TNA News and Notes from 12/13 WO

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

With much of the talent recognizing the straits the company is really in, the TNA promotion pulled off one of the best PPV shows in wrestling history on 12/5 in Orlando, paced by an off-the-charts cage match with AMW vs. XXX wife the losing team having to break up. The show featured a spot that I pray is never done again, but will be perhaps the most memorable spot of the year, when Elix Skipper walked the top of the cage and gave a hurracanrana to Chris Harris back into the ring. What was scariest of all is that Skipper stumbled and had a hard time getting balance on top of the cage before he did the tightrope walk. He's done the rope walk hurracanrana in the past, but has slipped doing it on occasion. Even on the top rope, a slip to the floor has its risks. On the top of the cage, a slip could have meant paralysis or death, and it’s just not worth it. Apparently the wrestlers had talked about the spot beforehand, and it was tentatively in the match, but there was talk of not doing it, both due to risk, and if Skipper felt he was tired from 20 minutes of wrestling to where it wouldn't be a good idea. Rhodes booked the match for 25:00 (it actually went 21:01), and noted that it would be either be a classic or a disaster, and it was sink or swim for four guys who had a bad match on the PPV a month earlier.

 

Fans live at Universal Studios gave both teams a lengthy standing ovation after a match that actually lived up to the standards set in the most famous match ever with the same stipulations, the 1983 Ricky Steamboat & Jay Youngblood win over Sgt. Slaughter & Don Kernodle for the NWA tag team titles, which was one of the biggest matches in the history of Carolinas wrestling. But it was hardly a one-match show, as there were only two bad matches. Unfortunately, the worst was the main event. In what turned out to be the smartest move of the night, new booker Dusty Rhodes put the cage match on last, as reversing it would have led to a flat finish of the show. The 1-2 punch of the cage match and the Petey Williams vs. Chris Sabin X Division match and this one were every bit as good as the top two matches at Backlash for WWE in April (Mick Foley vs. Randy Orton hardcore match and HHH vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Benoit rematch). And this show blew away every PPV offering WWE has done since that time.

 

While Rhodes' first show as head booker, if that s even the correct title, was a success, it was also noted that this show itself, as far as The key matches, were all booked by Dutch Mantel and Jeff Jarrett before The change. Right now there is an interesting company dynamic because Jarrett is already back as a key player in booking, if he ever really left. While Rhodes is the boss, and made it clear to everyone, Jarrett and Mantel are still in the game, and allies with each other. There was second-guessing of future plans, in particular Rhodes' idea to change the 1/16 main event from Jarrett defending against DDP to Jarrett against Randy Savage. The arguments, naturally, are that Savage is a far bigger name than DDP so it should draw more. The negative is the company was aware just how much of a joke Savage is at this stage, to the point they hid him with a kidnapping angle and only had him run-in for the finish, in street clothes including a long sleeve shirt. He's so physically limited that his pinfall over Jarrett to earn the title shot was on a blocked sunset flip, and simply, one punch from that position. To anyone who saw the show, even with Mike Tenay emphasizing that he pinned the champ and deserved the next shot, the idea of a Jarrett vs. Savage main event (which Jarrett himself was originally in favor of, for obvious reasons, since in his eyes, he gets a win over Savage provided Savage is agreeable to that finish) is nothing anyone would want to see., and the thought of Jarrett having to carry him to a credible world title match is a scary thought. Jarrett vs. DDP has no box office either, but at least it would be a good match. Of course, what ended up happening made it a moot point, as Savage once again walked out of the tapings on 12/7 in Orlando, where an angle was scheduled with Jarrett, Savage and Rhodes where Rhodes would announce the main event. The word was, when talking over the idea of the 1/16 title match, Savage refused to do the job when he found out that was the plan, and left again. Quite frankly, it serves them right because the result of the title match should have been told to Savage, and they should have something on paper with him so they could take legal recourse for screwing up their storylines, before they ever put him over on the show. Savage is not the bad guy here because he made it clear when he first was coming in that he wasn't going to put Jarrett over. Then, they booked his win knowing he'd already made that clear, and then were mad when he said it again. Instead, Jarrett and Rhodes did a confrontation, but Savage's name was never mentioned, nor was a main event announced, probably to avoid them committing to something in case Savage had a change of heart like the last time he walked out of a taping, and was back in the fold a few days later. There was no indication they'd come up with a new direction, although Hector Garza got a surprising megapush, pinning A.J. Styles on one hour of TV7 and then having Jarrett beat when Hall & Nash interfered on the second hour. They also could have gone to the Monty Brown, who was the idea for the main event on the December and January shows in booking plans a few-months ago, since DDP was already programmed for 1/16 with Erik Watts.

