Past Sell by Date TNA and Smackdown! Blogging

Yeah, so, I wrote out notes for recaps of both shows, but two nights later, it feels like an exercise in futility to type the whole things. Well, more so than blogging usually is, given whatever theoretical audience I have probably has already had their fill of analysis of these shows, and I'm just writing this stuff for my own amusement anyway. Also, it helps clear my head of useless wrestling minutia so I can fill it with useless minutia that's more culturally respectable, like Presidential Birthdays, baseball box scores, and porn. Lots and lots of porn. Still more culturally acceptable than watching wrestling, much less blogging about it. I know; I asked a panel of experts. Sure, that panel of experts was composed of porn stars, but would Jenna Jameson lie to me?



And now that I've depricated myself within an inch of my life and gone on a bizarre, Burnside-ian tangent, here come the blog!


TNA- Okay, this was probably my favorite episode of Impact in a dog's age; certainly this year, at least as far as I can remember. The match between 3D and Seafood and Curry (Shark Boy and Sanjay Dutt, for those of you who didn't know the tag team name I just came up with for them) was a fun little comedy match diminished only by the fact that 3D had to go over to keep their storyline going. Mind you, I'd rather they be heels (if for no other reason than that it keeps Bubba from talking every week), and I don't consider them dead weight like a lot of other 'net pundits, but I was really digging Sanjay and Shark Boy's offense in this one, and the generally goofy vibe of the match.



Motor City Machine Guns vs. Rave and Hoyt (the first appearence of Christy Hemme, in what appears to be her attempt to prove VKM right with her blatant sluttiness), on the other hand, was great all the way through. They crammed a ton of action in to the short period of time they got, which is what I liked about the X-Division matches TNA used to toss out there on a weekly basis before Kevin Nash and his merry wisecracking pranksters became the focus of the division. If Sabin and Shelley are planning on leaving, it will be a boon to whoever gets them (more so to ROH, but could you imagine if we some how miraculously got them vs. London and Kendrick?), but it will go a long way to making thos TNA is WCW analogies stick. But that's for the future; right now, I want to bask in the best tag match I've seen on free TV in a long, long time. I mean, Rave pedigreed Shelley on to Sabin! And then did an STF on both of them! Lance Hoyt, meanwhile, did what he does best; stand on the apron and take the fall. Which is the only way he could contribute much to the match, unless they let him do the Van Terminator. If you haven't seen it, scour YouTube or torrents sites for it; it's that good.

I was also really impressed with Women's match. Other than Ken Anderson, I may be the only Gail Kim mark on the 'net. I'd like to think that's because we both have much better taste than everyone else, but I'm not sure, since he's the only person I've seen admit to liking the first Punjabi Prison Match. Anyway, I like women's wrestling more than your average smark (at least more than most of them tend to admit), so despite the pretty valid concern that they already have too many people for even a two hour show, I was cool with the fact that they were introducing a Women's Title and Bound For Glory. They have solid workers in Kim, Jackie Moore, and Tracey Brooks, along with the incoming Amazing Kong and Angel Williams, to put on entertaining matches; Christy can provide the red headed sluttiness, and Roxxy is ... well, she's pretty much a female Boogeyman, although she looked considerably normal compared to her earlier appearences, so good for her. Maybe she can divorce herself from the festering uselessness that is VKM (who cut a shoot promo that called the X-Division and smarks at large, but still came across as incredibly lame, this week)

At any rate, if this match is any indication, they could have something with their new women's division. I tend to overrate matches if there's a cool enough high spot; Mick Foley vs. Edge is one of my favorite matches ever, but the only thing I remember from it (other than Lita taking a bump) is Edge spearing Mick through the flaming table, so that makes me wonder if it was as good as I thought it was. So that five woman tower of doom went a long way towards impressing me. That said, I thought it was a good little match, and Gail Kim's offense alone was enough to differentiate this match from the WWE's more T&A centric offerings, which I also have a soft spot in my heart (or at least another part of my anatomy). If they can keep up this level of energy and work in those kind of cool spots, their women's division can stand out from the WWE's as much as the X-Division used to stand out from Vince's half assed crusierweight offerings. This is as close to having a really deep roster of women who can work we've seen in mainstream wrestling since the embarassement of riches that WWE had for a couple years before they fired most of them and were further diminished by Trish and Lita deciding to hang up their boots.

