RETRO Segunda Caida- TomK's Impact Workrate Report 2/1/07

Another classic Retro report from our late lamented friend Tomk


WHAT WORKED:




Miss Tennessee~!!!! Miss Texas forearming Gail Kim in the back of the head was the single best wrestling sequence on the entire show. You had to go back and watch that in slo-mo. Eveen if you ignore the wrestling goodness, Miss Texas pairing with James Storm is the best non-wrestling thing on the show. Drunken belligerent cowboy James Storm encourages Eric Young to get some tail followed by Miss Texas telling him to “BRAND THAT STEER!!” put a big smile on my face. It’s a shame that the James Storm/Miss Tennessee pairing are stuck on this poorly written show as you really get the sense that they could be a great anchor for a Porter or Corey Maclin booked fed.




Homicide on the mic! I love me some Homicide mic work. I dug violent knife wielding Homicide. Liked the cross-eyed angry Devon delivery too. The delivery by both guys was good.




WHAT DIDN’T WORK:




A Few Good Black Men?? Oh see the joke here is that black entertainment is just watered down second rate copies of the stuff that white people come up with. Did Patrice O Neal cuckold Russo when they both worked in the WWF? “HA, HA Blacks have no ideas of their own, they aren’t creative. See I’m creative that’s what I always explained to Vince”. So they have Ron Killings in a spoof of Maverick distributed direct to DVD black movies, where Ron Killings is riffing on Jack Nicholson in front of cheap graphics and the boom mic falls on him. “Ha Ha Black entertainment is second rate”. One can argue whether this is a good way for TNA to celebrate the beginning of Black History Month or not. But one can’t argue that it’s not a good idea to spoof cheap production values of Bad News Ballers when you had your announcers reading from scripts on camera last week. Nothing in Master Ps filmography is as poorly written as the Abyss prison story. You’re running Chris Sabin doing an old man impression and yet you’re doing spoof’s of bad movies. “Ha Ha that movie is bad, unlike this comedy bit where Chris Sabin is using a walker…see its funny because Jerry Lynn is old. I mean I don’t think people will get the joke so Chris Sabin will have to say ‘Hey I’m Jerry Lynn. I’m Jerry Lynn’ again and again so people get it but it’s still brilliant”. There’s nothing wrong with doing a comedy segment but doing a comedy segment mocking cheap second rate knocks-off’s when you are a cheap second rate knock off is a mistake. TNA isn’t even the “Orca”, to WWE’s “Jaws”. For a cheap knock-off“ Orca” showed far more creativity.




And well this show was all about advertising that "TNA is second rate". Tenay announces “Are you looking for a PPV quality main event?” and then promises one. Instead he delivers a two minute match with a run in DQ. AJ mugged his way through this and Samoa Joe seemed to be sleepwalking. But even if they were going at iton all cylinders, don’t promise a PPV main event and deliver a two minute match with a run in. That’s a TNA PPV quality match? Well shit I can’t see any reason to buy there PPVs. I can see better longer matches on youtube. Derrick King vs. Bill Dundee’s BamBam tribute match smoked this. Fucking Sean Waltman carrying Vampiro through a five minute WSX main event was better than this. Why would anyone want to buy a TNA PPV? Post match they have Angle eat a meaningless chair shot, lazy Russo books Samoa Joe to give Christian the double birds (jeezus is Joe as Austin going to be awful…write some new material you lazy hack) then Styles and Chirstian double team Joe. Where is Rhino? I thought Rhino runs out any time there is a Styles segment? Rhino was chasing him a minute ago.




And well the undercard? Again, you can watch indies on youtube with longer better matches than anything on Impact. I liked some of the early parts of the X-Division five way. Starr and Shelley work as a heel team working really basic offense against Jay Lethal. Lethal works face getting beat on, getting comebacks (including chopping Starr’s chest beat red), getting comebacks cut off and it really feels like the start of a good well paced tag match. Then Jerry Lynn is tagged in. And it's Jerry Lynn on fire doing "on fire" shouting and Lucky Pierre doublejerking handmotions. Lynn’s house of fire offense looks shitty, he attacks everyone face or heel and we move from the slow early build straight into a really shitty dive train. No midrange section to match, just early slow build and then shitty Jerry Lynn and dives. And well these were unimpressive dives too. Maan poor Robert Roode is stuck in an endless series with his former Team Canada partners. Petey Williams isn’t good at eating offense or selling but manages to be unobjectionable in the parts of the match where Roode was on offense, and Roode is good enough at eating ranas that the Williams multiple rana sections where ok. But really Petey Williams should stick to ranas, as everything else was cringe-worthy. I don’t know why people spend so much time mocking the Canadian Destroyer when his floatover to Russian legsweep, may not be as preposterous but looks far worse. At least with the Canadian Destroyer (like the rana), its move that a good opponent can make look ok. Moves where execution/set up matters more than the opponents’ bumps…uugh! Sometimes watching Williams wrestle is like watching a guy pretending to be a guy pretending to be a guy pretending to be a guy wrestling. Wrestling is two guys pretending to fight. Backyard wrestling is people pretending to be guys pretending to fight. So imagine a mime trying to mime “Backyard wrestling”, now imagine a kid whose first grade class went to see that mime. That kid taught Petey Williams how to execute a Russian leg sweep.




