TNA iMPACT wORKRATE rEPORT 3/2/07

WHAT WORKED:

-Sometimes Don West’s clothing choice is really ridiculously Vegasy and ugly. Other times he dresses like the worlds greatest fashion conscious black deacon. Tonight he was in full on deacon territory with the reddish orange silk shirt with white cuffs and collar and full on matching tie.

-I liked Tomko v Joe. Tomko’s offense has gotten better looking and he still eats stuff well. The neck vice in match this short is full on RAW level silly and wow Samoa Joe is loosing a lot since the end of his undefeated streak. I thought loosing to Angle was supposed to have made him “tempered and forged”…instead it just leads to more meaningless throw away losses. Really get the sense that a one shot Tomko appearance in NYC ROH match v Joe would have been really good. An FIP match would have been really great too. Maybe they’ll be given time to do a long match in UWF or whatever touring TNA promotion they get running.

-OK so I really loved the Homicide beat down and attack on Johnny Rodz. Homicide when given the mic in this context is pretty great and violent. There is this story I’ve heard a couple times told by ex-SNCC folks about when Bayard Rusten was trying to recruit among a group of young militant blacks. The militant guys called out Rusten and argued for the need for revolution. Rusten, the organizer, carefully started to sketch out a plan for how one would accomplish a violent revolution; how you would need to keep the planning secret, how you would need to develop fronts for revolution, how you would need to carefully police your secret society, weed out snitches and possible informants, etc. Basic gist was that violent revolution would require you to kill a whole lot of your own people before you even started getting anything off the ground. I don’t know if it’s an apocryphal story or not but still neat story about nature of non-violent resistance (there’s also a really neat story about Rusten supposedly knowing that the civil rights movement was being infiltrated by FBI and saying something along the lines of “yeah those guys were really efficient workers. We put those agents in charge of stuff no one else would do”). So Homicide attacking fellow Puerto Rican Johnny Rodz was kind of poignant. In order to enact a revolution you have to take down a lot of your own, you can stop a revolutionary but can’t stop a revolution, to live and die in LAX. Sad and poignant. I mean having your comedy videographer film a serious violent beat down is incredibly stupid. Other people own cameras. Homicide referred to Channel 5150 and not Paparazzi Productions. The idea that Shelley is only guy in promotion with access to video camera is stupid. At least this time there was a lot of arty editing in the video of attack. The attack on BuhBuh’s Italian Uncle was filmed security footage style, here there was a lot of MTV style editing because “filmmaking is a passion”of Alex’s. Also the introduction of mentor of D-Von who has never been mentioned before in same episode the mentor gets attacked is stupid. Rodz is a father figure for D-Von? I didn’t know that? I’m supposed to feel for Devon because of an attack on a relationship of his that I had never known anything about? This relationship that has never been mentioned before. What happened to Samoa Joe’s girlfriend anyway? She might have been Rodz trained too for all I know. Is Samoa Joe also angry? So lots of reasons that this angle is stupid. But Homicide’s mic work combined with the violence and the subtext behind an attack on Puerto Rican in the name of a revolution built on Hispanic unity…all made this work for me.

-I kind of liked Joe’s mic work setting up his match with Christian and his mic work telling Abyss to man up. I kind of liked Buh-Buh/Alex Shelley interaction. Amusing version of Serch v. Dasit. Maybe was pedantic KRS-1. Maybe it was Buh Buh as Bill Cosby lecturing these young hip hoppers about the evils of their materialistic druggy existence? "Not like when I was growing up and we were respectful and I hung out with Ray Charles and jazz heads at the Playboy mansion, there was no misogyny or drugs there." Ehh, I can't come up with the right analogy. I don’t know what the right comparison is but Buh-Buh as pedantic KRS-1 is better than Buh-Buh as angry Italian Glen Reynolds. Alex Shelley as obnoxious chicken shit heel begging off “Filmmaking is my passion, see I went through art school” was also pretty amusing.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

-Ok so having your comedy midcard gimmick filming your serious violent angle is stupid but it worked for me. But having Buh Buh no sell and pinball Homicide and Hernandez around the ring and only sell for the comedy midcard guy is absolutely idiotic. Homicide and Hernandez are involved in a “serious” blood feud with team 3D. Nash is a character who provides comic relief and Alex Shelley is working a comedy heel gimmick. Buh-Buh sells nothing for the people who he’s engaged in a serious blood feud with. Instead he sells fear of Nash and a low blow from Alex Shelley. This is backassward, and embarrassing.