If TNA can give me these kind of fun matches over the course of two hours, my opinion of them will be considerably changed and I will happily tune in to TNA every week. This episode, depiste the massive overpush of Judas Mesias (even if he is a former "world" champion) and the appearence of Karen Angle (at least she didn't talk!), went a long way in winning back my goodwill towards TNA, to the point where I'm almost excited for the two hour debut. They've been so moribund for so long that I'm not going to get too hyped up, but they do have a history of putting on good debut shows. It's following up on their momentum that they've struggled with over their five year history.


Meanwhile, over on Smackdown, they have no problem remaining consitent. Consistently mediocre, that is! Keeping that in mind, there is something to be said for putting on a solid wrestling show, which Smackdown usually is. This episode was no different. Following Teddy Long's heart attack, Vickie Guerrero's in charge of things, which is apparently what the whole courtship between Teddy and Kristal was meant to set up all along. She's apparently still a face, although I am still convinced she slipped Teddy some kind of poison in that viagra she gave him in the most disturbing part of the otherwise fairly inoffensive relationship between the extremely thin young woman and the extremely old bald guy. So I fully expect we'll be getting Evil Vickie back soon. Really, I can live with that as long as they don't go digging Eddie up again to draw cheap heat for her and Chavo. Figuratively, I mean. Anyway, other than stripping my favorite midget in entertainment today of his gold, she didn't do anything heelish, so I may be totally off base here. I may really just want to write about poisoned viagra every chance I get. I'll leave that up to the reader to decide. As in the one reader I assume I have. Hi, mom! Aren't you glad you paid for my college education, so I could be doing this!

What of the actual show, you might say? Well mom, and anyone else possibly reading, there's not much to say one way or the other. JBL was entertaing as always, whether it was his awesome no selling of Cole trying to put over Torrie Wilson's improved ring accumen by more or less saying "Who cares if she can wrestle; all anyone cares about is how she looks!" Or, to quote some random jerk on the Simpsons, "Hey lady, you're an object!"

Anyway, Old Lady Wilson and Victoria had an okay match that was going to be overshadowed by the Women's match I had just watched on Impact, unless Trish Stratus had made her triumphant come back and taken Torrie's place. I do think she has become noticably better in the ring, mind you (although it did take her long enough), but she's still just okay, and a lot of that is probably down to being there with a solid hand like Victoria. Post match, some new, leather clad blonde beat Old Lady Wilson down. She looked sort of like a slutty Super Mario. They didn't even attempt to indentify her, other than the old "She doesn't wrestle here" saw that they really should retire. Anyway, all that made me wonder if they grow these women in a vat somewhere in Titan Towers.

MVP celebrating his one year anniversary brings to light how far he's come from where he was when he debuted. While the series of matches that played a large part in getting him there has been deleted from history by the 800 pound Gorilla in the room, never mind that; he's come a long way in the ring, and can finally back up his mic skills, which were always considerable (even if he does have one of the laziest heel catchphrases ever; at least it's to the point). He's like what I imagine they wished Carlito would have been by the time he'd been around for a year.

I'm also really digging this feud with Hardy. Despite the whole thing more or less being "Wacky Missmatched Partners Who Hate Each Other" boilerplate, the dynamic between Hardy's hard working, blue collar everyman character and MVP's flashy, trashtalking caricature of mega ego atheletes like Terrell Owens makes these segements genuinely entertaining, and keeping them a tag team builds the anticipation for their rematch, which is something that would have been nearly impossible otherwise given the current PPV model. Matt's being able to show a personality beyond "intense and broody" or "not Jeff Hardy" is a real revelation; he hasn't been this entertaining since the Version 2.0 days.

All that being said, I ignored good chunks of the MVP/Kane match. The parts I was awake for were solid, but these guys wrestled roughly 3,000 times last year, and I wasn't particularly excited about seeing them do it again, no matter how much better Porter is in the ring. I did like the idea that being in there with his old tormentor (they guy did set him on fire, after all) completely deflated Porter for awhile, and they did a good job working in each other's signature moves. The cheap finish was a little too reminiscent of last year's interminable series, but overall, a solid match; I'm just not really excited to see that pairing.

