Mad Scientist

I don't know...I think Eric Young can win and still get over, as he can play on that underdog role he's perfectly suited for. He can't have an undefeated streak, which ruins the "against all odds" gimmick, but he can win and make some headway, especially if they shift him into the X Division, which is sorely in need of some face talent. I think they really could have built something out of Sting/Daniels. Daniels definitely can work both in-ring and on the mike, but nobody can pull out a decent feud where they're buried immediately by their opponent in a direct and decisive fashion. Daniels as the "disciple" of Sting who misinterprets everything Sting tries to teach/tell him could work as the basis for an ongoing angle. TNA dropped the ball with it through bad writing and worse booking, but I think it would definitely work given some halfway decent writing/booking. The kernel of a great feud is there, but TNA refuses to make any use of it. I go into how I think the angle could be booked in my really long post above, so I won't bore anyone with it again, but it could have been great and elevated Daniels as he deserves, while also giving Sting a meaningful conflict for his character and a way to go out on a high note. As Joe having the title has shown that the X Division's best are glorified jobbers, the only way TNA can book him losing the title is with interference by Angle or someone else. They've written themselves into a corner. Of course, no one at TNA worries about booking consistency anyway, so they may just have Ray/Bubba win the title or something.

No! Abyss needs to stay the hell away from the microphone! He needs to growl and look menacing, dammit. The only difference between Abyss now and before is who he destroys in the ring. Of course, TNA will flub this as well. And finally we'll actually see a match with all three of Seratonin! This should be good. Of course, Raven will be involved in a run-in/beatdown of some sort.

I've gotta agree a bit with Spike and FULMINATUS! If fans start seeing this stuff, you guys are going to suffer an involuntary face turn unless you beat up some nuns or steal bread from an orphanage. Pranking heels gets you face pops. Gonna be tough to stay heels once you start getting face pops.

Uhm, incidentally...who's marking the matches this week? Not that I'm rushing things; I'd just like to be sure where to send my losing match before it goes into the losing matches thread.

That was the one that got me. It's clearly for the sake of the match with all the titles on the line, but to book that match they basically had to cut Jay Lethal off at the knees, which is my concern. When you luck upon a good thing, you have to capitalise on it. I'm in no doubt the Savage impersonator was meant to help Lethal's career, but I'm sure nobody in the company invisioned just how well it had worked. Lethal's done so fantastically to actually go beyond just being a comedy act and into someone fans genuinely want to see and for better or worse, one of the best things on the show week in and week out. And sure enough, the moment he gets the big win, he loses to Joe and his credibility just plummets to the point where he's right back to square one. Not to say 'Black Machismo' would have been the thing to carry TNA on, but it's the closest they've come to making a success out of someone since Eric Young. And they blew it. Horribly enough, this has become a classically TNA blunder. They will almost accidentally get someone over (Young, Lethal, Shelley, AJ) and then they will bury that individual with some ridiculous booking or silly backstage shenanigans or turn them into a stepping stone for someone who either does not need it (Joe) or who does not deserve it (Angle). It's almost painful to watch. I just keep hoping that they will turn things around in some fashion and stop pissing on their own talent. A vain hope perhaps...

