Okay, so* after reading the title a lot of you may be thinking that I am talking about last weeks episode of Impact…. well you’re not wrong,entirely.* I saw each of the four major wrestling shows starting with this past Thursdays Impact, including Ring Of Honor and up to this weeks edition of Monday Night* Raw and I am going to discuss briefly what I feel is one of the worst two hours of television in wrestling.
For those of you who think is going to simply be an attack on the quality of Impact Wrestling as a whole you re only half right. My issue is with the first half hour plus of both Monday Night Raw and Impact Wrestling. Now a lot of readers in the past have accused me of being a TNA basher and somewhat of a WWE apologist, so with that said, let the TNA bashing begin. Okay I’m actually not going to be that critical of TNA right now, as I just have lower standards for their product as a whole and they are not my main point of contention.* Lets start with exactly what happened on the first half hour or so of Impact Wrestling!
TNA The Opening: We start off with Sting coming out praising the return of Hulk Hogan, who eventually comes out to a thunderous ovation. Okay it wasn’t exactly thunderous as it is the Impact Zone after all. Side note to anyone who pays attention, go back and watch Impact and see how many times there was a roaring crowd reaction on TV, and look at every person in the audience at that point who had a closed mouth and blank stare on their face at the time.(Super editing TNA)
So after a few minutes* we finally get Hogan out and not only does he thank Sting for Bound for Glory but he tells him that he loves him…Really? Really? We re gonna forget all about the past year and believe that as Hogan saw the light in the corner, as he claimed, and realized the error of his way and felt compelled to turn his back on his allies and align himself* with his sworn enemy. If that wasn’t bad enough, now we get Dixie Carter and her John Laurinaitis like ring presence, talking with Sting about how he has some control of the show since he helped her win back the company.* Fast forward a few minutes later (literally) and we have a noticeably limping Kurt Angle make his way down to the ring to* brag about his victory at BFG. Robert Roode comes out and bashes Angle, gets no rematch and we re finally greeted by James Storm who is awarded a title shot after the “Interim Impact General Manger” (that ll catch on) Sting, makes the match for later tonight.
So long story short, 42 minutes in and all we really have is a lot of talking, not much sense being made and a title match for later tonight. Sounds like a lot of episodes of Raw lately, except minus the title match. (Btw all told in a 2 hour show of* Impact Wrestling, there was actually about 7 minutes of total in ring action, clever name for your show TNA)* Now despite the gaping holes in the Hogan face turn and* Bobby Roode* inexplicably not winning the title at BFG, my major gripe here is not so much with TNA as it is Monday Night Raw as I have much higher expectations for their show.
Raw The First Half Hour: the start saw Triple H in the ring talking about the most recent attack he suffered at the hands of the rarely seen Kevin Nash.* The speech actually had some momentum to begin with, then as it droned on, it slowly began to fizzle and came to a screeching halt IMO when he looked in the camera and declared that Kevin Nash had broken his heart (very touching).* Shortly after this* John Laurinaitis came out to do what ever the hell it is that he does at which point* Hunter basically threatened him from the ring and said if you don’t find Nash then I will. Fast forward a few minutes later(figuratively) and Trips is on the entrance ramp where he gets sledgehammered in the middle of the back by Big Daddy Cool.
This was a little odd to me Nash coming out at this point in the show, rather than building the suspense but lets overlook that point for the time being. After a few moments of Hunter being attended to by EMT’s we go to a commercial and we come back to a recap of what just happened and WERE STILL showing him getting in the ambulance! Why haven’t we moved on with the rest of the show yet?* We get our answer as its time for Kevin Nash to take Hunter from the stretcher and beat him senseless even more, at the very least giving the announcers reason to oversell his injuries.
The Drama Continues… Okay, SO, we have the long dragged out speech that kept getting worse, the crowd killing momentum, of Funk Man John Laurinaitis and the strange timing of the Kevin Nash appearance.* Add to that the extended viewing of the EMT’s, the additional segment of Nash beating Triple H and we re finally ready to move on with the show right?… NO! Now we come back from another commercial break and after the first boring segment (followed by a recap) and the second unnecessary segment and we get ANOTHER flashback of what we just saw for the entire first half hour, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?* For being a PG rated show they certainly think* a large portion of their audience suffers from short term memory loss because I haven’t seen anything so insignificant replayed so much in a short period of time since the final 5 minutes of the Broncos win against the Dolphins this weekend.
