TNA Impact 17/04/2014; I Didn’t Hate This Show
Leave a CommentImpact + Depression =…fun?
Impact + Depression =…fun?
Time to watch the little promotion in Florida that couldn’t, right?
Ladies and gentle/wild-men of the “Bored Wrestling Fan” community, welcome to my very first article here in the land of the strange, crazy and indeed wacky. Please let me begin this by stating how awesome it is to be here and how sweet it really is to be back writing about professional wrestling again! Oh wrasslin’ journalism, how I have missed thee!
I’ve basically been given free reign to chatter away to my hearts content about all things wrestling, which is perhaps the most fantastic welcome email I could have received by “the boss” (I’m very sure he walks just like Vince McMahon into the office every morning), ThinkSoJoe. So, with that said – feel free to thank that man for inflic…erm…bringing me onto your computer screens each week. You can thank him in anyway you see fit, likely by screaming at him in a voice akin to Paul Heyman, “WHO’S THE RAMBLING SCOTSMAN WITH THE GRAMMATICAL SKILLS OF A 4 YEAR OLD!?”.
It’s plainly obvious why I am here and why I have managed to stumble, with the help of the lovely Drowgoddess, blind drunk into the land of BWF; yours truly simply loves professional wrestling. I have done since I was a very small boy and will continue to do so until I’m a very small old man. It’s always hard for me to convey or put across my true passion for what all those men and women do each and every night. I’ve penned many an article for many a website regarding my thanks for the countless hours of fantastic entertainment they have given me over the years. The sacrifice and dedication to performance is evidently appreciated by millions, with me amongst those millions. I love wrestling for the drama, the spectacle, the over-the-top hammy acting and the head-in-hands moments where you’re failing to believe what you’ve just witnessed. It has made me laugh, it has made me cry. One thing it has never really failed to do however, is fail to entertain me.
I’ve long pondered why I am so enraptured by this unique form of scripted theatre. In the many years I’ve followed the grap-game, there have been many people I know who have moved on from it’s clutches. “Grown out of it” or grown bored of it, the numbers aren’t exactly sparse. In my circle of friends, I’d go so far as to say that 90% of them now view professional wrestling as “something for kids” or “entertainment for morons”. They don’t mean anything harsh by these statements but they seem to be missing the point of why I’m still heavily into it – it’s more than entertainment to me. I enjoy thinking about what might go on backstage. Where the storylines come from and how they’re put together is a topic which has long kept me awake at night, basking in the afterglow of another Pay-Per-View conclusion. Sure, I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that goes on when the lights go down and the show’s over, but it doesn’t stop me from daydreaming about it.
The above may seem like a pretty wacked-out piece of nonsense to a number of you. I appreciate that there are those and such as those who merely wish to watch the show week-to-week, never thinking of what goes on behind the curtain. Afterall, what’s wrong with that? If you’re getting what entertainment you need out of the product then by all means treat it how you wish to treat it. One thing nobody should ever do however, is tell another fan how to go about enjoying the same product. This is partly what makes pro wrestling such an exclusive commodity however. How many people do you know who watch…say…CSI and when they switch the TV off, they wonder for hours how the show is put together, what the cast are like as real people and will eagerly debate with others on whether or not William Petersen as “Gil Grissom” is protecting his spot and keeping the minor characters in their place, hogging the limelight all for himself?
Now we all know that if this does happen, it’s a very rare occurrence. Most fans of most TV shows are happy to tune in, enjoy and then tune out, getting on with the rest of their day/evening. Not so in the wrestling world. It’s one of those entertainment mediums which has it’s content scrutinised relentlessly by a huge number of it’s fanbase each and every day of the year.
The internet itself has become so renowned that the fans who like wrestling AND use the web are now referred to as the “IWC” or “Internet Wrestling Community”. There’s a negative stigma attached to this too, wherein fans who surf the net to talk about wrestling are perceived as fat nerds who just want to pick holes in what happened on Monday Night RAW. Now I’m extremely sure there are those of that ilk among us but, y’know, some of us just want to chat to fellow fans about what’s going down, where the promotion could possibly take the stories from here and wax lyrical regarding Velvet Sky’s entrance sequence.