TNA isn't getting it because they've fallen into the trap of "competing" with the WWE. They can't; they're just not on that level at all. What they need to do is play to their strengths, which their current booking ignores. Hell, the people who are the most over are seemingly buried in bungling feuds and the people who are the least over are pushed down people's throats. Here are my current problems with the booking, and what I believe could be done to correct the problems. Eric Young is quite possibly the most over man in the damn company. Even buried in a lower midcard feud, he got bigger pops than Sting, based on what I've seen, and Sting is their flagship babyface now. Why isn't there more focus on him? I liked the contract feud with Roode, but I thought they blew it having Jarrett intervene. Young should have gotten to stand up for himself and fight his way out of that contract without any outside help. Instead, we had Jarret show up for the save, bleeding away Young's well-earned overness. To correct this, they need to throw Young out of Roode's shadow and put him into a title picture. He could light up the X Division with someone who's legit over, other than the comedy act that is Dutt and Lethal. Samoa Joe should not be X Division champion. The use of the X Division belt as a placeholder in a feud over the world title is a huge mistake to make with what I see as TNA's biggest asset. The X Division should be kept to guys who aren't wrestling over the world title. TNA has a huge crop of great workers in that division who have the potential to get over on their workrate alone. Throw in Young to even out the faces and you've got a ton of talent that can create a lot of heatbuilding feuds and some amazing matches. A good heel to even things out would be good. Dutt would make a great insincere heel, especially if he turns on Lethal at a dramatically appropriate moment. They might need to bring in a few more heels to balance out the swath of babyfaces that are currently involved in the X Division. Shelley and Sabin need to be in the tag team title picture. Team 3D need to be out of it. We need to see more of Sabin and Shelley and LAX, and more teams in that same vein. AJ and Daniels would be okay if I didn't want to see Daniels do some more with Sting (more on that feud below). Storm and Robert Roode would also make another good team, as they're both very solid workers. A face team of Harris and maybe Rhyno would round things out pretty well. Team 3D and the Steiners do make for a lot of nostalgic heat, but those two teams are WAY past their prime and drag down the title pictures. The feud between Sting and Daniels had a lot of potential. TNA's bassackwards booking ruined it. In their first real match, Daniels should have gotten the rub, even if he got the win by cheating (using Sting's bat or some such). This could have set up a great interplay of moral ambiguity. Sting's strong religiomoral overtones don't jive well with carrying around a baseball bat, and the Fallen Angel could have provided an excellent dark mirror to the perpetual babyfacedom of Sting. Burying Daniels the first match in destroys any credibility Daniels had going in. That feud could have been an excellent way to let Sting leave when he retires on a high note, with a final, decisive victory over his dark side. He could have even shown up at the final match of the feud wearing his old beach boy outfit with the brightly colored facepaint from his original lighthearted incarnation. The pop would have been HUGE. No real chance of something like that now. The world title picture is just screwed up. The only thing going really right at this point is that Angle has finally become the heel he needed to be from the beginning. Angle can't play a good face or tweener; he doesn't have the subtlety to come off as believable in any role but that of an arrogant heel. Joe is chasing him. That is also good. Joe having to get the X Division title to do it is bad. It basically buries one of the most over guys in the division (Lethal) who had only held the belt for a couple of days. Christian needs to be in the picture, as he is arguably the best heel in the company right now, and the title picture needs that. Abyss could also be in the mix, although his upcoming feud with Mitchell's new monster might also be a good direction for his character. Jarrett needs to stay out of the title picture for a while. Harris, Rhyno, Roode, and Storm can be tossed in to the mix with some credibility to add warm bodies, but that should be the extent of it right now.

Don't get crazy with that now...I haven't read that book in nearly a decade, y'know. And it's not a book that's easily remembered, what with all those...er...what were those [fnord]s?

Oh, dear God, I'm doomed. The living, wrestling embodiment of CHAOS has...A PLAN! There's something horribly wrong with that. In both a metaphysical and a physical way.

"Careens to backwards" is Ancient Mayan for "I didn't really edit this match very well." The arm work was really more about the shoulder, which was the problem with the Uranage from either perspective, as it seems to use both arms and shoulders. I probably should have mentioned BL using his left arm for the forearms and such, though. I worry about constantly writing out that he uses his left forearm instead of the right, but in this case it may have been better to point that out. The leg move over the top rope was the only damage the leg had taken, so I figured that plus adrenaline would enable BL to pull out all his intestinal fortitude to try and hit with his best shot. Maybe some language about adrenaline in the finish sequence would have been welcome though. Thanks for the comments, and I'll work on it for the madness that will be next week's ladder match against FULMINATUS! You will most likely find it in the "losing matches" thread on Friday...ladder matches are not by forte, but it will give me a much-needed workout for spotfest writing.

I am certainly not hip, but I am a geek, I have read the Illuminatus! Trilogy, and I love to make nerdy references. It was my match. I'm interested to see Blue Leaf's now... Thanks for the compliments, btw. You know, after your last two matches, I'm terrified of this coming week's final match. What can I possibly come up with that could match those crazy spots? And in a ladder match, no less! My mind is boggled by the possibilities.

Aha. Live or dead? African or European? Dude, did you even listen to Skull Radio? Badger on a Pole is the only rule.

I have a purely academic question from my perspective... In the Badger on a Pole match, does the person who retrieves the badger win, or does that person just get to use the badger in some horrific, PETA-offending way against the hapless, and hopefully immunized, opponent?

I think Johnny Nitro is mic skills away from being a mega star. Too bad Paul Heyman is not around any more to work with him. There are dollars to be made with Nitro. Nitro also needs a better gimmick. This "Hollywood A-lister" crap just smacks of midcardiness.

You're right. The war zone was the prelude to independence. We really should do the fireworks for about a week before July 4. Then do it for a week after (since it took a little while for word to get around back then that the war was over).

Speaking of which, Angle needs to grow a goatee. A gold bandolier wouldn't hurt either. And yeah, I'm thinking that anytime you declare a "Me Appreciation Night," you're solidly in heel territory. Even if you're The Rock. Well, maybe not Rock, since he's STILL so over he could kick a crippled puppy and still get a face pop.

