Jingus

Funny how this story becomes a huge controversy while his son Leland sucker-punching Don Frye in a hotel and knocking him out two separate times just a few days ago garnered no attention whatsoever. Saying the n-word in private > multiple felonious assaults in public, I guess.

She's the only thing even close to a legitimate piece of talent that the divasearch has turned up, and she still couldn't put together a decent match to save her life. She's not good, she's just "good for a Diva". Funny how out of four Tough Enoughs and four Divasearches that Johnny fucking Nitro is easily the only new prospect with serious long-term potential that they've produced. (Of course, if they'd stop firing all the rookies just a year or two after signing them things might've been different, but oh well, hindsight...).

What the hell did Butch Reed supposedly have to do with the Steamboat/HTM title switch? As I recall, Steamboat asked for time off to be with his new kid soon after winning the belt, which pissed Vince off since he's a chronic workaholic and expects all his employees to be the same. So Honkey got the belt. And yes, Savage was supposed to win the IC belt and Dibiase was supposed to win the WMIV tournament, that's pretty well-documented. But I'm not sure exactly why everything got changed the way it did, "Savage flipped out over not having a belt" always sounded kinda suspect to me.

QFA. When I watch wrestling, I want to see wrestling. If I want to watch women who aren't trained wrestlers and can't act, why bother with the WWE when Cinemax is one click away?

Because out of his three tv shows, two were proven ratings hits and critically acclaimed, and the third sold so damn many DVD box sets that they made it into a movie?

Raven's matches with Benoit were prime stuff, especially the one at Souled Out '98. He also had a great one with Jericho at Halloween Havoc that year. Reading this topic did instantly bring someone to mind: I dare you to name a really great standout match featuring IRS.

Christ, not many TNA fans left here, eh? Wonder why. All this next stuff is copied from a post I made at the Pit, but this poor neglected thread has seen so little action, I figure it needs a pity fuck. So, I was bored tonight. How bored? Enough to sit down and watch an entire episode of Impact for the first time since they've gone to the two-hour format. Those of you who know me may be shocked, SHOCKED I say, that I found a bunch of stuff to complain about. -No one specific thing makes me feel this way, but the overall TNA product just comes off as... fake. Contrived and choreographed. Insincere in its plastic prefab simulation of a real wrestling show. The attention-deficit editing style certainly doesn't help, it always seems like they can never wait to cut away from whatever's happening now to whatever's happening next. It's all too painfully obvious that Tenay and West are just talking heads, repeating the lines that have been provided to them. -In the entire first hour, there was a combined total of four minutes of wrestling action. FOUR FUCKING MINUTES. Unacceptable. And someone please teach Russo that unsanctioned angle-driven brawling isn't a suitable substitution for actual matches. -It's Total Nonstop Action! So of course we open with a 10-minute promo. Angle still has great delivery on the mic, but he was scrambling to try and cover a storyline that makes no damn sense here with Cornette's bizarre tag-team match with a mystery partner, and the winner gets the heavyweight title? Kurt even pointed out how stupid the angle is in his spiel. He did get in a funny line about how watching a bunch of cop shows made him into a great detective. -Kazarian is like the modern equivalent of Tom Zenk. "If we just keep changing his name, he's bound to eventually get over!" It's not that he doesn't have a gimmick, it's that he doesn't have a character either. (Yes, there is a difference. Stone Cold is a character. The Ringmaster is a gimmick.) Being in pathetic short matches like this sure as hell won't help him either. And I don't think a single fan thinks he's got a chance in hell of winning this stupid tournament thingie. And what was the point of James Storm and Eric Young soaking the canvas in a pathetic attempt at Austin/Sandman debauchery? -Some of the Angle/Borash backstage "interrogation" skits were amusing, especially Black Machismo babbling about the Ultimate Warrior and when Angle broke down crying Austin Powers-stylez about his daddy hating him, but there were way too many, a little goes a long way with this stuff. -So, Team 3D is so much tougher than the entire X Division that nine guys aren't enough to put them through tables?! And where did Alex Shelley's charisma escape to? Nice to see that Russo still just can't resist writing promos directed specifically towards the internet. -The Hoyt/Rave/Hemme promo was a pretty good example of doing everything wrong in an interview. It was the first time this team has ever spoken on-camera, and we're ALREADY getting the standard Russo "tension between tag partners over a woman" crap. It further no ongoing storylines, it led to nothing, and it didn't even vaguely refer to anything that had to do with actual wrestling. Plus, we got our millionth example of Russo's creepy obsession with sexual storylines with Rave apparently talking about Hemme's pussy. Hoyt doesn't seem to realize the physics of speaking into a microphone in order to be heard on tv, and based on evidence here Rave couldn't cut a decent interview if there were snipers in the balconey waiting to cap him if he failed. This was a perfect example for Lance Storm's recent article about TNA's crappy promos. -All that being said, Christy has actually improved quite a bit on her general ringwork and presence, as long as she's not talking she ain't too bad. She leaned into that spinning backfist like a champ, and seeing her literally get bent in half is a memorable visual. Awesome Kong does a good Vader-style beatdown, though she really needs to cut out the goofy Kamala-esque facials. -Dustin Rhodes looks like he's aged ten years in the past three. And what the hell was the point with that key that him and Abyss are fighting over? Nobody ever even tried to explain what this WCW-type bullshit was about. I was looking around to see if Norman the Lunatic was somehow involved. -Christian is psychic. He sure as hell read my mind with his comment of "Can someone explain what's going on around here?!" -Robert Roode is the most absolutely generic and boring young worker who was never a member of La Resistance. He doesn't really do anything wrong, but he's just so bland, nothing he does is any different from any other wrestler in history. -The TNA Edit Monster struck again during the Roode-Joe postmatch angle. Samoa Joe did an absolutely disgusting bladejob, we're talking Corino Meets Abdullah level red waterfall here. But they barely even showed it; he got busted open during the commercial break, and they quickly cut away to the next backstage segment. Way to go, assholes, just ignore the most intense and compelling part of your entire television program. -Christian's match with Chris Harris was... there. I did enjoy some of CC's weird offense like the see-saw kick in the ropes, and how he demonstrated how to pin a guy while actually holding onto the ropes in a manner which would really make it harder to kick out. -The main event was the MOTN, but it's not like there was a lot of competition. AJ looked off at several parts, like that airball dropkick or the weirdly mistimed low blow, but he did redeem himself with the awesome springboard 450 at the end. Who is the guy who ran in with the slapjack? Why do they keep pretending that a nerf ball in a sock is a deadly weapon? Why pay the gigantic salaries for guys like the Steiner brothers if you're only going to show them for literally less than ten seconds before cutting away to yet another backstage Angle segment? -Note to TNA: bait and switch sux. Anyone with a computer knows the mystery partner isn't Scott Hall. -Where was Jim Cornette? More importantly, why did they mention he wasn't there, while never actually even suggesting a reason for his absence? TNA claimed for years that this second hour was going to be their ticket to success. Well, it ain't the first time they lied to us.

