ Styles, Chris Daniels, Jeff Jarrett, Monty Brown, Raven, Rhino, and Samoa Joe are the wrestlers featured.

Now I have to wonder what Lashley's mic skills are like. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Unfortunately, Lashley has a pretty squeaky voice (think Michael Jackson). It's quite hilarious and he'd be better off being a mute. Dean did a great carryjob there of him tonight doing the comedy schtick.

They have to build someone up interally. The other options are WWE rejects. Since AJ/Daniels/Joe are in the X-Division, probably your best option is Monty Brown followed by Abyss. The big problem on that front is you don't have many options for them to feud with once they win the belt. Sabu isn't in super health. If Shamrock is coming in to wrestle that'll be a big help as he's still very credible. Ditto if Ortiz ends up wrestling. Dudleys could do a Tag Team Main Event for a PPV against a Raven/Sabu type team but neither of them are good singles. You're looking at a Killings or Lance Hoyt after that so there's quite a bit of a dropoff. The "homegrown" stars for TNA are mostly tag teams or X-Division guys. If they could throw a truckload of money at Jericho that'd be ideal, but there's very few options out there. Any big guy with potential gets signed to a WWE developmental deal for the most part.

Either Abyss or Joe is who they need to get the belt on. Nash getting the belt wouldn't be terrible depending on how he'd be used. I don't see what you get as far as new feuds out of that though (Jarrett v.s. Nash II won't draw jack, no other guy not in the X-Division can drag a decent match out of Nash).

Isn't HHH a big mark for 90s All-Japan? I think you could see him wrestle someone.

If a guy is tall and/or on massive steroids, they get called up, ready or not. WWE cares about "the look" above all else, no matter if Danny Davis and Heyman (or Cornette in the past) say they need more time training or if they're a lost cause. They can't work miracles and make some roided hoss wrestle like Chris Benoit (hell, Snitsky was only in OVW for a month or so!) There's a bias towards people with the look Vince wants and guys who are great wrestlers like a Nick Dinsmore or a Brent Albright get stuck in OVW for years. OVW has had the best wrestling it's had in its history and it's primarily from guys 6'2" and under which is why you don't see them. You won't see guys like Elijah Burke, Johnny Jeter, Matt Cappotelli, Chris Cage, Mike Mondo, Tank Toland, Chad Toland, Seth Skyfire on TV before every worthless hoss since they aren't roid monsters. Heck, it took all the effort they had to lobby WWE to keep MNM together (who have been officially ruined since they think Nitro and Mercury are mutes, although they did a much better job with them than most OVW guys). The problem is on WWE's end, when they call people up way too early, or when they give someone who's ready a dead-end gimmick. I won't go through the list, but I can count on one hand the number of people who haven't been terribly misused at least initially (and a good percentage of those people got transitioned into dead-end gimmicks). Furthermore, since WWE hates tag teams with a passion apparently, they don't debut these hosses in Tag Teams where they can be protected. Notice how Heidenreich isn't unbearable to watch now that he's teaming with Animal. It's not because he's any better but because he doesn't have to wrestle a 10 minute match by himself! WWE wants to fit every wrestler into a certain mold and has no interest in maximizing the strengths of its wrestlers.

Nemeth is very generic and not good in the ring. His feud with Doane was decent. He's also not very big. Definitely needs more time in the OV-Dub. I guess he has kind of the look WWE wants but he's only billed as 6' in OVW. Boggles the mind that he randomly gets called up, yet Brent Albright and Jeter are still down there.

Considering The Rock seems to be extremely busy with 7-8 movie projects in the fire, it doesn't surprise me that he says he's not wrestling.

There's a pretty good reason why Batista was the most over wrestler in the history of OVW. He's always had a great ring presence in the ring and he looks freakish. What WWE did was give him a lame character and have him get squashed for the first year he was in WWE. He's Goldberg, in other words.

And you can attribute that to the fact that he's been wrestling Flair and Michaels the past couple weeks, who can make me or you look pretty decent at worst.

Heyman knew how to book him OVW. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, Heyman booked him beautifully. He's got charisma, he looks like a badass, and his MMA-style moves looked real awesome. Heyman was grooming him to be a bigger Taz. He was coming along real well. It's sad he got released because a properly built up match between him and Angle could have drawn big money. Just more stupidity from Vince McMahon.

No PPVis worth $30-40. I never watch them unless I split the money with a few people or more.

I saw Warrior speak a couple years ago just for laughs and he actually blamed Bill Clinton for 9/11, not because of anything to do with terrorism preparation, but because him getting a BJ set a "bad moral example" for the terrorists to follow. The guy is officially batshit crazy. I need to find the post I made on RSPW with all the wingnut things he said.

The problem is that there have been other heels that TNA has paired up with Jarrett for no reason in the past: Hall, Nash, Kip James/The Outlaw/Billy Gunn, Monty Brown, Petey Williams (not really in a group with him, though, but working WITH him every once in a while), and Rhino. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Jarrett/AMW makes a lot of sense because they've been the "cornerstones" of TNA, they all kind of do the "cowboy" gimmick and they're all from TN.

Think a little bit... I know everyone did a WTF when they saw it, but this is going to be huge. It can sense movement in all 3 dimensions as well as tilting. Imagine using the controller, turned hortizonal as a steering wheel for racing games, or a flight sim. Imagine using it to play RTSes. You can the functionality of a mouse, stylus, analog stick, light gun, and about anything else you can think of. You can use it with either hand so it works for lefties or righties. How about Fight Night or Punch-Out using two controllers as "each hand"? How about duel-welding? You know all those Arcade ports with the weird control schemes? Guess what, you can play them now. A tennis or golf or fishing game? How many copies will they sell of the LucasArts Star Wars Lightsaber game? Pure genius more or less.

I liked that better last week when I saw it on The Ultimate Fighter.

Very lame if true (I don't trust Lords of Paste). Puder's got a great thing going on in OVW right now. Can't understand why they'd want to get him away from Heyman. Probably is some blowback from the UFC/WWE feud at work here.

Burchill was real impressive even though he's highspotless. Really like him and Regal together. Showed he can talk a good game. Kennedy's backstage segment with Sharmell was great. That's the kind of stuff he's been doing in OVW (and shows he's more than just a one-trick pony). Otherwise, the rest is missable.

I wonder if Murdoch was legit screwing that up or his gimmick is he's supposed to be out of it. Either way, it was entertaining. They're not just a generic cowboy team of Stan Hansen clones.

Benoit's better than DK, although DK was much more innovative. Michaels is the heir to Ric Flair, pretty easily. Michaels is a little better in the ring and is below Flair on the mic. Flair is always godly on the mic and Michaels only is in flashes (usually when he's the prick heel character). Bret Hart is very overrated as a wrestler just because Canadians like him. He's pretty boring and I think doing the same five moves at the end of his matches is as business-exposing as the Flair Flip and Flop or Michaels nipping up or overselling. Comparing puro to US matches is comparing apples to oranges. I could care less how good of a match Jumbo and Misawa had in 1992 or how good All Japan was and how that somehow makes what guys are doing in the states (where they couldn't work that style) 13 years later worse.

Bad, bad move by Vince to piss off Spike TV. UFC can definitely eat into their ratings as could TNA.