-I think part of the reason that Joe’s mic work came off well was that he didn’t have mood music played behind it. I mean the “Massacre in New York” video had all kinds of editing and that made sense because Alex Shelly went to art school and all. Sting does a promo where the strings and mood music completely drowned and distracted from anything he was saying. Chris Harris did a promo where some rejected ER/House type medical show’s theme song was getting played louder and louder. And I missed half of what he said because someone was flat lining. Someone (but not Shelly…are they going to bring in Mareck Brave as Shelly’s film school rival?) was filming the humiliation of Eric Young with Benny Hill theme on calliope playing endlessly. Am I supposed to laugh at Young’s humiliation or feel sympathy? At least Joe got to do his backstage mic work without being drowned out by music. I will also point out that Abyss miming reflection and contemplation really shat on the Joe mic work. And was tempted to put the whole thing on the bottom. If you thought Abyss crossing his arms and bugging out his eyes to sell “I’m crazy” was shitty, wait till you see Abyss cocking his head, squinting and rolling his eyes back to sell “I’m pensive”.

-For a guy who is all about working 50-50 matches Angle sure isn’t doing anything to put Steiner over in their brawls. The formula with Steiner v Joe was that two would stand toe to toe exchanging blows while security would come and they’d do lots of pull aparts to build up heat for the actual match. The first Samoa Joe v Angle PPV match (the one that actually drew) was built up the same way. I like pull aparts. Liked Don Frye and UFO in New Japan, liked the pull aparts that would end every Zero-One show in their first year of existence. They build heat. Angle and Steiner aren’t having pull aparts. Angle is beating up and manhandling Steiner. Steiner gets his buddies to come over and they “play the numbers game” so Steiner and them can take advantage. Or this week Steiner just has security pull Angle off him. Steiner talks shit about Angle Angle comes in takes Steiner down and beats on him until security pulls Angle off. Steiner stiffed the hell out of one of the guys working security but he gets no shots in on Angle. Angle wants to get at Steiner and pretty much the story they are telling is that if only Angle can get Steiner alone Angle would have his way with him. Are they building to a cage match? Before they build to their first actual normal match? They’ve done absolutely nothing to make me believe that Steiner can stand toe to toe opposite Angle. Nothing. No reason to want to see this match. I mean they are doing stuff stolen straight from both guys’ series with Joe : Steiner wasting a Natural, Angle snapping and attacking authority (although it should be said again that the Angle snaps stuff didn’t draw last time). But it’s pretty clear that they have no idea of what worked previously. Pull apart brawls only work when BOTH guys are going at it.

-This was a weird episode of TNA in that normally I have no idea how the audience entertains themselves. I mean they have to spend 80% of the show watching backstage stuff taking place on monitors. They have to wait through that to get a couple of shitty three minute matches. What’s the advantage of watching that live as opposed to on TV? This week my sense is that the X division 6 man might have been actively good live. Pretty much had two good teams. I mean Sabin isn’t much but he’s pretty much kept to jabs and heeling at this point and well Jerry Lynn was kept out of ring for most part. So most of this was Senshi/Lehtal v Shelly/Starr. It looked like Shelly and Starr had a nice section working Lethal over as face in peril and it looked like they had a nice build to finish and endrun through the finish section. And I love a "This is Awesome "match that ends with a roll up. Match looked to be about ten to twelve minutes long and like it might have been good if we actually saw it. Unfortunately we didn’t see it as they go to commercial after first minute, come back four minutes later and then the camera keeps on going to the announcers table for a good chunk of match. I could almost make the match out. But I felt like a teenager watching Playboy channel on scramble-vision. Every three minutes maybe I’ll get to see a 20-30 second shot of actual action. Ki/Backlund v Starr/Rodz could be really great parejas increibles.

