RETRO TOMK: TNA Workrate Report 3/9/07

WHAT WORKED:

-Hey its Hector Guerrero. Cool. I've recently watched his Mid South stuff where the Guerreros represent Spanish aristocracy and Hector throws hot sauce in the eye of working class Hispanic Jose Lothario. Dundee/Lothario/Brickhouse Brown vs. Landel/Guerreros is pretty sweet. Chavo and Hector buy Jim Cornette off with golden pesos to help them against the RnR Xpress. Somewhere I have a tape of the Robert Fuller/Gordon Solie post Continental fed where Hector turns on Todd Morton by throwing hot chile in his eye. The whole period of WCW Worlwide when they brought in Hector to work against their green US juniors is pretty sweet. Hector rules. It's ridiculous that this fed has Bob Backlund and Hector Guerrero available and isn't running Bob Backlund vs. Hector Guerrero. This whole show was built around trios matches. Not well worked trios matches but trios matches. Those trios could have used veteran anchors. The only two things that draw in America independents are nostalgia feds and lucha. Vince Russo is an idiot and doesn't realize that it's MidAtlantic/Memphis nostalgia that draws. Instead Russo's brought in Backlund and Johnny Rodz. I don't think 70s WWWF nostalgia is a draw anywhere. If it was a draw it would be in the old WWWF territory and not Florida/Detroit/St.Louis TNA locations. I remember when WCW was in I think either the Omni or Charlotte and Russo brought out wrestling "legends" Tito Santana, and George Steele to no pop. Russo is an idiot. Still Hector is a guy who actually worked both St Louis and Florida.My guess is we won't get Hector wrestling and only get this one bit of mic work. But still: Hector Guerrero on the mic~! I've always liked Hector Guerrero on the mic. He's going to be added to the Spanish announce team. His little bit in Spanish hypeing the show was pretty solid and he's going to be a nice addition. I wonder if they'll ever have him turn heel on Moody Jack by throwing hot sauce in Jack's eye. TNA's Hispanic Legacy Foundation maybe the most carny bullshit charity ever. I was disappointed that they didn't put up a PO Box for donations.


WHAT DIDN'T WORK:

-Hey remember when Cornette explaining the booking and match making of the main events used to be one of the show highlights? He'd come out in front of the live audience and act as this surrogate giving the fans the matches "that they want". Now he's filmed in a backstage skit filling out the undercard with one stupid gimmick match after another.

-Hey remember when I used to write about how TNA should go to an all trios format? TNA was consistently putting out good trios matches on free TV. 6-Man tag is a good way to hide weak wrestlers. There are a ton of 6 man tag formulas. Formulas that allow for clean finishes without hurting anyone. Well this week they ran an all trios show and all of the 6 man matches were bad, none of them helped any of the participants. All of these felt like joined in progress segunda caidas. Roode, Young, Storm v. Lethal, Dutt, and Williams was just a mess where they couldn't figure out how to pace the thing to move back and forth between the stalling and the work..and it just felt all over the place. The main event was built around a goofy bait and switch, which never made any sense either. Why run the bait and switch? Was that supposed to add drama? Main event again just collection of stuff happening a ridiculous run in by AJ Styles, and then a really shitty "Please Don't Stop" everyone does big moves finish leading to a Abyss DQ ending. Watching that match made me not want to see any of the possible singles matchups ever. I guess in defense of these matches, 6 man format feels like it keeps guys from completely exposing themselves the way they would in a three, four, five way etc. But still, And well really not much to say about VKM vs. Serotonin. I mean that was just a squash. Even in a squash there is no reason to have Billy Gunn do the bulk of work in a match. So Raven has decided to give all these guys gimmick names based on 90s New Jersey indy workers? Tenay: "Win, loose or draw they get post match caning.Win?? When have they won? And draw???""

-Abyss is Crazy He's Snapped!!!---you can't have your crazy character snap. His gimmick is that he's crazy. He's been snapped for three years now. It's no longer shocking. "Oh no the guy who was institutionalized and wears a mask is acting nutty." Man this show was all about exposing the problems with the Abyss character. Exposing the stupidity of his moves, the poor quality of his acting and the poor quality of the writing of his character.

SoCal Val takes a nice bump on the Black Hole slam but seeing her take it just served to remind you that it's essentially a swing dance move. She's pretty tanned for a swing dance revivalist, as those girls tend to be paler than the palest rockabilly goth. But still that green dress and that color of red hair and watch Abyss lift her and swing her. Abyss is too small to be believable as Vince Vaughan but yeah he might make a fine John Favreu. Repackaging Abyss as swing dance revivalist might not be a bad move. It would also explain his little Charleston shuffle across the ring thing. I don't know if you could explain away his arm crossing as jazz hands. He would need a better tailored vest, too.

Christian really captured the right tone talking to Abyss about the loss of a father figure but watching Abyss try to do his mime of various stages of grief, reflection and anger exposed both the shittyness of Abyss and the stupidity of the writing. So around 92-93 I took a class on 18th/19th century melodrama. I don't remember a ton about the class and I think I probably failed it. I do remember that there was a piece of critical writing built on "a physical handicap theory of theatre" where every theatric genre is built on a handicap.. Tragedy is represented by blindness, comedy by deafness, melodrama by muteness and I forgot what form of theatre dealt with cripples. I do remember that the theory was taken seriously enough that people wrote about how the interest in mental handicaps in the 20th Century changed the nature of the stories at the center of theater/cinema. Really I've seen Gilligan get hit with a coconut far too many times to be able to read serious scholarship on 20th Century social breakdowns manifested by fears of amnesia as represented in popular culture. So I remember that and I remember the stuff about how early melodrama was built around hiring pantomimes and acrobats to avoid actors unions (similar to development of reality programming to avoid writers unions). Melodrama historically developed from pantomime and the issues that melodrama does and does not address can be traced to issues that can and cannot be addressed in mime. Mime is concerned with verbs, not adjectives, adverbs or nouns or some such. . And so I read a bunch on the issues that mime cannot deal with. Mime of course deals with the physical not the psychological. Mime is about things in the present tense not reflections on the past. Deals in the concrete not abstract, etc. The reason I remember this point is because I spent the entire semester filling my notebooks up with doodles of Red Skelton and Marcel Marceau being tortured in Hell as S Clay Wilson style demons demanded that they mime things that are impossible to mime. Elaborate drawings of demons demanding "Mime "I used to be virtuous", mime Drawings of Skelton crying at his inability to perform task of performing "art is difficult" in mime. Demon Mime formerly my father was an ambitious man but now he's resigned to life of toil Mime  My mother gave me an example of devotion and self sacrifice . These are things that are impossible to express though mime. Concepts such as virtue, or complexity of art backstories about relatives or characters reflections on the lot of relatives really can't be pulled off.

Abyss isn't a good mime. He's a shitty mime. Every show he crosses his hands in front of his face and pushes against the invisible box that is holding him captured. Not once do I believe that either he's stuck in a box or that his character believes himself to be stuck in a box. He's an awful mime. He's such an awful mime that I think it has saved Russo from some of the criticism that Russo deserves. Russo has written a story built around Abyss having to be reflective about his past experiences with his father and his current loss of surrogate father. Even a good mime couldn't pull off the material Russo has given him.