 

Also planned for 1/16 are Harris & Storm challenging new NWA tag champs Eric Young & Bobby Roode of Team Canada. When Harris & Storm signed their new contract, one of the things promised them was a tag title run in the near future. Apparently they were led to believe they'd also get the title win over Scott Hall & Kevin Nash, who would beat 3 Live Kru. As it turned out, that isn’t what happened, and it would have been hard to believe it would turn out like that. There will also be an Ultimate X match with champ Petey Williams against A.J. Styles and Chris Sabin. While Ultimate X is TNA's best invention, they are coming off doing one on 11/10 on the BDSSP special. The match will be great but they've destroyed the novelty of the match by doing it so often.

 

The show drew 650-700 fans. It looked full on television, except in the comers. The company was expecting 500 troops to come in from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, and fill out the other 200 slots with the local die-hards. The company never pushed the PPV locally or even that hard at the tapings because they figured they would have to turn people away even without promotion, due to limited availability. Unlike the Victory Road show four weeks earlier, this was a free ticket. The bomb dropped was when only 40 or so troops ended up coming, but they were lucky that enough fans came, and those who came were super enthusiastic. In many ways, this PPV was reminiscent of The legend of ECW, with the small but rabid fan base, and the wrestlers who knew the company was in trouble and went that extra length to put on memorable matches.

 

Our response level was down 29% from the Victory Road show four weeks earlier. If that show did 35,000 buys, which is the current estimate, then you could probably make an early prediction in the 25,000 range for this show.

 

The show was also filled with comedy knocks at WWE. They had a guy (ring announcer Tim Welch) dressed up as Vince McMahon, coming in a limo with a supposed HHH (Johnny Devine of Team Canada) with a wig and sledge hammer. These were reminiscent of the Billionaire Ted skits that WWE put on its show when it was losing the TV wrestling war to WCW. They had Abyss bring the supposed Vince, called Vince McDaddy, with the water spitting guy using an HHH voice as his useless son. They had the Vince character wanting to see Dusty Rhodes immediately, but Rhodes blowing him off. It ended up with the HHH character getting a videotape and smashing it with his sledge hammer, only to find out it was a "Best of D-Ray 3000"tape. Vince later was mad there wasn't catered food, saying he needed protein every three hours, meat, fish, lobster, and then got mad when Tracy Brooks brought him a batch of cookies, and threw them on the floor. The skits concluded with Teo the midget beating up Vince, who aghast screamed that he would sue and as he was writhing in pain, said, "Where's my son-in-law, that idiot." He ended up being taken to the hospital. HHH wasn’t there, because he was at the gym. They eventually showed the relatively innocuous and almost useless footage they took a few weeks back when WWE shot its Royal Rumble commercial at Universal Studios in Orlando. Luckily, due to 3 Live Kru making jokes about stealing the WWE's catered Mahi-Mahi, it wasn’t a complete dud. They digitised the faces out, to avoid the threatened lawsuit, of bo1h Luther Reigns and Rev Mysterio. Mysterio and Konnan have been best friends dating back to the late 80s when they trained together under Mysterio's uncle in Tijuana, and were acting like best friends while B.G. James joked that Mysterio being nice to them is a firing offence. While Reigns' voice was a giveaway, ifs doubtful almost anyone would know he was there. With Mysterio, with his voice, and his arm tattoo, let alone how many 5-2 wrestlers there are in WWE, it was obvious. Overall, the skits were a lot funnier than most of the Billionaire Ted stuff, and even much of the ECW parodies on the big companies that were done in the 90s. When it was over, Mike Tenay made a joke about the threatened lawsuit saying ifs not like we brought a tank to their headquarters (in reference to DX coming to the WCW' headquarters in Smyrna, GA, and to CNN Center in 1998 skits).

 

A: Andy Douglas & Chase Stevens beat Mikey Batts & Jerrelle Clark in a dark match when Batts was pinned after the Natural Disaster.