In Summary: in the overall scheme of things these are just another 2 bad half hours plus of many that wrestling fans have had to endure over the years; however, with TNA “attempting” to compete on a bigger stage and WWE on the verge of one of their biggest pay-per-views of the year, this is a really bad sign from what is to be considered to be the “A” show from each company respectively. Let’s hope this trend doesn’t continue much longer.
For those of you who think is going to simply be an attack on the quality of Impact Wrestling as a whole you re only half right. My issue is with the first half hour plus of both Monday Night Raw and Impact Wrestling. Now a lot of readers in the past have accused me of being a TNA basher and somewhat of a WWE apologist, so with that said, let the TNA bashing begin. Okay I’m actually not going to be that critical of TNA right now, as I just have lower standards for their product as a whole and they are not my main point of contention.* Lets start with exactly what happened on the first half hour or so of Impact Wrestling!
TNA The Opening: We start off with Sting coming out praising the return of Hulk Hogan, who eventually comes out to a thunderous ovation. Okay it wasn’t exactly thunderous as it is the Impact Zone after all. Side note to anyone who pays attention, go back and watch Impact and see how many times there was a roaring crowd reaction on TV, and look at every person in the audience at that point who had a closed mouth and blank stare on their face at the time.(Super editing TNA)
So after a few minutes* we finally get Hogan out and not only does he thank Sting for Bound for Glory but he tells him that he loves him…Really? Really? We re gonna forget all about the past year and believe that as Hogan saw the light in the corner, as he claimed, and realized the error of his way and felt compelled to turn his back on his allies and align himself* with his sworn enemy. If that wasn’t bad enough, now we get Dixie Carter and her John Laurinaitis like ring presence, talking with Sting about how he has some control of the show since he helped her win back the company.* Fast forward a few minutes later (literally) and we have a noticeably limping Kurt Angle make his way down to the ring to* brag about his victory at BFG. Robert Roode comes out and bashes Angle, gets no rematch and we re finally greeted by James Storm who is awarded a title shot after the “Interim Impact General Manger” (that ll catch on) Sting, makes the match for later tonight.
So long story short, 42 minutes in and all we really have is a lot of talking, not much sense being made and a title match for later tonight. Sounds like a lot of episodes of Raw lately, except minus the title match. (Btw all told in a 2 hour show of* Impact Wrestling, there was actually about 7 minutes of total in ring action, clever name for your show TNA)* Now despite the gaping holes in the Hogan face turn and* Bobby Roode* inexplicably not winning the title at BFG, my major gripe here is not so much with TNA as it is Monday Night Raw as I have much higher expectations for their show.
Raw The First Half Hour: the start saw Triple H in the ring talking about the most recent attack he suffered at the hands of the rarely seen Kevin Nash.* The speech actually had some momentum to begin with, then as it droned on, it slowly began to fizzle and came to a screeching halt IMO when he looked in the camera and declared that Kevin Nash had broken his heart (very touching).* Shortly after this* John Laurinaitis came out to do what ever the hell it is that he does at which point* Hunter basically threatened him from the ring and said if you don’t find Nash then I will. Fast forward a few minutes later(figuratively) and Trips is on the entrance ramp where he gets sledgehammered in the middle of the back by Big Daddy Cool.
This was a little odd to me Nash coming out at this point in the show, rather than building the suspense but lets overlook that point for the time being. After a few moments of Hunter being attended to by EMT’s we go to a commercial and we come back to a recap of what just happened and WERE STILL showing him getting in the ambulance! Why haven’t we moved on with the rest of the show yet?* We get our answer as its time for Kevin Nash to take Hunter from the stretcher and beat him senseless even more, at the very least giving the announcers reason to oversell his injuries.
The Drama Continues… Okay, SO, we have the long dragged out speech that kept getting worse, the crowd killing momentum, of Funk Man John Laurinaitis and the strange timing of the Kevin Nash appearance.* Add to that the extended viewing of the EMT’s, the additional segment of Nash beating Triple H and we re finally ready to move on with the show right?… NO! Now we come back from another commercial break and after the first boring segment (followed by a recap) and the second unnecessary segment and we get ANOTHER flashback of what we just saw for the entire first half hour, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?* For being a PG rated show they certainly think* a large portion of their audience suffers from short term memory loss because I haven’t seen anything so insignificant replayed so much in a short period of time since the final 5 minutes of the Broncos win against the Dolphins this weekend.
In Summary: in the overall scheme of things these are just another 2 bad half hours plus of many that wrestling fans have had to endure over the years; however, with TNA “attempting” to compete on a bigger stage and WWE on the verge of one of their biggest pay-per-views of the year, this is a really bad sign from what is to be considered to be the “A” show from each company respectively. Let’s hope this trend doesn’t continue much longer.