Personally, and I’m sure I’m not alone here, this reputation irritates me. It’s not that many wrestlers and creative team members of the various wrestling companies have bias against opinionated forum-users that gets to me. It’s a large portion of the vast number of wrestling-based message boards userbase that gets to me. The very same userbase which I myself am a part of. There does seem to be so much negativity around, to the point that sometimes you find yourself wondering why most of these people even watch the shows anymore. What pleasure can be gained out of watching any entertainment medium you find ridiculous, seething over it and then venting your self-made frustrations to others over the internet? Surely to heck some of these folks need to relax and if wrestling isn’t as good to them as it was back during the “Attitude” era, they should just stick to YouTube clips, videotape libraries and memories?
Having said all that, I beg of you – please do not get me wrong. There are many things which happen on wrestling shows which perplex me to absolute unholy hell. Do these things ruin my day? No. Do these happenings destroy my enjoyment of the show as a whole? No. I wouldn’t watch it for one minute longer if they did! I guess I do understand where some of the bitching comes from but, like I said, it impresses me how some of these people beat the product up and yet still find the time to tune in. It’s simply something I may never understand.
If you’re still awake, I must thank you for taking the time to peruse through my article. I really hope it’s apparent how passionate I am about the weird and wacky world of pro wrestling. As much as I know about it, I like humbling myself by saying that I know next to nothing about it, really. I know what I think, what I’ve read and heard, which is possibly not actually what happens in the day-to-day running of World Wrestling Entertainment or Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling.
I’d really like to hear from you regarding the content of this column. Any opinions, questions or corrections you can think of, I’m more than happy to read them all. I just love talking to others about wrestling! That’s why I’m here! I’d also just like to thank ThinkSoJoe, Drowgoddess and each and every one of you for welcoming me here with such open arms. It’s great to be a part of the family! You can send all correspondence to jamiekennedy@live.com
I look forward to it! TAKE IT HOME!
Hello there. Your big name player in the BWF has a brand new piece coming to here, and to our sister site, VinceRussoWatchesHisBeardGrow.com, but I need your help out there. What it is, is that I will be going back to the good ol’ days of ‘rasslin, with a review of an event from the past, whether it be a PPV, an episode of RAW is WAR, a special UK event, even an independent event, If I have it, I’ll review it.
This will also be a fan interaction piece, with you the reader, deciding which event I review. Your choices for the first review are:
[poll id=”10″]
Most votes win, so get to voting.
Greetings, fellow line-crossers!
Your Empress of “Impact” is here, with a review of tonight’s go-home show and predictions for Sunday’s “Sacrifice” pay-per-view. Tonight’s episode is titled “Double J in Jeopardy.” Will the TNA Founder remember to phrase the answer in the form of a question? Let’s find out!
It’s Thursday night, your Empress of “Impact” is here, and that can only mean one thing. No, not THAT! It’s time to find the nearest line and cross it!
Here are links to two good reviews of this week’s “Impact.”
http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/9169/
http://www.prowrestling.net/artman/publish/TNATVreports/article1005671.shtml
Real life has gotten in the way of proper reviews lately, so this week, here are some thoughts to accompany the above reviews. Consider it a slight rip-off of our good buddy JT’s “Random Randomness,” except that all points apply to a single “Impact” episode, making it not actually random at all. Did I mention that JT rules? He does.
1. Angle putting up his leadership position of the Main Event Mafia at “Sacrifice?” Ok. So the MEM will suddenly snap to and follow the lead of someone not named Kurt Angle just because of a match? Who would even want that spot, knowing perfectly well that the MEM would just take them out? Even in wrestling, people aren’t that stupid.
