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D-Ray 3000 & Shark Boy b (Kid) Romeo & Roderick Strong Kid Kash & Dallas b Lex Lovett & Brian Gamble A.J. Styles b Bobby Roode Those are the rest of the Xplosion tapings, from Meltzer. They really, *really* need to bust out a good 15-20 minute match on Impact. Why they're even running significant angles on Xplosion is pretty mindblowing if they're not on national TV. You could easily combine the World Title angles from Impact and Xplosion to make a great segment.

Closest thing has been Luther Reigns, whose OVW look remains intact in WWE, except they don't let him wear shades. He's pretty much the same guy he was in OVW except he doesn't get a lot of mic time. Although he had quite a different role in OVW since he was an WWE agent/talent scount out to destroy OVW (basically a GM-type role that he pulled off REALLY well). I wouldn't say Doug Basham has kept anything more than his wrestling gear from OVW... he had a very deep character "The Machine" in OVW with a lot of story behind it. There's quite a few guys (Conway, Danny Basham, Matt Morgan) who kept their wrestling attire from OVW but had different characters or no characters in the WWE. Back to Gene and Nova... I like Nova's gimmick. I like Gene more than a lot of the other hosses they've brought in, but they literally threw him on TV about a month after they signed him.

Just because a certain formula was successul with one person does not mean it will work for everybody. Forget Christian, its time for Regal to get into the main event title hunt. Christian's not ready to main event because his wrestling is still pretty poor. When has he ever had a good match that didn't involve a ladder? Regal's too old and while the crowd pops for him protecting Eugene, they don't really care to see him wrestle.

I've just posted about 20 times on different boards that he's an OVW guy. Guess I'll have to wait until Meltzer's update before people quit thinking he's a random jobber (since Keller hates Cornette and PWInsider acts like OVW doesn't exist).

This is going to totally work. I was LOLing through the whole thing. It's a midcard gimmick for sure, but it'll work. The big difference between this and Candido is that Nova's a better worker and talker than Candido was. He's improved a ton during his OVW stint. Also, Sunny did most of the talking for Candido which leeched heel heat from the whole thing (since she overshadowed Skip). The gimmick is much better because he's not just a psycho fitness instructor, he's a rich con man. I'd run the "ads" for a couple more weeks, then have "Simon Dean" as a "celebrity in the crowd" and have him get jumped.

The reason is because tag teams are a great way to mask weaknesses, and green guys generally have a lot of those. If you put two guys together with the right combination, you're going to have a great tag team even though neither guy is a good singles wrestler.

There are four pretty good teams in OVW right now (Nova/Aaron Stevens/Inferno, Chris Cage/Tank Toland, Seth Skyfire/Mac Johnson, Brent Albright/Chris Masters). None of them are the Midnight Express or anything yet, but any of them would be great additions to the roster. Johnny Nitro and Joey Matthews are pretty good together too, although they haven't been working a lot of tags. Knowing WWE, we'll probably all those teams broken up and Mark Magnus's Arab gimmick team before that. *rolls eyes* I'd reteam Akio/Noble and Moore/Hurricane, although not under their old gimmicks, mention that they were WCW Tag Champs. IMHO, about everyone who's stuck in Sunday Night Heat/Velocity hell should be booked in a tag team. They can still work singles and job in singles matches, while being productive as a tag team. Putting Fertig (Mordecai) with bland Tomko is a good idea as well since Fertig can sorta talk and Tomko can sort of wrestle.

Abyss is a shoe-in... a hoss big man they can repackage. They'd sign AMW, I think. They'd probably want Monty Brown, but they'd put him in OVW. They'd sure take AJ Styles too, but he'll never sign with them (since he knows he'd just be a CW jobber in WWE).

I think it was just because of the cage match stips, lack of competition, and the fact that it was a well-booked show. As far as being over, Orton's a bit of a flop thus far as a face. The crowd was sitting on its hands for Orton v.s. Kane, while Benoit is getting bigger pops than ever.