Abyss and James Mitchell chased down Sting’s ambulance and all that was left of Sting was his bat. They chased down the ambulance on foot? They’re shocked that he isn’t in it anymore? How bad do they think healthcare is in Florida? People just sit around in the back of ambulances waiting to be allowed into Hospitals. They’re surprised that his bat is left behind? What hospital lets a patient in with a bat? A middle aged burn victim shows up in tights with pantomime makeup on, I would hope they wouldn’t let him take his aluminum bat into the ER. Did they go to a hospital or just the First Aid Station at Universal Studios? This makes the Oz episode where they were unable to find Luke Perry’s corpse seem like good writing. And Christian asks Tomko to “Take one for the team”. Timmy Kirk doesn’t send Jaz Hoyt out to blow Manny Yarborough. That’s not how it works. Speaking of the workings of prison, James Mitchell does a meandering soliloquy setting up the Prison Yard match. Lots of lines reminding the audience that Abyss is a fat cow, some stuff about why it is that Mitchell isn’t pressing charges against Sting for kidnapping (they decide to have them explain why they aren’t pressing charges in one angle while doing a knife wielding assault in an other), and a bunch of stuff about the hard life of prisoners while an ominous monolith is lowered into the ring. The covering is pulled off the monolith and Mitchell reveals one of those racks for stacking your trays when you are done eating.

“In prison you have to buss your own trays!!!!” evil laugh…




So last week I suggested that Brother Ray/Brother Devon vs. LAX feud really was going to need more relatives: Brother Brother, Dances with Brother, Sign Guy Brother, Little Snot Brother, etc. Instead they introduce some random uncle who gets attacked by Homicide. Who is this guy? Favorite uncle? Uncle on which side? They’re brothers of a different mother and all. Is the uncle friends with Samoa Joe’s girlfriend? Hey what happened with Samoa Joe’s girlfriend? Introducing loved ones of wrestlers and then having them attacked in same episode is some hack writing. They didn’t actually even bother to introduce the loved one. One time where “explaining” Tenay was useful. Good storytelling shouldn’t need Tenay to explain it. Devon doesn’t usually do mic work because he’s cross-eyed and thus whatever he says comes across less menacing and more “slow”. Family feuds are the type of things that always rile up the most slow witted so it didn’t really hurt his micwork that much. He explains to LAX “When you go after family you go too far”. Wait didn’t this whole feud start when LAX went after Spike. The mic work from four weeks ago was about how they attacked Konan in retaliation for attack on Spike. Didn’t LAX already go “too far” by going after “family”?? I guess I’d rather see these two teams do week after week of Paparazzi productions where they retaliate and counter retaliate going after different relatives then see them in the ring again. LAX and Team 3D had a shitty PPV match where the road agents where furious with 3D for not selling anything for LAX. To make nice with the road agents 3D had another match with LAX where they promised to put them over. In that shitty match 3D sold nothing. So yeah rather watch the Paparazzi productions. Mustachioed uncle sells better than Devon.




Oh yeah and why are they doing this serious assault angle with Paparazzi productions? Paparazzi productions is comedy gimmick. Having Shelley supposedly filming this is stupid. Can’t Homicide get his own fenced camera? Comedy relief cameramen shouldn’t be filming you’re serious angle. While Alex Shelley is videotaping a serious assault, Sahadi is doing a serious deadpan video recap package for the Eric Young/Traci Brooks angle. This is a comedy angle!!! Why are they doing a serious video package? And if you are going to do a serious video package for this angle, where is the griot? The TNA Griot was made to narrate this type of coming of age story. C’mon TNA!!! If you’re going to do something this goofy, give me the TNA Griot telling me about “Eric Young’s quest to become a man”.




Back in November I talked about how much I dug the Sting promo where he talked about his personal battle to escape the temptations that come with wrestling and his dedication to the Truth of the Maker. I praised the promo and the whole direction they went with Sting. This week they do a “Fallen Angel” video promo with Christopher Daniels talking about how the wins and losses in wrestling have no meaning, Christopher Daniels questions “What’s the meaning of it all”, talks about how he is merely “treading water”, and that there “has to be a Higher Purpose”. And it just doesn’t work for me. Christopher Daniels Christian mic work just doesn’t come off as sincere as Sting’s, and you really need strong mic work to get over the Fallen Angel seeks Purpose/Redemption angle. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to have two wrestlers with the same gimmick. Two wrestlers grappling with the Truth of the Lord and the search for Higher Purpose? Just feels like one wrestler too many. I don’t think you can do two Christian faces. You can have one Christian face or you can have three who are actually one…but not two.




I’ve spent three months writing about how it is dumb to have the fans surrogates portrayed as bumbling incompetents. But FUCK!!!. Lance Hoyt tells me that disrespecting him is disrespecting the TNA’s fans. Wait he's supposed to be the fans surrogate? I’m no fan but I’d rather be thought of as a bumbling incompetent than a femme exotic dancer... Has Hoyt always had that chin piercing? I could make out a tongue one too. Guy with a tongue piercing announcing “You have no idea what I’ve done, professional wrestling is my life” made me cringe. Kip James explained that “If you want to go up in the biz, you first have to go down”..but don’t need to remind the audience of that in the angle with the mainstream celebrity. “ [Dale Torborg/] AJ Pierzynski] you want to cross that line, then cross it. Step into my ring and do what I do.” Do what you do? How many prison themed matches are they booking?