Sadly, that's my thought too. I'm glad that Whedon is coming back to TV, he's never worked as well in any other medium. But why fuckin' Dushku? Her star ain't exactly rising, and she was never that great an actress; some of Faith's line readings had me grinding my teeth over just how damn fake they sounded. So, yeah, expect to buy a Dollhouse: The Complete Series DVD boxset in a couple years.

No one. Without an advertising plan, a better understanding of how to book the wrestlers under contract and smarter decisions on who to keep employed and who to cut taps with then TNA will never rise above where they are. It takes forever but all the progress they were making a year or two ago has been flushed by poor decision after poor decision and a failure to get their name out there so people know they are an actual DIFFERENT company from the WWE. There is just one guy out there who's unsigned, healthy, and could probably turn this thing around all by himself. Problem is, Dwayne Johnson wants nothing to do with wrestling anymore.

Survivor Series used to be great because of the rigid hierarchy that the WWE had at the time; guys generally only fought other guys on their level, or squashed jobbers. SS matches let a lot of guys wrestle each other whom you normally would never see in the same ring. Also, it can be used to put someone over greatly, the best example I can think of being SS'87. After a few eliminations, Hogan got counted out, leaving his teammate Bam Bam Bigelow all alone against King Kong Bundy, One Man Gang, and Andre. Bigelow put up a ferocious fight, pinning both Bundy and Gang before Andre finally sat on him for the win. Now THAT's giving someone the rub.

Jesus fucking christ. I've seen MadTV sketches where the actors more closely resembled who they're supposed to be playing. As for getting someone to play Andre, hello, isn't the obvious solution to just stick a wig on Paul Wight? (Not the godawful ball of yarn passing for a hairpiece in this movie, but still.) Clearly these moviemakers couldn't afford Wight, as it's all shot micro-budget stylez. It's stupid to even try to make a movie about Andre without any money, considering he spent the majority of his life playing to sold-out crowds in the largest arenas on the planet. When a movie has such a low budget and is so badly produced that you can't even make a decent two-minute trailer out of it, jesus christ, just kill yourself and save us the pain of living in the same world with your "art". The worst part: the pathetic comments on that webpage from some of the people trying to defend this obvious steaming pile of shit.

