Alright, I’m up for commenting on the rankings this week. I haven’t done so the last couple of weeks because I’d been posting these without a lot of time to get in depth. Here we go!
1. Rey Mysterio (Last week: 4)
I ranked Mysterio 9th in my vote. Yeah, he won the World Heavyweight Championship at Fatal Four Way, but Kane got involved in the match, so I didn’t really find him winning the title to be an impressive feat. Win a match without outside interference, then we’ll talk.
2. Rob Van Dam (2)
RVD was my number one pick, and he wasn’t on TV this week. The fact that he’s number two overall on this list despite that fact says something about the push he’s gotten in TNA.
3. Sheamus (NR)
For the same reason that I ranked Mysterio number 9, I ranked Sheamus number 10. The NXT rookies destroying all of your opponents and you lucking out to avoid that fate before pinning John Cena, that’s not an impressive victory to me. Add in that you didn’t do anything impressive the next night in RAW, and I’m not sure how you managed third place this week in the Power Poll.
4. Kurt Angle (3)
Without even a mention on iMPACT this week, his win over Kazarian at Slammiversary must have impressed voters enough to allow Angle to stay strong in this week’s poll.
5. John Cena (1)
The former WWE Champion drops four spots this week – and he didn’t even make my personal list. I know John Cena is a big name with a lot of fans, but he didn’t impress me during the voting period. Maybe next week, Cenation.
6. The Miz (NR)
Winning the United States Championship on RAW last week wasn’t enough to put the Miz on the Power Poll, but retaining the title at Fatal Four Way sure did. Add in the fact that he assaulted Randy Orton on RAW, and The Miz made number four on my personal list. He definitely impressed the right people, and hopefully we’re seeing the start of a main event push for The Miz.
7. Abyss (NR)
Abyss turned on Hulk Hogan this week on iMPACT, after destroying Jeff Hardy and Rob Van Dam. This impressed me enough to place him number two on my personal list, and it sends him into the Power Poll this week.
8. Evan Bourne (NR)
Number 5 on my personal list, a win over Chris Jericho at Fatal Four Way and an impressive showing the following night on RAW sends Bourne flying into the top ten, hitting number 8. (My personal rank: 5)
9. Randy Orton (5)
Orton impressed despite not winning at Fatal Four Way, and his threat to the NXT rookies (before being speared by Edge) seems to have the Power Poll voters still clinging to Orton in their top ten lists. (My personal rank: 8)
10. Kofi Kingston (NR)
He may have been left lying by Drew McIntyre on SmackDown, but he retained his Intercontinental Championship at Fatal Four Way, which is enough to put Kofi Kingston back into the Power Poll. (My personal rank: 7)
Dropped out: Big Show, Jack Swagger, Bryan Danielson, C.M. Punk, Kane
Also receiving votes: Edge, Jack Swagger, C.M. Punk, Big Show, Bryan Danielson, Chris Jericho, Tyler Black, Samoa Joe, Ken Anderson, Jay Lethal, Kane
Participating sites:BoredWrestlingFan.com, Online World of Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Ponderings, Project Wonderboy, Ringside Rants, WrestleRage.com, Wrestlespective
The Power Poll is a weekly top 10 list ranking men’s singles wrestlers in WWE and TNA voted by wrestling writers. If you are interested becoming a voter, e-mail wrestlespective(at)gmail.com and include a link to your site.
After the worst week in recent iMPACT history (0.5) last Monday, how will the Orlando crew address this on a live to air episode. One thing we can be sure of is that tonight’s episode will be Bubba the Love Sponge free since he got his ass turfed on the weekend for basically… being himself (i.e. total waste of flesh piece of trash). Which “band” member will no show/show up drunk… tonight?
– We kickstart the show with a brief teaser of Hogan and Bischoff in a limo discussing another person coming in and defecting implied from WWE. Tenay and Taz announce that due to feedback, iMPACT will be moving back to Thursday nights. Also, they are adding a new show called TNA Reaction (not sure when this will air, but it sounds like Thursday as well). Hence, admitted failure!