 

1) Eric Young & Bobby Roode as Team Canada beat B.G. James & Ron Killings, as 3 Live Kru (Konnan was working the AAA big show at the same time in Naucalpan, Mexico) to win the NWA tag titles in 8:30. Team Canada did a good job of bumping here. Most of the match was getting heat on Killings to set up James for the hot tag. He had the match won, but Scott D'Amore distracted ref Rudy Charles, who missed the count. With the ref distracted. Johnny Devine returned and hit James with a hockey stick and Roode got the pin. Fast-paced match. **1/4

 

2) Hector Garza & Sonny Siaki & Sonjay Dutt beat Michael Shane & Frankie Kazarian & Kid Kash in 11:01. This match was a total sprint of high spots, but it's what people wanted out of the match. Smartly, Siaki did almost nothing. Garza tried a monkey flip, slipped, and nearly landed on his head. That was the big snafu and brought brief you f-d up chants from what was clearly an ECW/ROH inspired crowd. It’s great because it meant the enthusiasm was so high, but bad because it also meant casual fans don’t have interest or knowledge of the product. Most of the match saw the heels work on Dutt’s injured left elbow. Garza got the hot tag and did a picture perfect moonsault on Kazarian for a near fall. About the only thing Siaki did was throw Dutt over the top for him to do a flip dive on the floor. Garza pinned Kazarian after a tornillo. ***l/4

 

3) Monty Brown beat Abyss in 12:17 in a Serengeti Survival match. Rules were you could win via pin, submission, or slamming your opponent into thumb tacks. Brown in a promo called Abyss, "Obese." Abyss went for an Earthquake sitting splash on Brown, who was laying on a chair, but Brown got the chair and smashed it to Abyss' groin. I wonder if TNA folds, if John Laurinaitis even has a clue who Brown is. Brown used an Oklahoma stampede on a chair. Abyss side stepped the pounce period, and used a black hole slam, but Brown kicked out. Brown ended up giving Abyss the pounce period sending him to the floor. Brown set up a table, but ended up going through it when Abyss sidestepped him. Abyss and Brown each pulled out bags of thumb tacks at the same time and filled the ring. Abyss then took off his leather vest, revealing his physique, and if you saw this, you'd realize he just took $80,000 off his annual WWE downside guarantee by trying to prove to people that he'd take the thumb tacks on his back rather than throw his shirt. His physique looked like a guy who had never trained a day in his life. Not that it should matter, but his possible next employers are such marks for bodies, and we are years past anyone giving a rat’s ass about being tough enough to take a slam on thumb tacks. Brown blocked Abyss and slammed him down with a spinebuster to win. **3/4

 

 

4) Johnny B. Badd & Pat Kenney beat Glenn Gilberti & Johnny Swinger in 7:50. Remember when Kenney, Gilberti and Swinger were all taken off TV to be repackaged? So they came back, as the exact same people except they gave Kenney an "Empire Saint" nickname that they do nothing to push him as being different(not even a new costume, for God's sake) instead of making him the brunt of third grade Irish jokes. This was supposed to be a six-person tag with Jacqueline Moore and Trinity and was not advertised on the show, so nobody cared about it. They hadn’t even run any angles to set these four up in a program and Moore hadn’t done any TV since the last PPV. Trinity called a few days before the show and told the office 1hat she had gotten a movie role (doing stunts for Steven Spielberg's remake of "War of the World's") and couldn’t do the PPV. Since the show was already written, They were pissed at her for the decision. The instructions were to act as if she didn’t exist, and at this point there are no plans to use her again. Moore ended up being the ref, wearing her old WWE ref outfit. Finish saw Jacqueline bodyslam Gilberti and Badd pin him after a TKO. *1/4

 

 

5) DDP pinned Raven in some sort of a no DQ match, since there was interference everywhere and nothing was called in 12:03. They had a good match, but in their fear of not having one, so badly overbooked it that they took a lot away from it at the finish. At one point, DDP nailed ref Rudy Charles with a high kick. They went outside the ring with Page hitting Raven with a garbage can and a lid. Raven came back with a shot with his war helmet for a near fall and his drop toe hold on the chair spot. Raven used a low blow and small package for a near fell. Raven kicked out of the diamond cutter. Two masked guys in hoods came out. Erik Watts, who was doing commentary as a babyface, protested it was unfair. He choke slammed bo1h,and then, naturally, and this was so pathetic because it was a needless swerve that everyone in the building could see, turned on DDP and clotheslined him. He went for the choke slam, but DDP gave him a low blow. So not only was the turn transparent, but it made no difference because it didn’t even cost DDP the match. DDP used a diamond cutter on Watts, another low blow to Raven, and a third diamond cutter to win the match. The bout was considerably better than it reads, as it was Raven's best match in a long time until they got so cute that the finish was one of those fuzzy things that meant nothing. ***1/4