Speaking of overdone parings, Chuck Palumbo beat Kenny Dykstra. Again. They're both solid workers, but the only entertainment value I derive from watching them work together is thinking about their old gimmicks, and how, of course, a former gay gangster is a perfect opponent for a former male cheerleader. Palumbo can take Mark Henry's slot and just beat up local indie guys until they have a decent feud for him (or wind up moving him to ECW with all the other misfit toys), while Dykstra, who went from going over Ric Flair regularly to jobbing out for like 6 months, really ought to be working with the cruiserweights, given the fact that his only discernible talent is the ability to jump really high (and apparently resembling some cranky liberal over at Inside Pulse).

So, with Hornswoggle stripped to placate lame, humorless jerks (or conversely, anyone who isn't 11 years old or me), we'll see if they can give us the crusierweight division I doubted they ever would not long ago. Signs are not promising, as Jamie Noble and Shannon Moore had another rushed, heatless match in a series of them. They pulled out some nifty moves, including Noble's fireman's carry gutbuster and a lion tamer (that must mean Jericho's coming back! Or not! Or maybe it has nothing to do with him at all!), but still; it was just kind of there.

The only reason people cared about Noble was that he was was going after Lil' Horny, and it was funny when he failed so miserably; without the little fella around, his winning the belt won't mean much. I mean, think of the heat he'd get were he allowed to wail on the little fella, with Vince's approval no less, in an actual blow off match on PPV. He'd be a legitimate heel, erasing the buffoon image he accured by being outsmarted by a leprechaun. .

But no. They just vacated it. Seems like a wasted opportunity to get some guys over out of the Hornswoggle Imbroglio, which I am enjoying, mind you. If this leads to a tournament, though, I will mark out, 'cause I loves me some tournaments. And hey, maybe Jimmy Yang will get a push. That would be cool too. But really, they have a lot of ways to try and get the cruisers over here, even without Horny around; a tournament would at least give them some easy booking opportunities; a ladder match would give a different set of guys a chance to show off than usual, especially if they tossed some guys from ECW and Raw in there; they could even do an elimination/gauntlet kind of thing. Mind you, I'm expecting they'll just do a battle royal or multi-guy spot fest on Smackdown and go back to business as usual (complete with Chavo getting a run with the belt some time next year), so I'm pretty cynical about the whole thing.

I like the brewing Rey/JBL verbal feud. If they aren't going to give Rey another title run, or at least some main event matches, they might as well have him fighting surrogates against one of the best heels in recent memory. Rey more or less held his own with the best verbal performer in the company, despite misspronouncing hatred as "hatrage". Or maybe that's a new compound word I haven't heard of. I'm not up on slang from the 619. I'm also looking forward to the Finlay/Mysterio PPV match; it could either be a really good match, or a total trainwreck, given their disperate styles, but that along with the presumptive Cena/Orton blow off is enough to make me want to watch No Mercy at the local sports bar.

The main event was short and sweet, at least. And it made a hot goth chick in the front row really happy, so there was that. It didn't outlast its welcome, which I believe it would have had it gone on a minute longer, but for a match that made me question the existence of a kind and merciful God just by existing (and being a main event that people were apparently supposed to be pay $40 to see), it was okay. The 12 some odd video packages that hyped it up were infinitely better, but you know, this did its job. It makes me wonder if they'll be holding on to Mark Henry and his beard (which resembles a chia pet) now that his latest interminable push has led to a big job to someone who is actually over; he may very well wind up in ECW and become CM Punk's luggage (he'll have to carry him, you see). Given that there was an inexplicable Viscera promo on Smackdown, maybe they're just gonna trade fat, inexplicably long tenured black guys between the two shows. Which means they'll be in the same touring companies that work the same tapings, they'll just stink things up on TV on different nights.

Well, now that I'm done badmouthing large men who would make me shit my pants were I ever to meet them, I'll sum things up. TNA was exciting and fast paced for the first time in a dog's age, and hopefully that will carry over to the 2 hour shows. It was my favorite show of the week. I'm as surprised as you are. That said, Smackdown was the same as it always is, and really, shouldn't consitency be rewarded, even if it is only consistent medicority? That may actually be WWE's mission statement, now that I think of it. With Fergie's cover of Barracuda in the background (yeah, I don't know why either), I take my leave. Until I find something else wrestling related to write about.