– Nature Boy, Ric Flair’s music hits but it’s Black Machismo, Jay Lethal who comes out. He is not dressed like Randy Savage, rather in a suit and is wearing Flair’s HOF ring. Superstar Billy Graham somewhere feels confirmed in his fairly recent allegations against the fraud the WWE calls a Hall of Fame. And he does a pretty convincing impression (including attacking his jacket).
WOO!
– This is turn brings out Flair and he’s pissed. Lethal apologizes, gives back the ring, and tells Flair that this was something all he’s want to do his whole life… even if for 2 minutes. It’s a pretty endearing little rant, but Flair will have NONE of it. “I’m Ric Flair, I AM WRESTLING!” and slaps him across the face… Lethal slaps back and they go back a forth a bit until Lethal slaps on the figure four. Heels pour out of the back to back up Flair… Abyss and Team 3D clears the ring. Chaos! RVD comes down with a chair and the heels bail. The only bad part about this segment was Flair having his shirt off for most of it…
Yep
– An ad for Deadliest Warrior featuring Jesse James versus Al Capone is tomorrow. And it’s going to be awesome.
-RVD (w/ 3D, Abyss and Lethal) call out Desmond Wolfe, Beer Money!, and AJ Styles to continue the brawl. They do, and I can’t find many non-porn clusterfuck images… so you’ll have to get the idea. This continues for a bit until Hogan makes his way out… Hogan somehow takes out all of the heels with absolutely no moves. Pretty odd.
This ^ is odder…
– We come back, and Hogan more or less books everyone into matches for the night… and since I’ll to those as we suffer through tonight’s episode. Then cut to Sting up in the rafters pacing… more commercials.
– The Beautiful People are in their dressing room applying the pancake and having a bull bitch session about having to defend their titles tonight… eye candy? Yes. Relevant promo? No.
– Doug Williams was stripped of his X Division title (the volcano from last month prevented him to make the last PPV). That was pretty lame on TNA. He lets us know he is still the title holder in his own mind and will face Kazarian at the next PPV event. Him and Kendrick (stoned from the bong rips with RVD earlier) will tag against Shannon Moore and Jesse Neil and their retarded Mohawks… we used to call these types of guys “Punks for a day” in Calgary when going in indie shows back in the early-mid nineties. Punk rock is a mentality, not the way you look. Matt Morgan continues his pluralized reference to himself on commentary.
– In all fairness, this is a fun high spotfest of a match. If you’re like me, this was a highlight of the night. Team Mohawk picks up the win in a far too short match. Samoa Joe comes out post match and takes out both Kendrick and Williams.
Punk for a day!
– Flair and his heel crew meet backstage as Flair tries to “coach” them. Then cut to a Hogan interview about building up the new TNA and whining about Sting going awry. I call this filler. Tenay/Taz + Sting explanation = blah, blah, blah… meh.
– Desmond Wolfe won the fan voting poll for the number one contender shot, which seems about right. Last time I checked, Wolfe and Hardy were both tied for 27% with no one else even close to contending. I guess those internet indie darlings do well when the internet actually gets the opportunity to vote, eh Daniel Bryan? We then cut to Mr. Anderson beating the crap out of your Pope, my Pope… the Pope backstage. Anderson is wearing some fucked up choir boy outfit and takes Dinero’s Pope Glasses and walks off.
I never tire of this picture.
– Anderson makes his way down to address the congregation. As per usual, I will just take in the over-the-top antics that are Ken Anderson. After delivering the gospel in the fashion of a Jim Baker style southern evangelist, the crowd is clearly divided, but loud “We want Pope” chants prevail. This is turn, logically of course, calls for Jeff Hardy whose first retort is “The Congregation and the Creatures of the Night are one and the same.” … … Anderson puts on his WTF epic logic fail face to my own pleasure. This is getting too gothic and emo for my comprehension. Hardy’s challenge to face Anderson is turned down… so Hardy KO’s him and uses his hands to make Anderson’s mouth move like a puppet and accept the challenge at Sacrifice.