CZW seems like they have a better card to me. I'd only be interested in seeing the Scramble, Joe v.s. Williams, and Foley.

You don't know jack... Tom Pritchard is a smaller guy who Cornette managed for years. I haven't seen anything that suggests he hates smaller wrestlers. I would suspect he has no power as far as determining who gets called up when. Johnny Ace and Kevin Kelly were more responsible for signing the first group of OVW guys than Pritchard. There have been quite a few smaller guys getting signed recently. The reason why hosses get signed and called up too fast is because Vince likes hosses, plain and simple.

I really doubt they'd write him out of the show. They say this "he may never wrestle again, by gawd!" crap everytime someone gets attacked. I'd be surprised if he's gone 3 weeks. He took a gimmick that shouldn't work and got it over. He's selling stuff. He's just never going to be a main eventer with that gimmick, is the thing. They can repackage him, or give him a mask. And Dinsmore's a great tag team wrestler, especially with Rob Conway, so they have that card to play. They would immediately be the best team on the roster. He's a perfect type of wrestler for TNA if they'd dump him. That's all reasons why he will be back soon.

Stuff still has to make it through Gewirtz, HHH, Stephanie, and Vince, so I wouldn't expect anything dramatic. Still, this should still improve the show a bit.

A politics-free Cornette is godly... OVW has been the best wrestling show on TV for the last couple years. He also got more out of the OVW guys on the WWE roster than WWE has, by far, since he knows how to mask weaknesses.

There's no way they're getting a national TV deal (if they did, it's a miracle). I don't think a national DVD deal would be something big. A local TV show wouldn't be a big deal (they bought TV time in Louisville in the past). They wouldn't hype a surprise wrestler as a "big announcement", although I could see it be Foley appearing or Liger wrestling there before his ROH swing. They've obviously gotten some money recently since they've gotten a ton more aggressive in the last couple weeks (running in Evansville and running in the Louisville area again) and are booking a ton of name indy talent. I'm going to guess they're getting a show on Comcast Sports Chicago (a new channel that is just starting that has Cubs, White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks games and is probably desperate for additional programming). That channel will probably be available throughout most of the Midwest.... it goes on the air October 1st. Comcast is a cable provider in both Evansville and the Louisville area, which may explain why they're starting to run shows in both places (because they know TV is on the way?). http://www.dailyherald.com/sports/col_rozn...?intid=38231192 http://chicago.comcastsportsnet.com/

Damn, looks like I'll have to make the New Albany show at least (it's the closest one).

Benjamin should be ready to be back on TV. They could have Christian be a non-wrestling talker for a bit too. This is not good for them, though. Anyone expecting Jimmy Snuka Jr to be an "impact player" is pretty mistaken. Mark Magnus is way too green. Nova is ready but is too small (and is using a lower midcard gimmick on the house shows). Matt Morgan is the best guy who could make an impact but he's just a generic hoss at this point (although he's got good mic skills). Johnny Jeter is good but at best he's Jericho sans great mic skills (Jeter is okay on the mic). There's some other guys who should be called up as tag teams ASAP but don't really show enough for a big singles push. The two guys from OVW who could hold down an upper midcard spot are stuck in tag teams (Rob Conway and Doug Basham) and don't get mic time.

Nice... shoving it in OVW's face too... nice to see them get a bit more aggressive because lord know they're the hottest group in the Midwest right now.

This is pretty long overdue... Evansville is a good wrestling town for IWA-MS to start running and CCW obviously hasn't been making any noise. It used to be one of the bedrocks of the USWA along with Louisville and Memphis. They'll draw a decent amount of people there, probably numbers comparable to what Highland does.

Until these guys debut on TV, they're not set on a particular brand. Don't worry about it. It just means they're getting close to getting a callup.

Matt's probably the best of the TE crew, but he's still green. Jeter is awesome and is ready to go (but I don't see him getting far because his mic skills aren't great [although he's passable] and he's only Jericho's size). Magnus has charisma but he's never impressed me with his ringwork.

