TNA iMPACT wORKRATE rEPORT 12/7/06

WHAT WORKED:

Hey the promo package for the second Joe vs. Angle PPV match up was actually good. It had absolutely nothing to do with the actual in ring storyline they are running. In ring they had Angle refuse to agree to rematch, demand that Samoa Joe watch his back in order to get a rematch and then get a sneak pin on Samoa Joe when he promised he too would watch Joe’s back. I have no idea what Angle’s motivations are supposed to be for all the shit he does week to week…But the promo package ignored that and did a nice job putting over the match and Angle’s realization of the danger of getting in ring with Joe. The video package was on different page from the shows but it was clearly on better page.

I also continue to enjoy Christian Sting. Sting promises that he will walk down a “different road”, the road he had promised to walk down. Is Sting booking his own stuff? I bought Ring of Glory DVD at the Tower close out sale because I was enjoying what I thought was Russo Christian booking. Then you watch TNA where Sting is doing this neat Christian parable at same time everyone else is working a really shitty Russo “mystery” angle. Ooh Abyss has a mystery past, Tomko and Christian threaten to expose the “mystery”, ooh what is the “mystery”?… The cool sting stuff feels like its taking place in a separate universe from the rest of the shitty booking. Makes me think that the good stuff might be Sting’s and not the booker’s. I’m gonna be pissed if I wasted a dollar fifty at Tower on sub-par Christian booking, I think there was a Celly Cel Cd I could have bought instead.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

THIS SHOW SUCKS:

(1)The wrestling on this weeks show stunk:

Petey Williams gets a clean win on Homicide in an awful two minute match. Two minutes is a squash match even with the post match beat down by LAX. Why is Williams squashing Homicide in the middle of this feud? Of course this is only an undercard match and Tenay, West and Christie Hemme promise a main event with “NO RULES! NO MORALS! AND NO MERCY! THE TNA ALL-STAR WAR!”. They then run a three minute Low Ki vs. Eric Young match. Eric Young is doing a guy trying to sweat off weight comedy gimmick. The way this gimmick works is guy in sweat suit should appear blown up and not be able to perform. That’s the joke. Not a funny joke but that’s the joke. Instead Young and Ki exchange strikes evenly in a match that goes longer than Homicide v. Williams, and Young looses not due to exhaustion but due to distraction of Traci Brooks breasts. Of course this too is only an undercard match and Tenay, West and Christie Hemme promise a main event with “NO RULES! NO MORALS! AND NO MERCY! THE TNA ALL- STAR COLLISION!”. And so I guess I should be stoked about that main event. I mean the promotion is clearly being booked so on the fly that they haven’t decided what the main event is going to be called, as it’s advertised as “the TNA All-Star War”, “ The TNA All-Star Clash” and “ The TNA All-Star Collision” at various points during the show. What are they warring/clashing/colliding for? It was never stated. I ‘ve written before about how the show is currently paced too fast with one thing interrupting another and how one gets a sense of chaotic promotion that doesn’t have its shit together and well if you can’t keep your gimmick match name consistant in your advertising bumpers you really look half-assed. While no one seemed to know what the match was actually going to be called, they knew the tagline. Tag line they promoted the entire show was “NO RULES! NO MORALS! AND NO MERCY!”. Hemme, Tenay and West. Were clear that hat the main event was going to involve “NO RULES, NO MORALS, AND NO MERCY”. Despite the advertisement of “NO RULES!” the main event did not appear to be a No-DQ match. I was kind of excited by the prospect of “NO MORALS!”, as I really feel that Bill Bennet has ruined modern wrestling…and well I was also intrigued by the question of what Sting (who had earlier promised to walk down a better road) would do in a match that demanded a lack of morality. But there was nothing particularly immoral about the match. Angle put Christian in a headlock, held him in a headlock until through the commercial break and then they went to finish section. Where’s the immorality? Where’s the lack of adherence to rules? Where’s the failure to care about concept of mercy? For some reason Rhino was removed from match when he was obviously the guy who should have eaten the pin. Instead Joe eats the pin after a single Angle slam. What was the point of that match? What where they wrestling for? Main event was another one of these 6 minute main events with two minutes of commercial. This failed to deliver on the claim of “NO RULES! NO MORALS! AND NO MERCY!” , Failed to be a war or a clash. For a wrestling match pretty devoid of collisions. It didn’t deliver any of that. Apparently I misunderstood and the only bit of advertising that mattered was “the All-Star”. Tenay and West wax about all the “strar power “ in the match, Tenay talks about “all Star games”, etc. How shitty is it when you have to talk about match being cool, because “Look at all the famous people in it”. Tenay tells us that “ These guys are all STARS, unlike the rest of our minor league roster”. I guess it kind of felt like an all-star game in that it didn’t matter to anything. But still this stank.

(2)The wrestling angles stunk:

-Ooh Tomko and Christian have a “secret”? It’s a “mystery”, they will never be able to reveal the mystery because they keep on getting interrupted by other people’s entrance music. Hey did Eric young ever get to make his big announcement or is that still a mystery too? Who is going to solve all these mysteries? Someone needs to get Alex Shelly and Jay Lethal out of the PCS and onto the trail of these mysteries. Whenever there’s trouble we’re there on the double we’re the Bloodhound gang.

-A good 2/3 of this show was spent on unfunny comic "relief" and they have the nerve to mock "Ernest Saves Christmas". An hour of Auntie Nelda sketches would not only be funnier than this episode of TNA, it would also provide more physical action. Auntie Nelda uses a walker.

-I’m not a fan of jingoism but I understand it. The new LAX entrance video is one of the most jingoistic offensive things in wrestling today. It’s a bunch of archival clips of brutal Latin American dictators mixed in with Gandhi follower Cesar Chavez. Clips of death squads and United Farm Workers picketing. This is the functional equivalent of an evil black stable where the video package is footage of Papa Doc Duvalier, Martin Luther King, and Idi Amin as though they were all one and the same. Sand People Exchange entrance video made up of clips of Ayatollah, Gandhi and Ghadaffi. It’s shockingly jingoistic and offensive. Message of entrance video is that all political Hispanics are of the same cloth, all trouble, should just shut up and pick the oranges. It’s incredibly offensive piece of propaganda but I understand that it’s designed to appeal to (to draw) a jingoistic audience that wants their minorities quiet. I understand what the entrance video is trying to do and who it is trying to appeal to. I don’t understand the actual angle that they are working. After the Petey Williams/Homicide match, LAX jumped Petey beat him down and buried him in the Mexican flag. AMW ran out and Gail Kim grabbed the Mexican flag taunting Homicide with it….So the Canadian was buried in the Mexican flag and then the Puerto Rican was taunted by the Korean stealing it? What the FUCK??? Who is this supposed to draw? Who is this supposed to appeal to? Are there alot of Canadians with dual U.S. citizenship who have grievances with Mexicans? A lot of Korean American women who were slighted in high school because Puerto Rican boys only sat with Mexicans? TNA is located in Orlando. Haitians hate Cubans and vice-versa. If TNA ran Ricky Reyes vs. Haiti Kid they might be able to draw enough extra people to justify moving from the Chilly Willy Igloo Theatre to the Beetlejuice Graveyard Revue Stage. I mean if you’re doing jingoism you need to appeal to an actual real jingoistic audience. Angry Canadian –Americans really feels like a construct and not a real audience.