 

6) Petey Williams retained the X Title pinning Chris Sabin in 18:11. Just a super match with off the charts heat. People were screaming "Let's go Sabin" alternated with "Lets go Petey." Williams did a plancha into a hurracanrana on the floor. Sabin power bombed Williams into the guard rail. I hope they retire that spot. Big moves, near falls and innovative spots like Williams doing a mid-air spin into a Russian leg sweep. Sabin did a flip dive. They even did the Frye-Takayama holding and punching spot. Scott D’Amore kept interfering. With D'Amore distracting the ref, Williams pulled out Brass Knux for the pin. ****

 

7) Jeff Hardy & A. J. Styles & Randy Savage beat Kevin Nash & Scott Hall & Jeff Jarrett in 17:52. Nash & Hall & Jarrett before the show, being that they’re the Kings of Wrestling, dressed up like Elvis in jumpsuits and Elvis wigs. They also did this angle where a car drove away, and they acted as if they had beaten up Savage, threw him in a car and he was kidnapped. It was actually because Savage couldn't wrestle and they were trying to hide the fact. So when the match began, it was a 2-on-3. Hall & Nash wore the jumpsuits. So they looked like giant clowns. The jumpsuits were to hide their physiques (although Nash is in great cosmetic shape for his age), but it couldn’t hide their faces, as both, particularly Hall, have aged greatly. Hall looked like an aging wino, which is what he is. Nash, because of his grey hair, looked like a 55-year-old former NBA player like Phil Jackson or someone. They even came out to the old Flying Elvises theme music. Hall tried, but it was like an out of shape guy trying to keep up. Jarrett and Styles were there to carry the match. Styles worked for five people, but that wasn’t enough, although the match was more than decent when he was in, and that was most of the way. He made a cold tag to Hardy and the match fell apart from there. Hardy had Hall pinned when Nash pulled ref Andrew Thomas out of the ring. Hall hit Hardy with a guitar shot. Savage finally showed up and he made Hall & Nash look youthful. Backstage I was told Savage looked 100 years old. I thought on TV he didn't look more than a day over 60, although he did look older then Lou Thesz did when I saw him at a show in 1996 when Lou was 80. Savage threw a few punches and put Jarrett in a sleeper. Jarrett tried a sunset flip; Savage blocked it, punched Jarrett to the head, and got the pin. *

 

8) Chris Harris & James Storm beat Elix Skipper & Christopher Daniels in a losing team must split up forever "Six Sides of Steel" cage match in 21:01. Daniels juiced heavy after being slingshotted into me cage. They got handcuffs on Harris and proceeded to beat the hell out of Storm. XXX used the old Demolition finish on Storm for a near fall. Storm got the key and unlocked his partner. Harris juiced. AMW did 80s WWF tag team finishes like the Rockerplex and the Hart attack. XXX used AMW’s death sentence on Harris for a near fall. Storm power bombed Skipper while standing on the top rope while Skipper was sitting on the cage. There was a tower of doom spot where everyone took a huge bump that had the crowd going crazy. There was Skipper doing the ropewalk hurracanrana off the top of the cage. The crowd started chanting "Best match ever" while Mike Tenay acted like we were seeing history in one of the greatest cage matches of all-time, and that wasn't even a stretch by this point. The match ended with AMW putting Daniels in handcuffs and doing the powerplex XXX finisher on Daniels and Storm got the pin. The crowd gave both teams a standing ovation at the finish for several minutes. The heel dressing room then came out and gave a standing ovation to XXX as they got up to leave. This match blew away the match they had 17 months ago, and that may have been the best match in TNA history. There is little question in my mind this match now has those honors. ****3/4

 

