I know I’m not the first to say this, but for the first time in years I was anticipating Monday night wrestling. I had my remote control in hand and would be ready to flip from Spike to USA at a nauseating rate. TNA’s show would be three hours long, beginning at 8pm, so at around 7:30pm I put it on Spike to watch a Hughes-St. Pierre match while waiting for TNA to begin. As expected, there was a teaser, and it was as disappointing as ever.
Spike cuts to a clip of Jeff Jarrett getting out of a car with Shannon Moore. So apparently Jarrett’s going to be a part of the show. Now I’ve already gone on the record here at the Sledgehammer stating why TNA and Dixie Carter should attempt to do all they can to separate themselves from Jarrett if they want to succeed. Jarrett has no heat, little talent, and has a born to lose aura in the industry of professional wrestling. I have not been watching TNA as of late, or any wrestling show for that matter, but I was under the impression that TNA was phasing Double-J out of their plans, but apparently not. So before the TNA festivities began at 8pm I was already disappointed.
The show begins, and despite the Jarrett nonsense, I was still somewhat excited to see what would be going on for that first hour on TNA before the Bret Hart show (more on that later). Now I want to go on the record here and now stating that at heart I am a WWE fan. I also like to think that when it comes to my analysis of the industry I am impartial and that I truly want TNA to succeed. Because I, like everyone else who is a fan and doesn’t work for McMahon, know that the industry is better when there are options. And on top of all of that I have to say that the WWE has grown successfully and increasingly predictable, boring and dull over the years. Since the departure of Brock Lesnar the WWE has been a poor product – period. So that all being said, I took all the video montages of the fans chanting TNA and stating how it was a new era and they were sick of seeing the kiddie crap on the WWE with a grain of salt – the TNA brass has always wanted to try and insert itself into the niche left open by the disintegration of ECW.
So the first match we get is some multi-wrestler cage match. I will take nothing away from the talent in the ring in that match. Chris Saban and Jay Lethal are two of the better talents in the industry (I love the Macho Man gimmick that Lethal has been running with, even if I think it will ultimately hamper his own career) – but the cage itself was a joke. This was supposed to be a new era? no more kiddie stuff? If the TNA is taking themselves and this direction seriously they need to get rid of whomever it was who designed this cage. The thing looked like something from a playground. It also looked as if the sides were ready to come down if somebody hit it too hard. Homicide couldn’t even exit the thing – it was comical, and not in a good way.
Not a good start.
Jeff Hardy then makes his appearance. We then saw Scott Hall and the 1-2-3 Kid together again. Then of all people The Nasty Boyz, as if they were anyone of any consequence (oh wait, yeah, Knobbs is Hogan’s best friend). Ric Flair even makes a cameo. As it gets to be 9pm I’m getting itchy to change the channel, but I still want to see Hogan make his entrance. He comes out, and he rambles on a little, but I have to admit here it was where the channel flipping began. I will save my commentary for what I saw on the WWE for a follow-up post, but I still kept checking out the TNA show through the evening. Even in those first few opening minutes of RAW coming on the air I kept my eye on TNA. The worst kept secret in TNA’s history was that Eric Bischoff was going to be brought into the fold, which made that limosine gimmick where one guy jumps into another one so juvenile (shades of WCW antics). So the first or second time I flip back to TNA I’m watching Bischoff on the mic whilst in the ring with Hogan, Hall and the Kid. Ok great, it’s a nWo reunion. Again.
It’s just like the old WCW days, wait, what? uh-oh.
It’s fun to see all these old figures back doing what made wrestling so compelling in the mid-90′s here in 2010, but in terms of the TNA, what exactly is it that we’re watching? Bischoff is going around bossing people around like only Bischoff can do, he’s great on camera in that role – but why is he doing it? Who is in charge? Does anyone really know? It’s certainly not Bischoff. When you listen to Hulk Hogan talk, or read his transcripts of interviews he’s giving, he’s saying he’s being brought in as the ‘Vince McMahon of TNA.’ Well, ok, but what does that mean exactly? Is he being brought in to book? Does Hogan now have a financial stake in the company now as well? Is this all simply for show? Well if Hogan has the book, which he clearly does (why else would you see TNA planting seeds for a ridiculous Dudley Bros.-Nasty Boyz program), what makes this any different from 1997?
I like Dixie Carter and I want her to succeed, and I understand everyone wanting to recreate a Monday night war but the timing is wrong and the people she’s bringing in are wrong.
Dixie Carter IS THE Vince McMahon of the TNA and if she really wants to cultivate her product she should go out there and BE the Vince McMahon. Bringing in Hogan…and bringing in Bischoff…and bringing in Hall for the hundreth time….and bringing in Flair…etc, etc, etc…and trying to create the nWo circa 1997 is not going to help her show for a multitude of reasons, but there is one major reason which trumps all others:
TNA HAS YET TO ESTABLISH ITSELF AS A BRAND.
