TNA Impact 30/01/2014; Better Than RAW
2 CommentsI barely slept this past week and followed that up by watching TNA and reviewing it. What a terrible idea. At least it’s a UK show. This could be fun.
I barely slept this past week and followed that up by watching TNA and reviewing it. What a terrible idea. At least it’s a UK show. This could be fun.
…like Sliced Bread #2, only not as yummy!
With quite a lot going on in the wrestling world as we head towards the end of the year and into the annual “Wrestlemania Season”, you fine readers may well see a lot more of the “Mat Musings” concept. This is simply because there is a hell of a lot to talk about this time of year, specifically when it comes to World Wrestling Entertainment. Having said that, one of the topics in this article has absolutely nothing to do with the biggest company in all of the wrestling kingdom! With that said, on with the topics!
I have no clue how familiar many (or indeed any) of you are with the wrestling scene here in the UK. As it happens, it’s going through quite the boom period in regards to talent – which will be obvious to any of you who regularly tune into WWE or TNA television. The amount of British-born grappler’s currently making headlines in the major promotions is at an all-time high. This obviously bodes well for my local scene as the bigwigs at WWE and TNA seem to be on the lookout on this side of the water.
Recently, none other than Jeff Jarrett was flown in at the expense of TNA wrestling to hold a seminar with the young students of The “Scottish Pro Wrestling Academy” and the hard-working roster members of “Premier British Wrestling”. PBW has recently joined up with the “British Wrestling Council” (an institution put in place to improve the safety and working conditions for all those involved in the British wrestling scene, be they wrestler, manager, announcer, referee or ring crew) and this marks a clear statement of intent from TNA to sweep the shores of the UK for talent.
Adrian McCallum, who goes by the ring name “Lionheart”, was the man chosen by Jarrett at these training sessions to show the biggest amount of potential. Lionheart has long been a local favourite in Scotland, specifically Glasgow, and there is a fantastic buzz and excitement over him being given this opportunity. Having had the chance to see him wrestle a number of times, I can tell you that he reminds me of a younger AJ Styles and will no doubt thrive in front of a huge crowd at the Braehead Arena in Glasgow. Go get ’em buddy!
A special mention must be given to Ross Watson and his gang over at PBW too, for all the hard work they have put in removing the stigma and overall ‘cheapness’ of the British product. Their live shows are regularly jam-packed full of wrestling-hungry spectators and it wouldn’t be stretching the truth to say that nobody leaves a show feeling disappointed. This writer is in no way associated with PBW but feels that credit is due for all their efforts! It’s exciting to think, for somebody like me who is trying to break into the British wrestling scene, that someday I could perhaps be a part of all this. You just never know!
When WWE announcers start mentioning something heavily on TV at the direct request of their boss, it’s a good indication that the company and its owner are fairly confident said thing will come to fruition. The undoubted largest company in professional wrestling have always been very careful when it comes to things like this. Mr. McMahon really does like to follow through on things and doesn’t often leave things to chance, with his wrestling promotion at least.
There is still a lot of talk regarding the possible appearance of UFC performer and ex-WWE superstar, Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania this coming spring. Personally, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it all. I find it very difficult to imagine that Dana White, the owner of UFC, would allow one of his contracted fighters to show up on a WWE show for any reason. WWE and UFC may be two different monsters but they are in the business of ratings and trying to secure a bigger audience than the other, on the face of it. On the flip side, Lesnar appearing at the most-watched wrestling show of the year could be seen as the perfect advert for UFC. The chance of grabbing some new viewers could be a clever move, with WWE receiving the “cool” rub of being associated with mixed martial arts. Perhaps there is something in it for both sides afterall.
From a purely personal standpoint, I would love to see Brock back in a WWE ring. The chances of him ever returning full-time are extremely slim, which I realise, but a one-off appearance would only heighten my anticipation for the event. By far one of my favourite superstars from the past decade, “The Next Big Thing” became a world class main event level wrestler very fast – learning off peers such as Kurt Angle and The Undertaker with superlative quickness. With his intimidating size and impressive agility, I’d be a liar if I said I wouldn’t “mark out with my mark out” if the master of the “F5” showed up with his game face on.
