Michrome

It's a very good traditional match. Starting off early with the mat stuff that Spanky is better at, frustrating Cide and establishing Spanky as the babyface. Cide's heat segment was great too, since his neckbreakers are really good and the neck submission mixed with the middle finger was a great touch. All of Spanky's comebacks were quick flurries, usually involving high flying, and Cide did a great job putting them down with the top rope double underhook superplex, the belly to belly and the tiger driver. Spanky kept his offense basic, but he does everything so well which is what puts him on a different level than guys like Sydal. It's not your typical indyfest face-face even match, but it was damn good.

Homicide vs. Spanky 5/15 ROH deserves a spot. Criminally underrated.

AJ's by far the most over guy they have. TNA is supposed to be different than the WWE, not a second rate copy. If they have a champ that smokes both of the WWE champs, that's a damn good thing.

This really sounds appealing to you?

Well, I personally never thought TNA reached its potential, but it was good enough that I would think about ordering it some weeks, for the big matches. I ordered Raven-Styles when it happened, and despite the idiotic booking I liked that show a lot. My theory on what changed everything: Sometime around Summer 03, Jarrett obviously decided the product needed a change because they were stuck at 10,000 buys and that wasn't profitable. For some reason, he decided that Dutch Mantell would be the solution, thinking that an "old style" product would attract all the WCW fans in. He also made the move for Hogan around this time. Whereas Russo's style wasn't drawing more and more buyers in, it was keeping a steady base....unlike Mantell, who strung together about 8 months of absolute, total shit. Lately it's been shitty but not quite on the shitty level it was at from September through June. In this time they dropped from 10k buys per week to 6k buys per week, but keep on plugging because Jarrett can't admit he's wrong, and thinks television is the be-all and end-all. They finally get TV, paying an extra 35k and change per week to have it, and get no increase in PPV buys or revenue. Now they move to Sunday PPVs, which is another dangling carrot, which allows them to scapegoat failure on the Wednesday slot, and avoid blaming Jeff.

One of the reasons it's easy to pick out the problems is that there are so many. The trials of TNA are more infuriating than anything else in recent wrestling history. Here you get a multi million dollar money mark in Panda, willing to spend all the money it takes and wait longterm for success, and the people running the company are ruining it. Panda may really be the last of the giant money marks. TNA is on the path to blowing the best chance at giving fans a real alternative in years, and this mistake will cost us all for years. Fire Dutch Mantell, fire Vince Russo, move Jeff off the booking team, and completely shake things up. That's the only thing I can possibly think of. How many people are going to buy the 11/7 PPV to see Jeff Jarrett vs. monty Brown or Jeff Hardy?

Since I'm going to this I thought I'd start the thread. Samoa Joe vs. Doug Williams (World Title): Really looking forward to this. They had a match a year ago back when Joe had no endurance and it was way too short. Now Joe is super improved, Doug is world class, and this should be awesome. Austin Aries vs. CM Punk: Hardest match to pick in a long time. Aries is a rising star, but Punk is heading toward a big title match. Their midwest match almost 2 years ago got rave reviews, and both guys have come a long way. Should be strong. American Dragon vs. Alex Shelley: Total dream match for me on every level. This could be a MoTYC, and I expect it to get good time. The 2 best mat workers in the US one on one, and I can't wait. Homicide vs. Mark Briscoe: Should be very good. Mark is a great seller, and I assume most of this match will be Cide kicking Mark's ass. John Walters vs. Jay Briscoe (Pure Title): I'm still not happy about Walters as pure champ, but this should be fine. Jay is really good. Walters seems to be a lock here. Pitbulls vs. Maff/Whitmer vs. Strong/Evans vs. Carnage Crew (Ultimate Endurance): I loved the first Ultimate Endurance match, and can't wait to see what they do here. Acid vs. Kahgas vs. Rave vs. Izzy vs. Fast Eddy vs. Steele: I guess this could be an OK spotfest. Doesn't do anything for me. Whitmer/Maff vs. Slash/Venom: I don't know what to expect from the Puerto Rican guys. I expect a brawl here.

Danielson-Shelley and Punk-Aries will be fantastic. The foley stuff should be very fun too.

All you have to do is ask him what he thinks and he'll tell you. He is happy wiht having 2 steady dates per week because he has a family. Before he was trying for 2 dates per week on the indies, which isn't always possible. With the contract, he can pick and choose his spots. You can also ask him about the ROH thing in private, and he'll tell you what he tells everyone, that he thinks it's bullshit and he wants to come back but he can't afford to give up a contract with garaunteed dates. I don't think anyone ever said TNA was holding them against their will.

Pretty much everything on the card barring matches thrown together because of injuries has a storyline to back it up. I'd think Hero-SHelley and the socal 4-way are more "random" dream matches than anything. Everything worth seeing at the CZW show is in the afternoon (Red tag, Shelley-Hero, 4-way). Do that show in the afternoon and then come to ROH at night....Flash vs. Knoxx or Punk vs. Aries? Messiah vs. Pain or Joe vs. Williams? Bboy vs. Kingston or Danielson vs. Shelley?

Who the fuck blows off a feud with a tables match? Are you kidding?

A tour of the east would be really pointless, I don't see why they'd do that. They won't be taking Liger, as there is more to the NJ/ROH negotiations to make this happen. Liger is stopping in inbetween tours, he isn't just open to come in all the time. Plus, IWA wouldn't want to seem like they were copying ROH.