The TNA, for all its chest-beating still has the fundamental issue of not having its own identity. Now the waters are muddied more than ever because they are trying to mirror themselves after a model which did have success, yes, but ultimately failed horribly, and the wrestling industry has suffered ever since. I’ve mentioned the lack of a brand identity in previous posts early last year, but the one thing I said TNA had for them is the best talent in the industry: Kurt Angle. I suggested that what Dixie Carter and the TNA brass should do is build their brand around Angle, slap the TNA Title around his waist and let him ride them through.
They didn’t do that. Now they are trying to build around the shell of a former industry giant and trying to draw water from a well that’s been visited far too many times since the collapse of WCW already anyway. While interesting for the time, I don’t see this meaning much of anything over the long run for TNA, if anything it’s going to set them back immensely, which is sad.
One of the biggest losers in all of this is in fact Kurt Angle, the company’s top asset. It’s never a good idea to turn your top asset into the biggest loser of a new direction you’re looking to head in. The TNA show should have rolled up their sleeves with Kurt Angle and turn him into a new Hulk Hogan for a new century. But look at what they’re doing now. They are turning the clock back to the 1990s banking on a megastar of the 1980s while Kurt Angle is losing to a good natured guy in AJ Styles in a world title match. AJ Styles is a nice wrestler with talent, and I know he’s been there since 2002, but he is nowhere near the league of a Kurt Angle in ability in and out of the ring. Kurt Angle could main event any arena anywhere in the world under any venue and could sell out. Can anyone say the same about AJ Styles? Afraid not.
I’ve seen Kurt Angle talk in shoots. Angle still has a good relationship with the McMahons. Don’t be surprised now to see Angle going back to the WWE in the next few years if Hogan and his me-first antics start to take their toll with him having the book. In the past I could understand how other wrestlers should make way for Hogan, after all he is The Hulkster. But this isn’t the 1990s anymore, it’s not even the 00s. It’s now 2010 and Hullk Hogan should be remembered for the iconic figure he was, not being put into a position of authority in an effort to create another Monday Night War spearheaded by himself. If Angle ever left the company it would be an unmitigated disaster for the TNA. As I’ve said in the past here at The Sledgehammer, although TNA is an inferior product lacking an identity, what they do have is the top wrestler in the business in one Kurt Angle.
How long is it going to be before Bischoff starts rubbing his colleagues the wrong way? What’s it gonna be like when there is discord in the back? Who are the wrestlers going to go to? Hogan? Carter? someone else?? Is Scott Hall going to be able to keep his act together this time around with TNA?
Aye carumba.
Anyway, with all that said there is still hope. Even if this Hogan venture fails to take off in the way Dixie Carter hopes it will, and I predict it will fail, I don’t see TNA folding like WCW did. I still like Dixie Carter and was encouraged by some changes she made in the past year. This Hogan idea is completely wrong and a few steps in the wrong direction, but even still, I think Dixie is growing increasingly passionate about this TNA company and young enough to learn from these mistakes so that in the next ten years the company will begin to grow into something superior to the WWE as Vince gets on in age. The company still has a cooperative Kurt Angle in the fold and there is nothing set in stone that will say he and Hogan won’t get along. TNA still also has a a working relationship with UFC being partnered on Spike. Hopefully the network will look to exploit this, because that can really bring an added edge to their product in helping to establish a brand. They also still have Bobby Lashley a great, and I’ll repeat: great, talent who although an established player as a WWE wrestler was not with the company long enough for TNA not to start branding themselves with him. Lashley is not Brock Lesnar, but he’s the next best thing.
There is no program the WWE could offer that would be as compelling, dynamic and memorable as a Kurt Angle-Bobby Lashley feud (save for a Vince-Bret on-camera feud, Vince always seems to have an ace in the hole).
Unfortunately I see a TNA show now being about Hogan and his courtiers. It should make for a few interesting moments in the next few weeks, but ultimately not anything that’s going to establish TNA in a place they and wrestling fans world wide want to see them go.
Oh, by the way, Sting is still dwelling in the rafters with a baseball bat.
A legend. The man put the the midwest on the wrestling map in his heyday. With Dick the Bruiser he formed one half of the most legendary tag teams in pro wrestling. He really varved his legacy out of the AWA, winning their world title three times, but he also left his mark in various NWA-affiliated territories. The Crusher was not anyone you’d want to provoke.
