Jingus

I've known Hexgage, Chuck Taylor, and Ricochet for years, and I couldn't be happier that they're finally breaking out into the more well-known promotions. They're all incredibly talented workers and really nice guys.

Are we talking about the same office that thought Big Show vs. Batista was a good idea for the main event on the same show? Collectively, "they" don't have a damn clue.

Aw, whaddya you know, bitch, you've never been in the ring. I've been H-bombed by the Harris Brothers and had Bobby Eaton blown his own spot that he called and been smacked with chairs and blah blah blah ::Jingus continues his "grumpy old indy veteran" name-dropping and general whining long, long into the night::

2.70-2.80 here in Nashville TN. The difference depends on daily fluctuations and prices vary from area to area. It's really weird: in one part of town, the gas is twenty cents more expensive than in another, at every gas station regardless of company. That means that Exxon, Shell, BP, and Texaco in Town A all charge more than their sister stores in Town B just a few miles away. I think the reason why we have higher prices than most other Southern states is due to Tennessee's ridiculously high gas tax. It's basically one big pork barrell scheme for the Department of Transportation and its various subcontractors, as they get damn near every cent of tax from damn near every gallon of gas that's pumped in this state. It all adds up to an annual budget which is in the Billion dollar range. Just about every major road and interstate is constantly undergoing some kind of construction, yet, oddly enough, every tiniest construction project seems to take years to finish...

True, those matches could both be awesome. But don't forget this is TNA. Which means they'll probably be cut down to five minutes or less, especially considering the company's annoying over-reliance on cutting to commercial in the middle of relatively short matches. Man, I must be psychic. The tag match clocked in right at 5:00 even, and the singles match a bit less. And WOW that thumbtack match sucked. Abyss and Spike are both good workers who can do hardcore in their sleep; how the fuck did they give birth to this abortion? It was damn near a squash, Spike stayed down forever off the weakest of token "beatdowns", and the finish was anticlimactic. Worst of all was the incredibly contrived yet legitimately dangerous spot with the tacks on the tables. There was no need whatsoever for the tacks on the bottom table; none of them were gonna touch Abyss anyway, and they just exploded outward into the crowd. Dumb, dumn, dangerous stuff that could've easily backfired on them. Don West stole the Batphone from Commissioner Gordon's office!

According to PWInsider, the TV taping has been cancelled and apparently the whole deal is off. They also said that Rob Feinstein was working for the company in a backstage capacity, which translates to "they were fucked from the start".

Exactly. And does anyone think that the WWE has any idea what the card of the December to Dismember show is gonna be? Hell, does anyone think they know what next week's card is gonna be?

If that ever was the plan, I think Cole and especially JBL pretty much sabotaged it last week. Miz: "I'm gonna make my wrestling debut next week!" JBL: "WHAT?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I would rather see Star Jones on my bed, in a thong, topless, than see this goof wrestle! I would rather stick something up my BUTT! Tell me this isn't happening!"

None of their current booking is gonna help in the long run. What they're doing is commonly referred to as "hot-shotting the territory". In the old days, that meant either an energetic new booker (or a desperate old one) moved towards a more crash-TV style of booking in order to bring up the houses. It meant bringing in new wrestlers, having fast-paced storylines wherein feuds started and ended quickly, and a whole shitload of matches with special gimmicks or stipulations. It can work wonders in the short term (see the ratings for that first Nitro where Russo took over), but it never holds up in the long term, because it doesn't think about the long term. ECW is much like that. They book week to week, constantly changing storylines (sometimes even BEFORE the storyline happens), they haven't really had a single feud that's lasted more than a month, they go bizarrely back and forth in an arbitrary manner over which matches are "extreme rulz" and which aren't, and of course (the clearest sign of creative bankruptcy) they bring in constant guest stars. Great for the short term, sure. The core WWE audience will tune in en masse to see what swerve happens this week, what Flair or Batista or DX is gonna do on this show. Problem is, you can't keep doing that forever. There are only so many guest stars in the company you can use before you've exhausted all the important ones. Constant plot twists and swerves only keep the audience's attention for a finite period of time. Eventually, they always get tired of the "oh-my-god I can't believe what just happened this is thegreatestnightinthehistoryofoursport!"shennanigans and just tune out.

But anyway, to make sure there's no confusion: I think that Joey Styles is quite possibly the best play-by-play announcer working in wrestling today. And that's not just a personal opinion, it's a professional one; I've been a play-by-play commentator on a local indy show for almost five years now, and Joey still amazes me with his talent for pacing, his balance between ironic insider jokes and oh-my-god markishness, and his quite possibly unique ability to call an entire show by his damn self. (Having done that myself, lemme tell ya, that shit's HARD.) BUT Joey can only fulfill his full potential in the right environment. And any company which tries to force him to change his announcing style, pipes in lines over his headphones for him to speak, pairs him up with motor-mouthed color commentators, and generally forces him to submit and be a good little Michael Clone is NOT the right environment. For a quick & easy example, compare his amazing announcing job at the first One Night Stand (one of the finest commentaries I've ever heard) with his by-the-numbers hack job at this year's ONS (where he and Tazz sounded like complete corporate shellouts while they talked about what tough guys Edge, Orton, and Cena were). Even now in ECW, Joey is a sad shadow of what he used to be. He's out of his depth and simply not suited to parroting the company line. It doesn't help that he's partnered with Tazz, who when not explaining the psychology behind a hold or cracking the (occasionally funny) joke is kinda useless. Joey shouldn't have to ape JR's old line about "you can't believe how big the Big Show is unless you buy a ticket to see him in person!", or act like he's terrified of fake vampires, or plug Cena's movie. It completely destroys his old character of being the knowledgable yet wimpy smartass, to whom you actually had to listen closely because he might just say ANY damn thing. Joey Styles used to be the best announcer in the world. (Or at least the best currently working announcer in the world who wasn't Jim Ross during an Austin, Flair, or Foley match.) Now he's just another white-toothed goof in a suit.