I'm thinking it won't be a national DVD deal, as tons of indies have it and I don't think they would hype that this way. My guesses are: 1) Big outside name 2) Syndicated TV deal 3) IWA PPV? 4) Ian sold the company (ha)

Yeah Foley is making his debut. He signed on for more dates too, apparently wants to be a part of a real angle rather than just a one time thing.

Again, an irrelevent point. Everyone concedes that when they signed the contracts this became possible, but they were totally mislead to believe it would only keep them from working WWE. The point of the column was that the debate months ago has been settled in the way most people knew it would be. Nobody was covering the story online, and after some emails with Dave he wanted me to write a column about it. I believe he will be covering it in this week's observer.

I don't even see how that's relevent at all. I clearly state in the column TNA has a right to do what they're doing. You're point is the equivalent of someone saying "I have free speech!!!" when they're called stupid. The point is that the whole contract/Feinstein thing was a red herring and a sham. They wanted to get those guys off for months and jumped on that. They don't pay their workers anywhere near enough to limit their work. In the cut down to 5 dates a month, Chris Daniels makes like 500 per show. Is 2500/month a good living? They signed vaguely worded contracts because they were stupid and were told that it would only keep them from working WWE. If TNA makes it their official policy that they want to keep Daniels/Styles exclusive so people will want to get TNA, that's fine, but the whole charade of morality regarding Feinstein is a joke. As it is right now, it's guys working for peanuts being limited from an indy with no television, all because of a stupid dick-wacing contest. People wonder why Shelley is still around, the feeling in ROH is that TNA lets them keep him so they won't start a big anti-TNA campaign.

I expect Shelley to be pulled soon enough. Low Ki was never signed in TNA, as he was working Z-1 full time. The jealous argument is based on hearsay, but it's pretty unanimous hearsay. I mean, TNA even wanted to sign Joe to some meaningless program months ago just to take away ROH's champ. There has always been a lot of anger in TNA when Daniels and Styles said they liked working ROH more. I don't see how it's valid. They took talent off "because of Feinstein." Now he's gone. What's the issue? Are you going to try to tell me that Jasmine, Ian, and others that TNA guys work for don't lie all the time? Give me a break. Banning all wrestlers from working for lying promoters is like banning all waiters from working for restaurants that serve food. Daniels in TNA pretty much is the equivalent of Whitmer in ROH. He's in an uppercard tag team with a storyline, and once in a while he gets a big match, but he has no character development or any reason for people to care about him. There's no doubt that ROH was shady in the way they handled the situation. Still, the goal was to get rid of Rob, and eventually they did that. I'm very close to this situation because I have direct contact with workers involved. I was repeatedly assured that Jarrett's intentions were only the best and that they would be allowed back when Feinstein was gone. Over the last month, all of them have come to the realization that that just is not true. Finally, it's possible that this is all a big grand work. Daniels, Styles, Sabin, Red, etc are all working their friends, families, etc in a big angle to come back to ROH. If that's the case and people directly involved are keeping the best work ever a secret, then I'll happily look like a dumbass when it happens. I have a very hard time believing that though, since Chris Daniels had no date last night because H2 cancelled and TNA wouldn't let him work ROH.

Not really, he was right that Feinstein was still involved, but it was his position that Gabe, Doug, and Rob were all in a big secret pact to keep Feinstein's involvement secret, and would try to keep it secret until the end of time.

The source of this story is Bob Barnette's "friend" who supposedly called RF Video and heard someone that sounded like Rob in the background. Rob wasn't even saying this the day he was trying to call everyone and say he was still involved. Again, it's very possible Gabe knew, as I acknowledge in the column. However, why would he all of a sudden decide that the companies HAD to split, out of nowhere? Why was Silken trademarking the name ROH earlier? There was clearly movement towards a split for a while. The idea that it was a grand Gabe/Doug/Rob conspiracy when Gabe and Rob hate each other is just ridiculous.

Way to not adress a single point. Answer me this: If Feinstein is gone, and the guys were pulled because of Feinstein, why aren't they allowed back? The RF situation was indeed a PR disaster. Outside of that though, their PR has been far better than TNA, a promotion that splits up its workers into small groups to tell them news they had read on websites for months, just so they aren't able to voice mass objections.

I'd say 75% clean finishes would be good enough for me.

I can't really think of a single big match, so I'll go with Jeff Jarrett vs. Jeff Hardy in a Ladder match for the title, to try to get some buys out of Hardy with a ladder.

Well, it's telling when you compare London underdog matches to AJ ones in ROH. The best example for AJ bombing is 2/14, where he is absolutely awful in his role and pretty much ruins the entire tournament with horrible selling and his inability to connect with the crowd beyond cool looking moves. Pimping AJ's "overall selling" is laughable. Even in his best matches he usually has one or 2 eyeroll selling goofs. No, beyond chops there is pretty much no stiffness in the WWE. How about selling, staying focused in a match, not losing his head, never doing braindead things, and telling a story with his work. The point is, if you watch both of their matches near the end of their ROH tenures, they pretty much ditched the stupid moves like the nip up rana, quebrada DDT, and other contrived things. They'd use them really sparingly. AJ tends to ditch them too in IWA. In WWE and TNA, it's just a rush to get "interesting" spots in with the hope of getting over.

Yep.

I'll be at CZW afternoon and ROH night. Daniels and Styles aren't big draws against ROH either, ask 3PW. CZW would be better off finding some other guys to make their show more appealing without paying an assload for AJ. I know Daniels is already booked elsewhere.