There's no depth on either roster right now. I only count about 15 male wrestlers who have gotten weekly TV exposure on Raw (Benoit, Jericho, Edge, HHH, Orton, Batista, Flair, La Resistance, Rhyno, Tajiri, Hardy [replaced by Michaels], Kane, Eugene, Regal). Hurricane, Rosey, and Tomko are on semi-regularly. Benjamin and Christian will be on weekly once they're healthy. That's only 20 guys. Compare to Smackdown with: JBL, Taker, Eddy, Angle, Luther Reigns, Buh Buh, D-Von, Spike, Misterio, London, Kidman, Booker T, Cena, Orlando Jordan, RVD all are on regularly. Big Show will be on regularly once he returns. Charlie Haas, Rene Dupree, Chavo, Noble (probably both those last two will be on regularly for a while), Kenzo Suzuki are all on semi-regularly. Beyond that you have Jindrak, Bashams, Gunn/Holly. There's quite a bit more semi-respectable depth on Smackdown. Smackdown's in trouble right now, but they're set up a little better for the long haul than Raw is. Raw is going to be in trouble around the end of the year (or after WM 21 at the latest).

It was a bad wrestling show, but a somewhat entertaining sports entertainment/Russo's wet dream show. The Diva Search/Rock segment was about 10 minutes too long, but I see why they did that because they believe the Rock is ratings crack. If I were in charge, I'd move the "competition" segments to Heat and trim the Divas to 2-3 minutes total segment time. Rock was good here although he couldn't save the whole thing from being a waste of time. They really need to cobble together another tag team besides Rhyno/Tajiri and La Resistance, just for the long-term health of the company since very few wrestlers get TV time anymore. I'll go ahead and talk a bit about the new "glass floor effect". The following wrestlers have been getting regular Raw TV time: Benoit, Jericho, Edge, HHH, Batista, Orton, Flair, Regal, Eugene, Tajiri, Rhyno, La Resistance, Kane, Matt Hardy (with Michaels taking his spot). Hurricane and Rosey get TV about every other week. Benjamin, Christian, and Tomko will probably get regular time once they return (or in Tomko's case, once Christian is back). Bischoff and Coach are non-wrestlers. Trish and Lita get regular TV time. Gail Kim, Victoria, Keibler, and Molly will get TV time once the diva search is over. The problem is, after that crew (around 20 male wrestlers), it's an absolute wasteland. The WWE has to do a better job of building up guys outside that core group of 20 since they don't have the developmental talent available to replace a sizeable number of them. Edge/Jericho had a nice TV match which was ruined by two breaks and a screwy finish. There's better ways to book a draw. The Orton/Evolution segment was good, although this entire angle is super-rushed. Regal/Flair was okay, nothing more. Regal and Benoit need to have a match already because at this point, Regal is still stagnant and still not getting any reactions while wrestling. They need to kill the recaps of the other shows. At least the "MOMENTS AGO" segments seem to have been dropped. The wedding will probably pop a bit of a rating, but I don't see the point beyond that... Michaels and Kane already have a good motivation for their feud. There's some nice sized plotholes in the whole thing (why didn't Lita divorce Kane right after the show?, why does Kane not use his magic fire powers in a match?). The wedding was entertaining however.

The worst crowds have to be the Northeast (sans NYC, Boston, and Philly) since the WWE runs them every two seconds. Really dead crowds in places like Hartford and the like.

This was quite a bit of a better show than recent weeks with some nice little matches and some angles actually going somewhere on Impact. A couple less squashes with no-name local jobbers. At least some of the wrestlers were over with this local crowd. I would expect the show to improve a lot as we get away from having to hard sell the upcoming PPVs every week. Of course, Fox Sports Midwest here was screwing up. They aired the show unadvertised at 2 pm (as they sometimes do and sometimes don't do), then aired a skateboarding show for about 15 min before starting Impact late at 3:15. There's still way too much dead weight on the roster and they're going to bring in a couple guys like a Sting and DDP for a few months to add some star power if they ever can get a good timeslot, but it seems like they're back on the upswing at this point.