-There is no way to realistically gore someone off a scaffold. Why advertise something that you can’t possibly do?

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tNA iMPACT wORKRATE rEPORT 2/22/07

So cleaning up desktop and realized that in moving last workrate report from notepad to the website the line"Sojourner Truth flashing guys at Freaknik "Ain't I a woman"" was left out. Don't remember if that was deliberate ( I mean at this point Freaknik is about as dated a joke as you can make) or just an accident in cutting and pasteing.

WHAT WORKED:

None of the matches were actively good. But I’m using the Russo in TNA standard where I point out that all of them where functional and none made you want to vomit. The Kip James, BG James, Lance Hoyt v Eric Young, Robert Roode, James Storm match was way too short to be considered a match but they kept the worker on the face team (BG James) in for the bulk of it, with Hoyt getting a couple seconds in and I don’t think Kip ever got in ring. BG works a LA Park comedy segment with Eric Young and works a wrestling section with James Storm good enough that I kind of want to see them in a singles match. The main event ladder match wasn’t as messy as you’d expect, nothing really memorable but nothing awful either. It was really worked to protect Lynn and portray him on a higher level than the rest of the participants. It’s ridiculous but if that’s the booking, than the match made sense within the booking. TNA is bringing in a bunch of veteran U.S. junior heavyweights and watching this I got the impression that Lynn may have enough stuff that he can probably be controlled and carried to something good by Hector or Rodz. I don’t get why you repackage Dudleys as Italians. I mean if you’re doing a “New York City Style Latino v. Italain Gang Warfare” angle LAX v. Marco Corleone/Johnny Stamboli could be really great. Fuck Itallion Stallion/Angel Armani vs. LAX would also be really good and way better than LAX v 3D. I don’t ever want to see Team 3D v. LAX again. One could point out that you shouldn’t run a match where Devon works face in peril and Buh-Buh works hot tag. But honestly Devon wasn’t working “face in peril” as being “face in peril”would require selling. Hence “in peril”. Devon never sold for LAX and well this was as much a one sided squash as all the other TV matches in this series. But the strap match format saved it as Devon laid down for the straps…and it’s the old “when match in ring isn’t good distract with a lot of extraneous stuff outside of ring” formula. That formula worked here.

-I liked the Andre Rison stuff but you really can't do two special celbrity involvement angles on one show. I want to make a Rison should be feuding with Chris Harris joke. On the one hand the joke is too easy and obvious, on the other it would be ridiculous not to make it. So just mentioning it here, you make it yourself.

WHAT DIDN'T WORK:

The rest of the stuff on the show stank. They are trying to build four big matches for the PPV: AJ Styles v Rhino, Abyss v Sting, Samoa Joe v. Christian and Angle v Steiner. They manage to fuck up the promotion of all of them.

AJ Styles comes out to introduce his new innovation the elevation X match. Huh? Why is the chickenshit heel coming out to announce that he’s invented a really dangerous match and issuing an open challenge to anyone who wants to answer? Rhino comes out to answer challenge and AJ runs. Why is chickenshit heel debuting a dangerous match and giving open challenges? Stupid. Tenay and West were particularly annoying during this whole opening segment as they seemed to be working in some sort of call and response cadence around AJ’s mic work. AJ would say “I’m on top of the world”, Tenay would say “He may be on top of the world, now”. Why are they doing call and response? It was annoying. I guess it’s impressive that AJ was able to time his pauses right but it was just annoying. Let the guy talk without commenting. The Tenay/West call and response stuff felt very scripted so I’m blaming the writers and not Tenay/West here.

Samoa Joe is challenging Christian for the world title and a chunk of his mic work is dedicated to talking about how he’s been "tempered and forged" by loosing his series with Angle. Umm when did Angle become Dusty. Samoa Joe is challenging for the title, why mention the series that he came out loosing on the way to the title challenge? “Loosing in the program against Angle has gotten me really ready to challenge for the title”??? That’s dumb.