If the main event of the first Wrestlemania was an every-man-for-himself streetfight shoot, the match would have lasted all but a few moments with Orndorff dusting off Piper, Hogan & Mr. T with more than enough energy to pose for the crowd (much like Hogan would do after all of his staged exhibitions). Orndorff’s toughness behind the scenes is legendary (just ask Big Van Vader). In the 1980s, if you took a secret poll of all the professional wrestlers, asking them to name the one guy they’d least like to get into a brawl with, I’m fairly certain Orndorff would have been the hands down winner.
All you need to know about this man, and what a badass he was, is that when Andre the Giant was first brought over to North America, Kowalski was the first person who was booked to pin him in a match in Quebec City. What is so ironic about Kowalski is as mean and nasty and stiff as he was inside of the ring and in front of an audience is how nice and approachable and gentlemanly he was outside of the ring. But be careful, because he might just rip your ear off.
He wasn’t the biggest guy in the ring, but he might have been the toughest. I remember watching him in the ring in the mid 90s back in the WCW days and thinking to myself that thusre wasn’t anyone like him in the business at that time. I have still never seen a guy his size work as stiff as he did. His chops were lethal and he hit hard. He was exactly what they called him, a rabid wolverine.
What can I really say that hasn’t been said before? Terry Gordy truly earned his nickname. This man’s work personified smashmouth. If it weren’t for Gordy, there was no way the Fabulous Freebirds would have ever taken off, with or without Michael Hayes. When you look at him you saw that he was just bred for brawling and beating people up in and outside of the ring. Terry Gordy is a legend
Well, I did say earlier that if you took a secret poll of the wrestlers in the 1980s on who’d they least like to get into a real fight with, the winner would be Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff. In all reality it should be Haku, and it still might be. Everyone respected this man in the back, knowing what he was capable of. Working primarily in the WWF in 80s to early 90s, where stiff work was typically frowned upon, unless your name was The Ultimate Warrior – Haku was still a fairy stiff worker in a lot of uncompelling matches. Goldberg would tiptoe around him in the WCW days when he went by the name of Meng. When Bobby Heenan calls you the toughest man he’s ever met, then you know your not dealing with just any old stack of dimes. The man would literally take out 2 or 3 men at a time on semi-regular basis, and this is outside of the ring. If he wasn’t gouging out Jimmy Jack Funk’s eye or biting off your nose, he was typicall buried in the undercard of a wrestling show. Either way, King Tonga was not anyone you’d want to get into a physical altercation with – because you were not going to win. In fact, if this was simply a list of guys I think would win a fight, from what I’ve heard, Haku would probably be one.
Brock Lesnar still has a lot to prove in his UFC career, but he could be doing worse. But as a pro wrestler Lesnar certainly brought that bigtime smashmouth showmanship that had been lacking in the WWE for longtime before he got there and has been missing ever since he left. The impact of his moves left impressions. As low-a-risk the F5 finisher was, if Brock was laying you out with it, you certainly wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of one. Oh, by the way, he’s kind of strong too.
Talk about a stiff worker and a tough s.o.b. Wrestling Observer newsletter named their ‘Best Brawler Award’ the Bruiser Brody Memorial Award. Brody’s status as a tough badass has almost reached mythic levels and rightly so. When you listen to Tony Atlas talk about the horrific events of what went down in Puerto Rico when Brody was murdered, even after having been stabbed and sliced open by some piddly scumbag, with chunks of his intestines hanging off of the knife of his assassin, Brody still was going to pull through. It was only after doctors were ordered by ‘persons unknown’ to stop operating that Brody died. As a worker he was mean, he was stiff, he was bloodthirsty, utterly uncontrollable and unpredictable, Bruiser Brody was certainly unforgettable.
When Bruiser Brody went to go work for Verne Gagne and the AWA he took the name King Kong Brodie out of respect to Dick the Bruiser. He was the Brock Lesnar of his day. The man is famous for starting barfights with patrons at bars between wrestling matches. And these patrons at the bars were not just any ham and egger either, they were professional football players, and when the police were called in and finally arrived, Dick the Bruiser was the one who was still standing.
He wasn’t the prettiest or most talented man to watch in the ring. Pound for pound I’d even say he’s probably not even the single toughest man on this list either, but man, sometimes you just wince watching him hit others while working a match. His larriot is quite simply the most brutal clothesline the induestry has ever seen. He took over Japan on that finisher alone. When you’d see him making his way to a ring before a match began with his black leather cowboy vest with the skull & bone symbol on the back, you’d think on another wrestler that vest would look silly. Yet on Hansen it somehow seemed just right. The man was a thick, tough, wreckingball of a wrestler. I think Bruno Sammartino is still bleeding and aching from his collisions with a young Hanson back in 1976. Stan Hansen, like a Bruiser Brody, has also achieved something of a mythic reputation in that he pretty much wrestled in the modern age, but rarely in a territory or companywhere he’d receive mass exposure.