Problem is, it probably WILL get ratings. ECW regularly gets more than double whatever rating TNA gets, and almost approaches old Nitro territory. Apparently there is an audience out there for this stuff. (Even though it seems to be dwindling slooooowly in 0.1 increments every week.)

Since I haven't once actually offered my opinion on the quality of Joey's announcing abilities in this thread, how do you still somehow know what it is? SCROBY IS PSYCHIC

And when did I ever say it was all Joey's fault and he was to blame? Ever? Don't put words in my mouth. Maybe if you'd read what I'd written in the last few posts, you'd see me repeatedly say that Styles never really had a chance in that spot and was destined to fail no matter how well he performed.

Which was a plotline that, truthfully, I never really liked. Evil can't be defeated? Temptation will always overcome you? That's a horrible message. (To put it in Star Wars terms, that's as if the ending of ROTJ was the Emperor tripping over his own feet and falling to his death after he kicks Luke and Vader's asses.) "Huge" and "gaping" wouldn't even begin to cover it. Try using descriptive metaphors like "Grand Canyon" or "Paris Hilton". Personally, I never saw the extended versions of the movies. How much stuff was put back in, and was any of it really worth the time?

They were already hedging their bets with him before they decided to relaunch ECW. Remember him being replaced on Backlash?

Jeremy Borash's greatest contribution to mankind was directing Forever Hardcore... in which he never appeared on-camera. Too bad he didn't learn the obvious lesson there.

He got taken off the air and replaced with the guy HE was supposed to replace. To me, that's failure, regardless of the cause. Say you challenge me to run a mile in one minute. I try, and of course I fail. I had zero chance to succeed in the first place, but that doesn't change the fact that I still failed.

It's only cool if you think there's a chance in hell of either HHH or HBK actually laying down for Sabu or RVD. Otherwise, no matter how good the match is, it's Just Another Frustrating Klique Squash. Plus, most WWE crowds would boo the shit out of anyone who fights D-X, and do we really want the office to have any less confidence in the drawing power of the "original extremists" than they already do?

Of course there were people who got the questions right. Those people just got edited out of the footage we saw. Why bother showing intelligent citizens who know their shit? That doesn't draw ratings, or at least that's the media's theory. (The WWE's theory too, now that I think about it.)

I think you're all jumping the gun a bit, debating the pros and cons of different schools all over the continent. He might've asked about Windy City just because he lives in Chicago. Not everyone has the ability to pull up stakes from their home and move to wherever just because they want to train in that particular school to be a wrestler.

Yep. True, those matches could both be awesome. But don't forget this is TNA. Which means they'll probably be cut down to five minutes or less, especially considering the company's annoying over-reliance on cutting to commercial in the middle of relatively short matches. I'm expecting good shit out of the thumbtack match. Anything else that's actually entertaining will just be a bonus.

But he can get over with the crowd due to the ridiculous amount of bumping and bleeding he does. I mean, c'mon, haven't you seen The Passion? Dude takes a sicker beating than Mick Foley EVER has, and then no-sells it by just resurrecting himself long before next week's show. Heh, that's my favoritist typo evah.

I think they need a second hour, too. This week, they had only three matches, and they were all singles matches. Aside from the thousand guys who ran in on the main event, that's only FIVE wrestlers getting TV time (I don't count Heyman). Five? Out of a roster of at least a couple dozen people? Yes, they do need to manage the time they have more efficiently. Problem is, the company is owned by the WWE, so it won't. We're gonna be subjected to shit like bikini contests and plugs for Cena's movie forever. So, my suggestion? An ECW b-show. Like Heat or Velocity, but for the new brand instead. Shove all those "CM Punk/Kevin Thorn kills some jobber" matches onto that show and give them one nice long main event every week between some midcarders who might otherwise never get the TV time. Then on Tuesday nights you can focus on the big angles, the main event feuds, the dumbass backstage segments, and so on.

That's IF you consider Big Show, Matt Striker, Bob Holly, Renee Dupree, CM Punk, Shannon Moore, Torrie Wilson, Test, Kelly Kelli, Mike Knox, Ariel, and Kevin Thorn to be "ECW stuff". Mighty big IF, there.

Angle almost certainly had legit prescriptions for whatever he was taking. Lots of wrestlers legally take painkillers or steroids that way. R-V-D! R-V-D!