I think they were trying for something serious and somber with the mesh "death bed" but all I could think of was the nightclub scene at the begining of "The Hunger". Why is Demolition Ax feuding with Abyss? Filming Sting laying down really makes his face look rounder and emphasizes his widows peak. Laying down in a jacket also makes him look fat. That all combined with his current one side up other side down makeup really had me thinking it was Ax. I’ve said a lot of positive things about Sting’s mic work over last couple months. But his mic work introducing the death bed match was just shitty. Really felt like the type of embarrassing goth mic work I expect out of Raven. Goth Demolition might be amusing. This wasn’t. Abyss acting crazy is really hokey and you’d think Abyss choking Borash wouldn’t be as dull. How much would it cost to get Peter Murphy to sing “Here comes the ax, here comes the smasher, demolition is a walking disaster”?

I love me some contract signing. Love Dusty signing a contract with the Assassin. All the clichés: the challenges, the shit talking, the briefcase, the signing, the upturned table-- I dig all that shit. And they hit most of the spots here. But they fucked up with the “shit talking”.

They fucked up the “shit talking”! How do you fuck up the “shit talking”? Shit talking should be the easiest thing in the world. Ideally you drop a grand on some blow have both guys pull some lines and then Steiner yells shit incomprehensibly and then Angle mumbles shit incomprehensibly and you bleep out the cursing and pray that neither guy’s heart explodes. But you don’t need to do that. You really don’t need much for successful contract signing shit talking: “I’m gonna beat your ass”; “Screw You!”; “Screw You Harder!”; “You suck!”; “Well you suck harder “ ; table gets flipped. It’s that easy. Nothing fancy just needs to convey two guys who want to rip at each other.

Instead they had Angle and Steiner exchange insida shoot comments. Their mic work managed to emasculate both of them.I’ve written before about how “shoot”comments need to be extensions of character and not just insider stuff thrown out for color.

People seem to forget that Brian Pillman’s gimmick wasn’t “guy who shares backstage gossip”. No. That’s the Mean Gene hotline’s gimmick. Pillman’s gimmick was out of “control crazy unpredictable guy”. His “talking out of turn”/shooting was a way of demonstrating his unpredictability. Shane Douglas’ gimmick wasn’t guy who “shared insider gossip” either. Shane Douglas gimmick was guy obsessed with his own self importance. Part of the way he demonstrated that was through shoots where he placed himself at the center of wrestling history. Steiner’s gimmick is similar to Pillman’s. Uncontrollable drugged up crazy. You kill that sense of uncontrolableness by giving him the kind of really scripted insider coffee line that Russo gave him. His gimmick is guy who will say anything…not guy slipping in carefully worded witty insider comments. The shooting is part of the “you can’t predict what he’s going to say or do” gimmick. Overly scripting him as guy who shares insider information really is regimicking him as Mean Gene’s hotline. Mean Gene isn’t threatening to anyone. Scripted Steiner really was Mean Gene trying to impress Harold Ross at the Algonquin Round table. That’s about as emasculated as you can get.

So Steiner does a really overly insida shoot scripted line about gold medals and a cup of coffee, which incenses Angle so much that he does a insida shoot line about how the “business no longer needs money hungry egotistical whiny bitches”. Not that Angle hates “whiny bitches” or that “whiny bitches” affect him in any way. Instead that Angle is emasculated frustrated middle manager who worries about how other people’s workplace attitudes affect the “business” at large.

So instead of getting across two guys who want to rip ate each they managed to do mic work that conveyed two completely emasculated guys.

So who are the insider shoot comments aimed at?

Some time ago WWE moved Shane Helms to Smackdown and gave him the gimmick of being guy disliked backstage. I don’t know if it was a rib on Batista or what the idea was, but Helms’ heel gimmick was guy who didn’t show proper respect to other people in the locker room. Nobody cares about that shit other than the folks in the locker room. About a month into gimmick Shane Helms started heeling himself on the crowd and on his in ring opponents. That gets some response. Guy who thinks he’s better than/disrespectful toward audience or toward opponent gets a heel response. Why should the audience care one way or another about the guy who is disrespectful to folks backstage? Is there a reason I should be upset that Shane Helms kayfabed Scotty 2 Hotty? “Damn him he should have shaken Scotty’s hand”

I’m a fan; I’m not in the biz. Why should I care if someone’s whiny backstage? I’ve written a ton of critical things about Shawn Michaels. I’ve never criticized him for thinking it was funny to force Sunny to eat his feces. Nope I criticize him for boring me in his matches. How he acts backstage doesn’t affect that. I have heard lots of stories about the hazing Kawada put Omori through. Kawada is a great wrestler who entertains me. Why should the audience care that someone is whiny or a douchebag to their colleagues? The audience is made up of audience members. The audience is not made up of road agents. They don’t need to worry about backstage interpersonal squabbles.