AWESOME!
– By the way, after Hardy rips the choir boy outfit off of Anderson, Ken’s trunks say the following on the reverse: “Talk into…” and on the front “…the mic.” I wouldn’t wear these with Orlando Jordan around unless you are REALLY comfortable with your sexuality.
– Like the PatMan, known amongst the inner circles as PatMan of all that is Horny, the Beautiful People are out to defend their Tag and World titles against Sarita, Taylor Wilde, and Tara in an “I Don’t Understand the Stipulations Either” match. “What’s Lacey doing… it’s like the Elaine dance from Seinfeld…”
Good call Taz! AWKWARD…
– The match dissolves fast shortly thereafter allowing for the Beautiful People to retain all of their titles while Tara’s antics take out Sarita and piss off Taylor Wilde. So far, not a lot of action tonight. Hemme addresses the issue with Tara post match… Tara will put her career on the line against Rayne for the title….
– Three way tag match. Team 3D versus Beer Money! versus the Motor City Machine Guns. If there is any justice, the MCMG’s (best tag team out there) will prevail. God hates wrestling fans so…
Charles Barkley@ G: “I’ve got a public speaking function tonight, so I have to skip out on the TNA stuff…
G@ Charles Barkley: “Ok, just let me know when I have to bail you out of jail again…” Click here for stats on celebrities and how many times they’ve been bailed out.
– In what starts out to have potential is ruined quickly… dammit. The “Band” interferes and a DQ is issued. In a turn, Eric Young runs down and appears to have joined the Band by making the Wolfpack gang signs. The MCMG’s pull some awesome double teaming to take out the Band briefly until Beer Money! takes them out. I didn’t see Waltman anywhere out there… so Waltman must be the guy to not show up or show up drunk as I referred to at the start of this retarded review.
– Welcome to the “O Zone” with your sexually ambiguous host Orlando Jordan. Honestly I will try to give this a chance… He brings out Rob Terry as promised last week, in the form of a cardboard cutout. Meh. The real Terry comes out, attacks Jordan, turns his back, Orlando takes him out. Tumbleweeds blow through as nobody is shocked nor cares.
– Monster’s Ball Match (i.e. garbage weapons match) between Styles and Abyss. I’m doing my best to stay awake…. it’s 1 AM here and I worked from 8:30 AM through 11:00 PM today (and did I mention I’ve been drinking?). It’s a pretty decent bout, but for some reason Chelsea comes out to distract? Umm… who? The ruse is used to allow Flair to toss brass knuckles in and allow Styles to use them for a win. And Abyss of course ends up in a pile of tacks as Styles picks up the win. What the point of that was, is beyond me. WEAPONS ARE LEGAL. BRASS KNUCKLES ARE LEGAL. STUPID.
WTF?!?! Weapons are legal!
– Finally, we get RVD versus Desmond Wolfe in what HAS to be our main event. It sure starts off good with some excellent ring action… I’m focusing my typing hands on watching this… ahh crap, another 2 minute match in what could have been epic. Retarded. After RVD picks up the win with the 5 Star Frog Splash, he is attacked by Styles…
– Hogan finds Jarrett beat up backstage… due to Sting. Right, I could give a shit about his heel turn forgot about that.
– Hogan calls out Sting, who comes down to retort… Basically Sting says it’s about Hogan having a “veil of protection” throughout the years and that he loves TNA, blah blah blah. Hogan uses the word “brother” a bunch and pretty much says nothing. Sting cackles, “I’ve always said you’re one of the best chess players of all time […] it’s your move Hulkster.” Hogan throws down the challenge to take his best shot. Jarrett comes down first and attacks Sting with his own bat. Hogan and Jeff argue as Sting gets to his feet…
– The TNA logo comes up, and I’m out.
Charles Barkley@ G: “Ok, I need that bailout G. Hook a brother up honkey!”
G@ Charles Barkley: “Good. I’ve got no time for final thoughts this week anyways…”
I know, I know. Last week I said I’d review iMPACT before RAW. Then I said at the end of this week’s RAW review that I’d review iMPACT in “a couple hours.” Here it is 12 hours later and I’m just now sitting down to review TNA’s show. Let’s get started!