Matt Hardy, Finlay, Kennedy, and MVP are putting on a lot of good matches, most of which are consistently better than Cena's TV matches. I hate that they've booked Finlay with the shilleleigh and Li'l Bastard/Hornswoggle as a crutch, but that's doesn't reflect on Finlay's ability so much as his lack of main event charisma. Punk was putting on some good matches with Burke and Corvon, until those two dropped off TV. On RAW, Cena was admittedly doing more than a lot of the roster until very recently. Getting over with anything is more a function of charisma and booking than wrestling ability. The Rock and Austin could pop a crowd with a Backdrop or a Thesz Press, two very basic moves. You're absolutely right that neither really presented a varied or interesting moveset, and that was a flaw in their matches as well. Their sheer charisma got them past it. Being "over" does not make a move "credible." Making Scotty 2 Hotty a tag champion never, ever made "The Worm" a credible move. Some things are just too silly. Did the People's Elbow or the Thesz Press pop the crowd? Always. Were they "credible" in terms of being apparently dangerous or spectacular moves? No. I wholeheartedly agree that there is a lot more than moves to a wrestling match. John Cena, most of the time, does understand those other aspects and works hard to put on a good match. As did The Rock and Austin. However, he is limited in the moves he performs, although he could easily change that if he were allowed to do so. I will happily add that rolling neckbreaker and a leg drop to his moveset. However, he is still mostly punch, punch, punch. Does he get pops doing things that way? Yes. Is it still boring as hell to watch most of the time? Yep. Right now, Cena is not exhibiting enough charisma to pull me into that sort of match. Rock and Austin in their day could make a good match on charisma alone. Not so with Cena, at least not yet. Agreed; popping is not all there is to a match or a promo. Mick Foley's cheap pop gimmick gets the pop, but it still sucks. I didn't like Bret's 5 Moves of Death either. Same problem. Someone who could do more and better either gets lazy in the ring or is forced into a rut for booking or crowd-popping.

I'll point out that in each of the above, you have a generic moveset allusion...chain wrestling by Finlay, quickness by Mysterio, mat wrestling by Punk. You don't know what moves they're actually going to do, and thus there is room for a surprise as far as the sequencing and use of the signature moves or spots for the above guys. This illuminates Cena's weakness, IMHO. He doesn't have a lot to mix into his matches. Cena's move list is punch, stomp, kick, shoulderblock/clothesline, 5 Knuckle Shuffle, maybe a verticle suplex vs. a little guy, maybe a body slam with a big guy, FU, STFU. I don't mind anyone hitting their signatures to pop the crowd; that's what a TV match is about (and PPV as well, to a certain extent). The Five Moves of Death deal does get boring, however. It got boring with Bret Hart too. My problem with this is that Cena is the flagship for the entire company right now, and I believe it is perfectly legitimate to expect a bit more than that. Again, this is not to cast aspersions on his ability to put on a good match when the need arises, but I think that when you see some guys lower down the totem pole kayfabe-wise that put on consistently better matches, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Will it be addressed? Not as long as the current program makes money, as far as I can see. Cena has the potential to do a lot more, and he did do more when he first appeared on WWE TV; his first TV match on the Angle Invitational showed him mat wrestling with Angle, and Kurt sneaking a victory with his chickenwing cradle rollup. Now, I believe because of booking and PR, he is stuck in a rut. That's the most disappointing thing about the situation to me is that getting to the top has choked out what could have been and might still be a really great wrestler who also has excellent mike skills when he's allowed to use them.

This is ridiculous. The Khali ppv matches are the only ones I think come close to fitting this description, though that's generally what you see from any monster/normal guy match. The Umaga matches don't even fit this. At the Rumble, Cena was getting dominated a lot, but the idea was him avoiding all the death spots to keep him in the match until he could finally choke Umaga out. At NYR, he got dominated, but there was no "hulking up," rather a simple survival roll-up. The HHH, Edge, and Michaels matches were all evenly built back-and-forth kind of stuff. The RVD match was actually mostly Cena because he was the heel. I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea all of Cena's matches are the same, because they aren't. I said a typical Cena match goes like that, not all of them. Typical does not mean all. But yes, lately that has been the program...he faces a heel, he gets in a little offense early on, the heel dominates for a large chunk of the time, then Cena goes for a comeback and gets a win. All his matches certainly aren't like that, it's just that such matches are his typical ones. Even Hogan didn't have the same match all the time, but most of his matches follow the program mentioned above. Cena is being booked exactly like Hogan. That says nothing about Cena's in-ring ability or his overness, it's just a fact of his booking so far. I didn't say the booking was ineffective; it works on a lot of the WWE fan demographic. I just find it makes things exceptionally boring in the RAW main event scene. If you enjoy that sort of booking, then I'm happy for you. I don't enjoy the booking, as it destroys the credibility of any existing heels on RAW, and leaves us with a big swath of face-v-face matches, which are rarely worth watching IMHO. Lashley versus Cena is not what I'd consider a great match waiting to happen. I hope they'll prove me wrong on this one, as it's going to be headlining a PPV, but I have no faith that these two can pull it off.