Lots of times when I say that stuff doesn’t work for me, people answer that I’m not the “average fan”…and what I think doesn’t matter. "What matters is what does the average fan think”. And I’m not the average fan. I subscribe to the Observer, can watch upwards of twenty hours of wrestling in a week, and spend a lot of time thinking about professional wrestling. In today’s society that’s outcast freakish behavior. There was a point back in the DVDVR500 days where I balanced career, education , social life, and maybe 45 hours of wrestling a week. At the time I was obsessing about lots of stuff, collected 78s, first edition books, world war two era toys made out of paper due to metal rationing, various ephemera, etc. Post Hurricane Katrina I bought myself an Ipod and haven’t been tempted to go to estate sales looking for 78s or even purchased an Lp or 45. Even though I’ve changed my lifestyle so that in case of evacuation I won’t be left like the jazzmen mourning their sheet music…I still will regularly pick up wrestling dvds. So the point I’m making is that I’m crazy. And I don’t care about what wrestlers are like backstage or what Vince thinks of the Olympics. Why am I supposed to believe that the vast majority of fans who’s interest in wrestling is only casual are going to care about the minutae of backstage politics?

It also should be pointed out that if you are a fan who cares about the minutae of backstage politics, you’re probably following the “biz” closely enough to laugh at the idea that Angle is giving a speech on the evils of selfish ego driven performers creating a toxic back stage environment.

AJ Styles v Rhino in a gimmick match, Steiner v Angle, Christian v Joe in a title match, and Sting v Abyss in a gimmick match is a decent PPV card. But they managed to fill the show with stuff that managed to drain heat from all of them.

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Hamada UWF #1 3/1/90

Shoju Akiyoshi v. Black Aidoman

PAS: Akiyoshi is future Jado and I am going to guess that Aidoman is future Gedo, and this is way better then rookie Jado v. rookie Gedo should be. Really stiff which is kind of strange for a lucha promotion. Aidoman looked especially great, bumping around big and having an awesome looking five arm.

TKG: I'm not sure how Phil has decided who is who here? And I don't know about them actually being Jado and Gedo as I don't remember Jado and Gedo looking this crisp two years later. The thin guy did look like Jado and was slick on the mat and had a really pretty powerslam. The fatter guy wore green tights that said Japanese Sensation across the crotch and had the great five arm and nice strikes. The match ends with a reversal into a roll up with a comedy heel ref quick count. Followed by ref mugging claiming he was counting slow. Weird way to end an opener.

Monkey Magic Watika v. Masa Michinoku

PAS: This is Delfin (Watika) v. Sasuke (Masa) but at this point Watika is clearly above Michinoku as he just totally squashes him. Kind of lays in a beating, including a really nasty camel clutch. I kind of understand why Sasuke fucked him out of money years later, I would hold a grudge too.

TKG: This was a complete squash.

Xochi Hamada/Micka Takahashi v Bison Kimura/Grizzly Iwamato

TKG: And it is your undercard joshi match and it has all you need in a early nineties undercard joshi match: faces with dives and neck bridging out of your finishes, punk rock heels beating the shit out of the faces, kendo sticking faces while refs back is turned and then faces finally stealing the kendo sticks and going after the faces. This also had the added benefit of faces frustrated with heel cheating also kendo sticking the ref in the balls alot. The real manhandling of the ref gave this an almost US midget feel at points. Weird watching this and realizing how much our society has changed as in 2007 the punk rock girls would be faces and heels would either be the fashion conscious girly girls or goths. Bison is really fun here just absolutely stomping elbowing and beating the shit out of the faces. When she's on the apron and Grizzly is beating the faces, Bison does the distracted blowing on her nails pose which rules. Also I really liked the opening where Bison wearing singlet looked around the ring and put on a T-shirt like a self conscious chunky girl at the local pool. When girls fight at the pool, safe to bet on the girl wearing the shirt over her suit.