2. Amazing Red! He was never one of my favorites because he always seemed very sloppy in the ring to me, but I enjoyed watching him back in the early days of TNA, and having him back could be grand. The new look really helps. If you saw his old look, you know of what I speak. Honestly, though, Red’s last work in TNA was long enough ago that lots of current fans have no idea who he is. Having wild surprises is great, but in the case of Red, a few weeks of video packages, or even a “Rough Cuts” segment, would have been more effective. His big return was far from bad, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not a surprise when half your audience is thinking, “Who?”
3. Amazing Red and Suicide beat the MCMG. So there are other plans for the MCMG besides TNA tag team championship matches. As long as they’re on tv, I can’t complain. However, this is the third match in this tournament (more on that later) in which an established, legitimate tag team was beaten by two guys who were teaming together for the first time. Why? What does that do to make the tag team division look good? If there were a reason for it (injury, team dissension, and so on), then fine, but now No Limit, Lethal Consequences, MCMG, and LAX are all out of the tag team title tournament. Three of those matches were clean losses (not counting the LAX beatdown by the British Invasion). It’s Beer Money and three teams of random guys. This does not count as shaking up the tag team division with new blood! It just looks like any two guys can team up and legitimately beat guys who have been teaming for several years.
4. The Beautiful People seem to be hanging Madison Rayne out to dry. Funny. The group interaction is always fun to watch.
5. Cody Deaner and Abyss. Again? This seems to be a feud, but I’m not liking it. Deaner makes me want to change the channel. Was he really worth getting rid of Petey and Sonjay? ODB’s peacock hairdo hurts my soul.
6. Mick Foley searches for back-up against Kurt Angle’s invasion of his office. This is actually fun. Mick goes to the MCMG and Samoa Joe and gets nowhere, but watching him try was great. Particularly after his history with Alex Shelley. Suicide is Al Snow?
7. The British Invasion bit was very well-done. If there had to be a match in the tag team tournament where an established team was beaten by a new one, this was it. Not crazy about the name “British Invasion,” but it could be worse. At least Brutus Magnus is out of the gladiator gimmick. He can only get better working with Doug Williams, and then, everybody wins. Magnus has a good look and isn’t a bad talker, but his ring work was painful to watch up until now. He seems much more comfortable as part of a team. Good. Taking out Hernandez and triple-teaming Homicide made absolute sense. A solid introduction for the faction, and I’m actually looking forward to what they do next. Yes, I’m eating my words from a previously-posted thread. It happens.
8. Kong squashing Madison Rayne was great, as the fans kept chanting “One more time! One more time!” Don West was appalled and had some great lines about the sick fans.
9. If you didn’t laugh during the MCMG/Daniels segment, you have no soul. Go to the TNA site and watch the video clip of this segment. It’s actually up. Or just try this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDacEZvsCOQ It includes such gems as –
Alex Shelley: You have a wife and two kids at home who play with our action figures!
Chris Sabin: Why is it that you and Suicide have the exact same build? I mean, let’s face it, that ass is unmistakable!
Sabin shoves his mic into Daniels’s chest with great force. Daniels is still holding his own mic from entering the ring. Shelley leans over and says, “He already has a mic.” Sabin responds, “I just wanted to hit him.”
10. I hate the fact that Jenna Morasca has almost the same first name as me. Whatever she’s getting paid should be spent on acting lessons. Immediately.
11. Daffney and Lauren competing for the affections of Abyss??? Hmm. This could get interesting. I hope Daffney doesn’t get wasted on a non-wrestler, though.
12. Matt Morgan? Offering his services to the MEM? Uh, ok. It may fit character-wise, but he doesn’t meet the requirements. Lashley does. Morgan/Lashley?
13. AJ loses because Joe doesn’t show up. Sure, I’m curious, but isn’t this pretty much admitting that there is no Main Event Mafia versus Front Line?
14. Sting returns. Ok. A bit soon, methinks.
15. Foley losing his mind and being all over the place is more intriguing than nice-guy Legend Foley. No, I don’t want him at the top of the food chain for a year, but I’m interested in seeing where this goes.
Peace out,
Drowgoddess