I’ve finally gotten a copy of TNA iMPACT from last night. Sadly, I could’ve gotten a copy of RAW 3 times over before getting this, so maybe next week I’ll cover TNA live and WWE afterward. Before I begin though, I figured I’d share with you what I just experienced over on another wrestling website. I actually just had two people try to tell me that WCW went out of business because Ted Turner decided to get out of the wrestling business, that WCW’s ratings were strong and still beating WWE’s when they went out of business, and that television executives didn’t have anything to do with Nitro and Thunder getting canned and the company going out of business. Kids. *Shakes head.*
-I have absolutely no idea what in the hell I just saw. That’s really all I can think of to say. Where to start?
-I guess I’ll start with the obvious, the Main Event. Another great match put on by AJ and Angle but what a horrendous finish. Just absolutely horrible. How many times of we seen the damn screw job recreated? But this was a damn recreated completely. Angle even screamed about going back to WWE (kind of like Hart drawing the WCW letters in the air) and then spit on Hogan and even trashed the announce table. That was the worst ending to Impact I have ever seen and I say that without hesitation. My head hurts from that. The AJ heel turn at Genesis was GREAT! I loved it, but this was just dumb.
-Now going back to the opening promo, that was great! Great execution from all involved and I think AJ is going to benefit greatly from this pairing with Flair. Nothing but good things can come out of that for him.
-The Brits were all but squashed in their rematch. Dinero lost in under 3 damn minutes to Jordan after putting on one hell of a match against Wolfe at Genesis.
-Love’s return was nice but did that match even go 2 minutes? In fact, I think AJ-Angle was the ONLY match that even went over 5 minutes all night. For a company that keeps screaming about how they are ‘pro wrestling’ and not ‘entertainment’ they sure aren’t doing a lot of actual wrestling right now.
-Anderson’s promo was good and I actually think he has A LOT of upside if he can stay healthy. A feud with Abyss doesn’t really seem like it would benefit either of them though.
-Who knows where the thing with Lashley is going? I don’t think they even know.
-And how sad is that we saw more of Bubba the Love Sponge tonight than any of the Knockouts or X-Division or guys or even Samoa Joe or Christopher Daniels at all? Just wow. I’m not going to speak on that pile of dog crap (Bubba the Love Sponge), I’ve said enough this week about him.
-I have absolutely no desire to see the Nasty Boys in TNA but it looks like they’re here to stay and Young got completely buried in the process.
-I would actually like to see Hall and Pac stick around, especially Pac since I think he still has a ton left to offer. I just don’t want to see a rehash of the nWo for the 100th time.
-TNA just doesn’t seem to have much of a direction at all right now. Maybe things will start to come into focus in the next few weeks but I just don’t know.
-I think hogan is going to run TNA in to the ground he was trying to say that he thought Vince EVERYTHING he knows….well Mr. hogan you are a fucking liar. Vince SR sold the company to Vinny Mac because he knew it was going to be in good hands Vince made you what you are today. A star an 80’s star that has run out of gas, and money. your wife left you for a 20 year old. your daughter is a whore that cant sing that tries to live off of your name. And lets not mention your son who crippled his “best friend” then you blamed the accident on the passenger.
-i think Eric Bishoff is to proud to fail twice but if he wants this to work out Dixie has to get rid of hogan and i don’t think that’s going to happen. look at what hes doing to the iMPACT zone it looks like a episode of WCW Thunder. Eric is a very intelligent mind in the world of wrestling but i think him in TNA is just rehashing old feelings of what he did to WCW
After a half-completed review last week, and a total MIA during Sunday’s ppv, let’s see if your Empress of “iMPACT” can pull off an entire review! Cross the line, peoples! (more…)
“Bound for Glory” is TNA’s “Wrestlemania.” We’ve heard about the matches. We’ve made our predictions. Come with your Empress of “iMPACT” and cross the line!
