Fro

Actually, I think he wanted to build up Santino to fight Angle, actually. I don't think he was ever supposed to feud with Punk in ECW... OVW maybe. Both Puder and Santino were really good at doing the pseudo-MMA style... it looked really good, especially since Al Snow is pretty familiar with that style.

Burke's way better than Orlando Jordan... the guy had good matches with all sorts of stiffs like Matt Morgan and Shad Gaspard (back when he was "Da Beast" in OVW and was useless). Since he's heel, WWE probably isn't letting him work that underdog babyface style.

Last xplosion/dark match is very interesting as it points to Cornette getting some booking power with two former OVW teams (Riggs Brothers and the Heartbreakers). I liked what I saw of the Riggs Brothers a lot and was surprised they got released. You know my opinions already on WWE blowing it with the Heartbreakers.

But for Incandenza to say he had "the least commercially and critically popular solo catalog" discounts how popular his early solo work was, and also how you define "solo" since a great deal of Paul McCartney's later success was when he TECHNICALLY wasn't solo (i.e. songs released by Wings or when he was collaborating with Michael Jackson). That ignores the fact that all of his "hits" were covers or songs George Harrison co-wrote with him, and many of the other Beatles made "guest appearances" on his early albums. Harrison easily had more success than Ringo, and Lennon/McCartney had even more success than Harrison.

"Sports and Wine" is a great rocker too It's pretty much all been covered already besides that... but everything up to and including "Whatever and Ever Amen" is pure gold. There's also good stuff on Autobiography, but that's an entirely different tone.. first few songs + "Army" are amazing though. Rocking the Suburbs is great and his second best album. I don't really care for Saving Silverman. The EPs had their moments. I really hope Folds records his next album with the drummer/bassist he's been touring with lately... they're like the Five... but better.

Cornette, Russo, and Heyman in a booking meeting would look like some sort of weird Thunderdome/Elimination Chamber match. It would take a hell of a lot more than West and Tenay sitting between them to keep the shit from flying. Although I commend Russo for not taking out after Cornette after listening to Jim bitch about everything he's given (allegedly). Actually Heyman and Cornette are on a lot better terms than Russo and Cornette were. They buried the hatchet in OVW and get along now.

Which says to me that they really must not watch that much MMA after all... Exactly... Matt Hughes is 5-9 and probably walks around at 185 or so (and cuts weight to 170) and he's drawn more money in the last year than HHH has in his whole damn career.

Wow, that was one helluva show this week. They obviously did a little too much, as Russo is prone to do, but everything was firing on all cylinders.

Yeah, the sequence before the ref bump was just insanely good. And Joe clearly came out looking like the better guy tonight, Angle tapped out and then tried to cheat to win, and then tapped out yet again. This totally made Joe as the crowd was going crazy for him at the end. Definitely left things open for them to top it with the rubber match, hopefully in several months.

Here's the Sting pics...

Tenay/Shane Douglas with Don West as the designated shill guy for PPVs ala Mean Gene would probably be the best option. Well, actually Cornette/Douglas would be the best possible team they could put together, but that ain't happening since Cornette is too lazy.

Better shape, although he was slimmed down. Looked like a smaller version of his mid-90s self. He ended up looking like the Great Muta more than anything in this look... pretty cool.

Yeah, JTG is decent enough to be face in peril and Shad can do your typical hoss stuff. They've got more charisma than I thought, especially after seeing "Da Beast" in OVW for years. Doesn't hurt too that they actually have an idea of what's somewhat hip.

Definitely a quality show tonight. The Christian/Joe stuff was all great, and there's plenty of other interesting things going on.

double post

I thought it was a pretty good and intriguing show. Russo's exactly what they needed as far as character development goes and giving guys direction. Nothing offensive except for putting the camera on Christian so much while the X-Division match was going on. The wrestling being cut down doesn't really bother me because they weren't giving the matches enough time to be good and were ignoring most of the matches already on Impact.

Guess you missed the Ultimate X match then.

Crash TV is definitely in full effect (and so far, so good)

Yeah, god-forbid they give him a non-wrestling role that makes sense since he's not in condition to wrestle at this point.

Looks like TNA is doing this the right way: http://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.asp?id=20524&p=1

That's exactly how I'd book it. Angle on Impact in a couple weeks to cut a promo, refs the match at BFG, and wrestles for the first time on the primetime debut show

he might improve ratings in a morbid, "Faces of Death" kinda way. Anyone who doesn't think Angle will pop a rating for TNA is nuts... just look at the reaction online. They're not going to start doing 3.0s, but they should be doing in the mid 1.0s.

Judging by the internet wrestling sites imploding, absolutely they're gonna go up signficantly.

Someone seriously needs to put that promo of Angle up on Youtube... they did an insanely good job with it.