Yours truly can recall being mega-disappointed with the way the man’s wrestling career ended. Coming to a close in complete and utter insouciance, his match with fellow-leaver Goldberg was treated with disdain by those in attendance at Madison Square Garden. It was a sorry end for the man in whom Vince McMahon saw great things. It would be entirely fair to say that Lesnar would still be a huge star in the land of the WWE had he not decided to pursue an American Football career, tired of the long roads he had to travel with the industry.
The only thing for us fans to do, is play the waiting game. It’ll certainly be an interesting watch to see if WWE ramp up their interest in their former champion. Or perhaps they already know something the rest of us do not..
I’d love to hear YOUR opinion on the topics discussed here. Quite frankly, they’re as important as mine. Sometimes even more so! The banter and chatter amongst fans is truly what makes pro wrestling such an amazing form of entertainment. Almost everybody has something to say. I love that. You can leave a comment below or send a quickfire email my way – jamiekennedy@live.com I’ll be sure to respond to anything and everything. Quite frankly, I just love talking to people about the wild and wacky world of wrasslin’! TAKE IT HOME!
Rather ironically, when I was approached about penning a column on wrestling house shows – I picked up the latest copy of the UK-based grap magazine “Fighting Spirit Magazine”, only to find that they themselves had written an article dedicated to the art and history of the non-televised event. This has happened to me quite a few times in the past when writing for various websites and it’s always freaked me out. I start thinking about an idea for an article, randomly flick through some old or current wrestling mag/book and see what I thought was my idea spread out across the page! This particular instance was no different to all the other ones and actually made me laugh a little bit, kinda like Michael Cole does when John Cena acts all immature. Thankfully, the piece was an awesome read and really helped get my creative juices flowing for putting together my own diatribe.
Still I find myself lacking the means to really write as many columns as I would like. We don’t have internet in our new flat yet and therefore I’m only managing to write this due to being home for the weekend to visit my family and spend some time chilling out. Quite honestly, I can think of no better ways to relax than watching, thinking and talking about professional wrestling. With that said, let’s take a look at the wonderful world of ‘wrestling on tour’..
Earlier this month, my good friend Richard Flynn (who is responsible for this weeks WWE Smackdown report – check it out!) and I attended a WWE live event featuring the superstars of the Friday Night Smackdown brand in action. This is a pretty regular occurrence nowadays; for us to attend these shows. On a few occasions in the past, other friends have joined us for a night of live and in colour wrasslin’ entertainment but most of the time it’s simply Flynn and myself geeking it up. To say I love spending time with the guy and watching wrestling with him would be an understatement. The amount of hours we’ve let go past by watching WWE and TNA shows is probably mind-boggling. Not to mention the oodles of time we’ve dedicated to chatting about the aforementioned companies and also our favourite moments from the past. Seriously, we have spent a lot of time thinking about wrestling together. We seem to feed off one another’s passion and it has made for some very cool and very pleasurable afternoons and evenings, to say the least.
Our continued excitement at attending these WWE and TNA shows is equal to that of pretty much any kid you know who likes wrestling. I’m glad I can say with all seriousness that I am just as thrilled by the thought of seeing this brand of entertainment live today as I would have been had I been fortunate enough to grab tickets for a show when I was 10 years old. Rather unfortunately, whenever the then WWF and then WWE visited these shores back then, I always found myself facing a ticket hotline with no more remaining tickets. As much as my parents tried (my mum phoned as early as she could every time and my dad even drove the 150 miles from our home in Campbeltown to Glasgow on the off chance the venue would still have some seats left), it just never seemed to happen. This is probably just aswell – 10 year old me would likely have passed out with excitement had he been privy to The Rock or Triple H up close!