PAS: Yeah Bison was queensized in this, as she was beating the shit out of her opponents in a really reckless way, just throwing awkward elbows to the back of Xochi's neck, and stomping on faces. We also had a young Aja Kong at ring side looking punked out and sexy.

Blackman v Black Terry

TKG: This was really short but fun. Black Terry absolutely rules and was surprised by the degree it felt like Blackman was deferring to Black Terry and really letting Terry lay out match. Match builds in odd but really neat way. They start off kind of exchanging slams, arm drags eaten as slams, monkey flip as a throw/slam. Just everything eaten as a slam until Blackman eventually is able to monkey flip and project Terry out of ring. Terry avoids the countout gets back in and they start doing all spots that throw each other big distances. Its like a match built on building up trajectory of throws. Spots that project your opponent across ring section also ends with Terry getting monkey flipped and projected out of ring. This time Blackman follows it up with a great dive and Terry is counted out.

PAS: I kind of have trouble adjusting to these kind of singles matches. Lucha singles matches are usually either title matches or Super Libre brawls. This kind of syndie TV one fall match really isn't done much outside of tourneys. This was longer then a tourney match, but not worked like either a Super Libre brawl or a title match, so it just seemed odd. I imagine I will get used to this kind of stuff the more I watch H-UWF. Black Terry looked really great, he is a guy I always like when I see, but haven't seen enough of.

Super Astro/Kendo/Yoshinari Asai v. Negro Casas/Shu El Guerrero/ Espanto Jr.

PAS: This was what you bought the ticket for. Casas may be the best wrestler of all time, and he looks it here. He has a Eddie x2 monkey flip take, where it looks like he hovers in mid air, they are setting up Casas v. Asai and they look amazing in there interactions with each other, both the wrestling exchanges and the balls out brawling. Astro looked really great as usual, as really everyone did. I really liked the finish of a double countout after the spectacular dive train, the restart part of the match just felt off, and didn't add much to the point of the match which was to get over the Casas v. Asai match.

TKG: Match was paced really nicely with opening matish/ technical exchanges Negro Casas matching up awesomely with Super Astro, Kendo matching up with Espanto Jr and Asai matching up with Shu. Super Astro threw alot more suplexes than I was expecting and really good looking suplexes at that. You don't get as much Shu mat work as you'd want as Shu section is mostly about him trying stuff and Asai always landing on his feet. This builds up into your guys match up put opponents in submissions only to have their partners break the submissions with strikes which builds to your strke section which builds to the toss opponent out of ring and dive section. Everything really nice and moved along well. I haven't seen much Espanto Jr before this and he was fine here. I have seen alot of Shu before this and thought he underperformed but yeah this is all about Negro and Super Astro. The restart did fuck it up.

Perro Aguayo/Jose Luis Feliciano v. Gran Hamada/Lizmark

PAS:Perro Aguayo was amazing here, just a nutcase brawler, kicking people in the face, slamming chairs on folks head, punching people in grills. His mafia kicks were incredible fast and stiff, and both technicos took huge bumps on them. Seriously , fuck a Brody, Aguyao is how you play that role. Hamada was a bump fiend and had some beautiful comebacks too. Lizmark and Feleciano had their moments, but this was the Aguayo v. Hamada show. Hamada may take a posting better then anyone in wrestling history. The finish with the rudos destroying the technicos and challenging the entire crowd was totally awesome. It actually felt like something might break out.

TKG: Lizmark looked like he blew a couple of exchanges but they moved right through that. And well Hamada and Perro remind you why they are superstars. Phil wrote about how good Hamada is at eating stuff and he's really great at that but his offense is also just supergreat. there is this section where Hamada wastes Feliciano with a lariat follows it up with a nasty slam and then does one of the greatest elbow drops I've ever seen as he gets huge height, hangtime and then drops with what looked like the point of his elbow full force into Feliciano's trachia. I was totally expecting Feliciano to come up spitting blood.

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