Goldberg was a face too. If you build up an invincible face, then present a situation where he might lose, you get people buying to see him "overcome the odds" and keep on winning. Difference being that Goldberg was believeable in the role. He looks like someone who can't be beaten. Same goes for Samoa Joe. Cena doesn't come off as that type of character. (emphasis added) This is true and it's lost on so many. Lesnar came across as a believable juggernaut too. Goldberg was booked to go through opponents like an oncoming train. Joe for a while at least was booked like an invincible badass. This is not something everyone can pull off, charisma-wise or personality-wise, even if the wrestler is booked for it properly, which Cena is not. Cena matches typically go like this: (1) Cena gets pummelled, tossed around, and generally whipped from pillar to post for 90% of the match; (2) Cena "hulks it up" and makes a comeback; (3) FU/STFU is applied; and (4) Opponent is pinned/taps out. You can't make a believable Goldberg/Lesnar/early Andre out of this kind of program. Unbeatable guys don't get dominated for most of the match only to make a superman comeback at the end to win. Cena is booked more like Hogan, and honestly that era has passed. There's only so many times per week or per month any wrestling fan who's not a complete Cena mark can stand to watch that match. This is not to say that Cena can't put on a good show; he can and he often does. Cena and Nitro's match was excellent, and did a good job of showing that Nitro is a somewhat legitimate champion, as he took Cena far closer to his limit than the supposedly invulnerable Khali did. And Cena did an excellent job of showing that he now saw Nitro as a possible threat by the end of that match, after initially taking him lightly. Cena could also pull off a badass gimmick if booked for it, but he would have to undergo a gimmick overhaul, and he would never be able to rap again. A white boy rapping is the antithesis of a badass gimmick.

That would be kind of unfair to you, I'd say, since Blue Leaf only has a domino mask. He has much less to lose. My predictions are doom, despair, and drama. Because they all start with "d" of course.

Honestly Cena would be okay if they dropped this new painful goody-good face gimmick and stop having him use that screwed-up STFU. I honestly enjoyed the hell out of his promos from his rapping gimmick, and I would actually look forward to those freestyle rants, especially during his feud with Angle. They don't have to turn him heel, just turn him loose with the rapping again. You can tell that the promos he has to do now are stifling him. The STFU annoys the crap out of me just because it's the one move he has that is completely inconsistent with both his character and his in-ring style. He's a brawler/powerhouse. Every other move he does plays to those strengths. Having him constantly employ the STFU flies in the face of his entire style. It shocks you out of enjoying the match whenever he does it. I would suffer a similar break if I suddenly saw Umaga bust out a crossface chickenwing as a finisher. I'm nitpicking, I know, but that kind of stuff drives me nuts. I'd be equally flabbergasted if I suddenly saw Chavo Guerrero use a damn chokelsam. It doesn't make any kind of sense for the character or the wrestler's style. Other than that Cena works his BUTT off every match, which is more than can be said for a lot of the roster, and he can always put on a good show. I'd be a fan if I could get past the above two flaws I find in his current incarnation.

Honestly, I know I'm one of the n00bs, but the only flaw I saw in your match was a decided dearth of halibut. Before I read Maddix's match, I wouldn't have even known that was a flaw. I need to come up with a good submission hold employing halibut.

I marked out every time I watched his matches. Never saw a bad one. Couple that with what his classy carrying of himself outside the ring as well, dealing with the fans and other wrestlers. Wrestling will not be the same for a long time now. The best damn technical wrestler ever. No one ever did prove him wrong. I can't and won't speculate about what happened; all I'll say is I will miss seeing him every week and it's going to be hard to watch for a while. RIP Chris Benoit.

Thanks for the comments. I'm a big mark for submission finishers too, as you may be able to tell. I always worry about the timing of the breakdown work for submission setups. Honestly, nowadays in most pro wrestling there's hardly any build to submission finishers...they always "come out of nowhere." Even Benoit's crossface is now in this category...he almost never works the arm and shoulder anymore before the crossface pops up and puts out his opponent. And Angle never works the leg before he slaps on the anklelock. Contrast this with Ric Flair's classic build toward the figure four, with chopblocks, leg stomps, shinbreakers, etc. This is more a function of the short match program most of the big companies operate on, especially on TV, and hopefully not endemic of the entire industry. But I digress into rantdom; I'll stop. I'm a little torn myself on how to sell injury. Letting the opponent get in more offense before a serious breakdown would probably have worked better, now that I think of it. I'll work on that aspect.

Yep. I really glad that I'm not the only one. We can share our canes and stuff.