Yeah, but not the main chick, she was one of the other random victims. Personally, I think it would take much less time to make a Good Parts list for Transformers than spend the hour or so I'd need to talk about all the Bad Parts.

Yeah, that occured to me too. What did she look like? Jessica James is ODB's shoot name, and she's wrestled under that name before. Just wondering if it was the same person.

Weird, me too. Me and some buddies used to go up to the local Deja Vu all the time because the wrestler who trained them worked there as a bartender, and we'd get in free. One night when the WWE was in town Orton, Batista, and Rico all showed up. I didn't talk to them because I didn't care, it's not like Ric Flair walked in or anything, but I've heard that Orty and Bats are regulars at clubs of both the regular and stripping varieties.

It's partly true. That is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany, communist China, and various crappy third-world dictatorships. But comparing those genocidal examples to anything happening now in America is a stretch.

Kathy Griffin did a bit in one of her standups about constantly being on Hollywood Squares, so, no surprise there. I find it amusing that this thread actually led several people who'd never heard of Skye to check out her music. I guess it's one of those any-publicity-is-good-publicity deals.

A lot of the deleted stuff from Apocalypse Now that they put back in the Redux version was pretty lame, especially that ENDLESS, godawful sequence at the French plantation that just stopped the movie's momentum cold at the worst possible time. My brother and I use "Snake Eyes Syndrome" to describe a movie which starts off really good, but falls completely to shit by the end.

Geez man, we really have to do something about that sand in your vagina.

I call shenanigans on Bret claiming he invented the sharpshooter on his wife in the middle of the night. Konnan had seen some Japanese guys use that hold and showed it to Bret, both Konnan and Bret have said that in interviews before.

Your buddy dissonance was a fucking idiot who could barely string multiple sentences together. He went out of his way to troll and insult the other posters, even by Pit standards. He kept going on and on about how everyone else was so close-minded except for him, and man I got tired of seeing the word "myopic". It was like pulling teeth to get him to ever try and speak in details or specifics, he always would just post one or two line's worth of vague crap and call it a day. And any time he was proven wrong on anything, he'd just no-sell it, pull a Monty Python's Black Knight and say "I am bleeding... making me the winner!" You kept talking about how smart this dude was, but I never, ever saw any evidence of that whatsoever. Plus, storming off in a huff because someone very gently messed with his account in a non-permanent way, and then the "prankster" not only apologized for it but quit as a mod because of it? Jesus, what more did you guys want, punitive damages?

I think Sting's starpower has been hurt a lot by the massive amounts of time off he's taken over the past decade. In WCW from 1998 until it closed, Sting did the same thing as Hogan and the other top guys with randomly disappearing for weeks if not months at a time. Then he was the only top WCW guy who never once worked for Vince. He basically sat at home for years, worked a couple times for TNA during their weekly PPV days and then vanished again. He's spent more time away from the business than in it for several years now. Obviously he's not a draw, because TNA doesn't draw jack shit (although you could say the same thing about every other worker on the roster). Plus he's almost 50 years old now, there just can't be much gas left in the tank. Supposedly Sting doesn't mind putting the young talent over, but I'll be damned if I can remember any concrete examples of him doing so. And no, him jobbing the title to Abyss on a DQ doesn't count.

Vince provides the general themes ("I want more blonde women with implants, and more big guys in the main events"), Stephanie comes up with the weekly outline ("Make sure that HHH, Cena, Undertaker, and HBK are all kept strong, and give the Divasearch plenty of airtime"), and then the writers themselves come up with all the details, and then present them back to the bosses for the green or red light on what they've written.

Kurt has main evented on episodes of Raw which had higher ratings than anything Sting has ever done. Ditto buyrates for PPVs. Plus in terms of name recognition, Olympic gold medalist > guy who the general public might confuse with the former lead singer of The Police. Of course, since TNA's ratings and buyrates are eternally a small fraction of WWE's and they never turn a profit, it really doesn't matter who's on top, it's gonna fail anyway.

I wasn't surprised at Cena beating HHH, considering that Trips had jobbed in the previous two Mania main events. What DID surprise me was the finish being him tapping out to the STFU, since Cena hadn't used it to win very many matches at that point, he'd only started doing it a few weeks before that.

Those are indeed good examples. I was actually thinking the Cena/Big Show thing too, as Cena is easily the smallest guy to ever throw Show around.