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Jerry Jarrett and Bob Carter met in Nashville this past week with Jarrett trying to propose a new budget that would greatly cut back on costs in order to convince Carter to say in for the long haul. The company was happy with how the PPV did, which was a positive. They are claiming they have confirmed agreements for $3 million in ad sales for 2005, which, with other cutbacks, could see the company break even at 45,000 to 50,000 PPV buys per month, although that’s still going to be a very difficult figure for them to average monthly. But a $3 million figure sounds suspiciously unrealistic, like the ad revenue companies like World Class, Crockett and Watts expected to be able to sell given their ratings, but later found out that because they were wrestling, they couldn’t get ad buyers to pay the rates their ratings would seem to deserve, and ended up getting deep in debt because they were expecting that revenue. Most syndicated TV shows really cant make big money in ad sales until they hit the 2.0 rating mark. ECW didn’t make one-fifth of that in ad sales, and they had far stronger syndication and roughly five times the cable ratings of TNA. WWE will do maybe $40 million in ad sales this year. TNA's ad sales up to this point have been negligible. While they don’t get to sell Smackdown because of the UPN contract, that's still Raw, Velocity, Experience, Heat and syndication which combine to 6.14 ratings points last week not including syndication(admittedly that was a better man usual week, but 5.2 plus whatever syndication brings is a low end average). TNA right now averages about a 0.18, plus whatever Xplosion brings in (probably next to nothing) or maybe 30 times lower, plus WWE is a marquee name brand and TNA is unproven. While TNA wont be getting the 8pm. Monday night BDSSP weekly tie-in show they were hoping for, since the ratings didn’t come in they needed, they are talking with Fox Sports Net about doing some prime time specials on the show. Even with the exposure coming out of the first show, the buy rate appears to be, well down for the second show, and that’s with a good first Sunday PPV. The January show will be interesting because you really can't expect to ever have a better PPV show then they did this past weekend. If buys don’t increase, then good quality PPV shows cant save the company by itself. Among the things being talked about now are to move the Friday Impact show from 3 p.m. to 4pm., which is slightly better, but really only slightly, as well as adding a Saturday midnight replay show, and adding Xplosion in a weekday afternoon time slot. If FSN gives them the slots, they are okay, but if they are paying extra for the additional slots, and I'm presuming that would be the case, the extra expense is nothing they are going to make back through advertising. They are also trying to come up with celebrity involvement ideas, since WWE was put on the mainstream map by Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper, and Mike Tyson was the catalyst of its biggest period in history. Of course, celebrities also in the long run hurt WCW more than helped them, so ifs hardly a guarantee. . . A funny story is, DDP is earning more money with TNA than he ever earned in WWE. . . Larry Zbyszko was upset because he wasn’t booked for either the PPV or TV taping this week. While he hasn't been on TV every show, he had been booked regularly since he lives in Jacksonville and ifs an easy drive. If you remember back to the interview in Orlando when Rhodes & Zbyszko were together and Zbyszko did a far better promo, upstaged him, and Rhodes pitched a fit about it, well if Zbyszko knew Rhodes would be booker in a few months, I guess he could have tanked his promo. For whatever this is worth, Rhodes was told he has six months to turn things around.

 

Jeff Jarrett did one hell of a job in his TV bout for the NWA title with Monty Brown. It was the best match I've ever seen Brown in, and while Brown deserves the credit, you could really see Jarrett’s ability here, as they went 13:02, and if anything, it was too short rather than too long, and that’s saying a lot when we’ve never seen Brown in a good match past 7:00. Perhaps removing all the stress and time from booking and running things will get his work back to what it once was. He still needs to lose the title far worse than he can understand, but that’s a different issue. Crowd heat was tremendous, although that was a hot crowd even for a lousy Scott Hall vs. A.J. Styles match the week before, and the freebies in Orlando are getting very ROHish as in this match there were the alternating "Let's Go Jarrett" and "Let1 s Go Monty" chants, just like last week. The problem, and this won't be solved because Rhodes is the booker and people are so entrenched with how they used to do things to not realize people groan at the overdone stuff that used to work, is the match was just awesome until the ref bump. Then you had Jarrett use a guitar shot that Brown no-sold, which was a great spot because people are sick of the guitar finish. Then, Brown kicked out of the stroke and gave Hall the pounce. But that gave Jarrett the chance to hit Brown with a hard chair to the back and another to the head and get the pin. That finish undid his no selling of the guitar, which should have been an angle onto itself. Plus, when it was over, instead of having the emotion of it being a great match, that emotion was killed the minute the ref went down from the awful bump, and the emotion was "same old, same old" non-creative rerun.