As it pertains to the day-to-day running of any wrestling organisation, there can be no arguments that non-televised or “house” show events are the least important they have been for quite some time, maybe even in the entire history of the industry. There is far more stress placed on the signification of a Pay-Per-View event or the rating for an episode of Monday Night RAW than there is for how many fans are drawn to arenas for the next WWE nationwide tour. House shows used to be the place to see your chosen wrestling promotion but has in more recent times been usurped by TV tapings and major shows such as “Wrestlemania”. This shouldn’t take away from the overall necessity of a company touring the country or indeed the world however, far from it. The revenue boosts WWE alone will feel from visiting the UK must be worth the trip. In between ticket sales (and the fact these tickets are snapped up readily due to the scant nature of shows in any given town each year), merchandise and crossover TV appearances, it’s clearly worth the promotions while to head on over the Atlantic frequently. It’s also a valuable tool for TNA, who have played before their biggest crowds when not in the United States. Big, American pro wrestling companies are simply devoured quickly in foreign markets, such is the fascination with only having one or two chances per annum to see them.
Due to this shift in how a wrestling company, specifically WWE, views its un-televised product, it’s far more of a mixed bag when you attend one these shows. What I’m getting at here is that it’s a clear learning ground for younger members of the roster and a chance for established superstars to try out new things and further develop their characters, far away from the scathing perfection of television. It has been really rather interesting to view things at the handful of house shows Richard and I have bought tickets to which would NEVER feature on WWE TV or PPV. As mentioned before, this can bring both positives and negatives along with it. It’s engrossing to view someone such as Chavo Guerrero, a man scarcely used on the air, be allowed to partake in a 12-minute long match and fully show off his skills to the audience. On the other side of the coin, it can be disheartening to know that nothing of any great significance is likely to happen on the show in your town.
This leads me rather nicely onto an argument which has been permeating wrestling writers and fans over and across the world; have WWE officials decreed that their wrestlers shouldn’t work quite so hard and take so many chances at a non-televised show as they would when the cameras are rolling, thus reducing the risk of injuring themselves or a peer?
If this is the case then it could be argued as short-changing the loyal fan who is excited to see the company and expects to see something pretty close to what he sees on TV each and every week. Surely, with the prices as they are for admission to the typical WWE or TNA house show (I.e not very cheap!), it’s not being cheeky to expect a level of performance matching that of what you are used to. To be completely fair to TNA, they encourage their performers to give their all, regardless of the platform or if the event is being filmed. Having witnessed this with my own 2 eyes, it does make for a thrilling spectacle.
Again, using the proverbial “other side”, I really don’t think the overall feel of the shows have suffered that much. Having been in attendance for a couple of RAW-brand house shows and a few Smackdown-brand ones, the match-quality has been pretty darn good. Sure, there are restholds and not nearly as many high-flying antics as we would see on TV but it’s not exactly a million miles away from your typical match on Monday Night RAW. Infact, I’d go as far to say that the promotion makes up for this with some well-placed and excellently executed (oh boy..) storyline goodness. This writer can recall just earlier this month some TV-inspired goings on with the “Nexus” stable and also some in-ring promo’s which draw you closer into the show. Therefore, I don’t think it’d be fair to say that either WWE nor TNA treat the fans with disdain in the house show market, certainly not on this side of the pond.
With all this said, what do YOU think? Have you attended a WWE or TNA house show event in which you’ve wished you’d saved your money? Did you wish instead that you’d spend some extra cash to go to a TV taping or Pay-Per-View? Or were you like me and felt both companies did their utmost to put on a good evenings entertainment and ensure the fans would come back in droves the next time around? Your thoughts are every bit as important as mine and opinions are definitely a huge part of what makes Bored Wrestling Fan and wrestling fans in general so great! Let me know what you reckon, either by leaving me a comment below or by sending me a quickfire email to jamiekennedy@live.com ! Until the next time, TAKE IT HOME! To your house. To your house uh…show..
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!