 

There is still talk of putting the title on Brown, as Rhodes likes him, and possibly going with Jarrett vs. Brown in February. But Jarrett and Brown had built such a hot crowd and damn good match where people actually cared about the title, and then they ruined it and in the end it had no impact other than a lot of insiders raised their stock on Brown quite a bit as far as future potential... The plan for Jim Mitchell and Abyss, which appears to be out the window again, was for Mitchell to play the role of a 60s circus carnival barker with a top hat and cane having a booth with "The Monster Abyss" all chained up behind the curtain. The idea was silly enough to promote as a new heel in the 80s for Hulk Hogan, but if s pretty much ludicrous for a character who has been a part of the TV show two years. That was largely the consensus among people who saw the top hat he was told to buy and he was asking around if it looked too campy. Mitchell told people he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just manage Abyss as himself. At the last taping, with Rhodes having taken over as booker, Mitchell was told there were no plans for him. He wasn’t happy since he took a day off of work to come to the taping and then didn’t get paid since he wasn’t used. So the angle started looks to have already been dropped.

 

The big emotional high coming off the PPV was already gone in a lot of wrestlers by the 12/7 tapings. A lot of wrestlers are coming to grips with the idea there is a solid chance this thing may not be around much longer. What hit home was doing two weeks of TV, and to save money, key people like 3 Live Kru, Sabin (who was scheduled for one of the big matches on the show), Sonjay Dutt, Pat Kenney and Abyss were all flown home, even though they wouldn't even have to fly them in, since there were either no plans for them or to cut costs. There were people, like Johnny Devine, Eric Young and Petey Williams, who also weren't booked to wrestle on TV, but at least stayed to do promos. We didn’t get much info at press time on the tapings, other than they had about 500 or so people there for the first hour, but lots of people left early. There were tons of empties sections right in front of the cameras by the second show, and they didn’t even take the time to move the crowd around so it would look good, which even WCW used to do. Besides the Garza push, to nobody's surprise, Dustin Rhodes was in with a big push. That led to a funny store that wouldn’t be evident. Rhodes was doing an interview and went way long. The woman floor director was giving him the signal to wrap it up, since it was going forever and he wasn’t saying much. He wasn’t wrapping it up and she was very expressive behind the camera that he should. Jeremy Borash ran out and told the floor director that this was the hooker's son and if he wants to go long, you don’t distract him. Spanky was also there, but wasn't used. Swinger and Gilberti were used as singles jobbers for Dustin Rhodes and Monty Brown respectively. Brown pounced Gilbert in seconds. . . Johnny Devine is back in the ring as well after being stabbed, with his first match back scheduled for 12/8 in Nashville working for USA Championship Wrestling in Nashville, as a tag team with Cassidy Reilly as the new Hotshots. . . Regarding Petey Williams and the Canadian Destroyer move, Amazing Red actually did a running version of the move on a 2002 ROH show is Wakefield, MA, so he did use it before Williams came to TNA.

[pgi86 0]

Thanx for posting this.A great read .

[slimm44 0]

Some good news. I will agree about the Ultimate X being used too often but it's the ULTIMATE X!!! All of these matches one up the previous one.

[strummer 0]

I always get the impression Meltzer really wants to like TNA because it is the type of wrestling he likes, but he never just comes out and says it. It's like he's afraid to say he likes the product too much. I think if they cut the skits and Dave's arch enemy Dusty Rhodes was fired, he would give them oral every week in the Observer.

 

And it's nice to say Meltz start with the Dusty bashing in full throttle, what's it been 3 weeks of him as booker, I'm suprised it took this long

[Internet Warfare 0]

awsome posting, HTQ. keep up the good work.

 

Damn, i really wanna see the tag cage now, imma see what i can do to get the ppv.

[Guest dvkorn]

the TNA promotion pulled off one of the best PPV shows in wrestling history.

well.. there you go

 

sounds excellent

[Precious Roy 0]

Savage is not the bad guy here because he made it clear when he first was coming in that he wasn't going to put Jarrett over. Then, they booked his win knowing he'd already made that clear, and then were mad when he said it again.

 

That's the first time I'd heard that. WHY would they put over Savage when they KNEW he wouldn't return the job? I mean, to have not proposed the idea is bad enough, but come on, thats inexcusable!

 

Thanks for posting HTQ

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

That's the first time I'd heard that. WHY would they put over Savage when they KNEW he wouldn't return the job? I mean, to have not proposed the idea is bad enough, but come on, thats inexcusable!

They probably booked that finish for the same reason that WCW put Benoit over Sid for their World title, even after Benoit made it clear he was leaving. They assumed that by giving the guy the win, they'd be placating him enough that he'd change his mind.