On Brand Segunda Caida: Iceberg in TNA! One Man Gang vs. a Sluff!

One Man Gang vs. Avalanche White MECW 1999

ER: Avalanche White, boy what a sight. Bryan Turner has been uploading a ton of southern indy gold from the lost era between VHS and DVD, and this one jumped out at me for a couple reasons. First, One Man Gang was still awesome in 1999. It's weird to think that by the time he was done with WWF, done with his WCW comeback, done with his 98/99 ECW stints, that Gang wasn't even 40 years old. Somehow, the One Man Gang was barely 40 when he worked the WWF Gimmick Battle Royal. As seen in several ECW fancams, One Man Gang could still GO in 1999 (seek out the Sabu and RVD matches, they're out there somewhere). So, knowing 1999 Gang could still go, AND seeing him against some guy named Avalanche White, my mind was made up. One Man Gang against a man large enough to go by Avalanche!? Well, it turns out that this avalanche was more of a guy with an early 90s WWF dumpy jobber physique, and the only avalanche was him hitting the mat whenever Gang beat him down. I am almost surely never going to see Avalanche White again, and that is because One Man Gang packed him up and shipped him out. This was entirely Gang, nothing but stiff clubbing arms, clotheslines, a pair of great elbowdrops, and a nice legdrop that saw Gang hold onto the top rope and not let go until the leg was dropped. Avalanche got choked a ton over the rope and absorbed several kinds of elbow strikes, and wouldn't you know, Gang added insult to injury by flattening Avalanche with an Avalanche. RIP Avalanche White, buried in an avalanche of white. Who has the 1999 Carlos Colon/One Man Gang match? 

Iceberg vs. David Young TNA Xplosion 1/15/03

ER: You could give TNA some credit for putting guys like Iceberg on regional TV, but you should criticize TNA for only using guys like Tank and Iceberg a couple of times when they should have been featuring guys like that. Pro wrestling fell out of love with big fat guys like Iceberg by the late 90s, and we've all been worse for it since. The Atkins diet was all the rage and suddenly a great big fat guy and cool wrestler like Iceberg has no guaranteed employment. Young and Iceberg had plenty of matches in Wildside and the greater Cornelia area, and they fit a lot into the TV time here. Young hit a big Asai moonsault into the entrance but then got flattened into the apron by an Iceberg avalanche. From there we get to see the kind of thing Iceberg can do. He might slow down the longer a match goes, but he lands heavy and takes offense well. He throws Young around with a belly to belly and a delayed flapjack slam, drops right onto him with a side slam, and then hits his awesome running splash. I love a big fat guy splash, but Iceberg has an especially good one. He runs from the corner and dives low like he's the fattest dude to ever do a Pete Rose impression. He uses a real similar motion when he uses his spear, and lo, he also has a great spear. He takes a couple of big bumps: getting his corner punches reversed into a kickass sitout powerbomb, and then running into a spinebuster on the floor. A guy Young's size hitting a spinebuster on a guy Iceberg's size doesn't really work, but I'm real happy we got to see someone even try to bust up a quarter ton man's spine. 

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2009: FUTEN Tag VS. Foley vs. Nash

Kevin Nash vs. Mick Foley TNA Hard Justice 8/16/09

ER: This is a great match. A legitimately great match. Kevin Nash was 50 in this match and I'm doubtful that he has another performance as good at any point in his career. Foley barely had 10 matches left in his career at this point and he turns in easily one of his best performances of the decade. I honestly didn't think either of these two had a match anywhere close to this good in them at this point in their careers. This is a straight up fight, with great selling from both, great blood, and no skipped steps. The selling is great from go, as Nash is throwing super forceful knees in the corner to Foley's gut, and Foley is just stumbling and crumpled after. This whole match is like a super serious version of the Roy Munson/Big Ern showdown, and I mean that in the best way possible. Both men were worn, not 100%, tired, but proud. As the match goes on Nash keeps making all of these hard-breathing "what the hell is wrong with this guy...what the hell is wrong with me!?" faces. Foley takes a hard spill onto the apron, then gets kicked into the guardrail and flies backwards into it, banging off it in sick fashion. Foley amps the crazy by doing his leaping elbow off the apron, with Nash under a chair, and Foley gets his head busted open when Nash shifts the chair.

Foley gets a classic Mick gusher going, and Nash is savage working it over, and still wrecking the rest of Foley's body by ramming the back of his head into the ringpost, the steps, and keeping those knees and elbows coming. Nash's knees and elbows move slow here, but the hit with great impact. His hair keeps getting more fly aways, his eyes keep saying "why isn't this OVER" but there's Foley, getting up after each rough fall, firing back with headbutts and hard fists, and you know Nash gets busted open too. We even get the visual of blood flying onto the camera like I'm watching Hacksaw Ridge. Nash works over Foley's cut with elbows and jabs, and Nash's own cut is dripping pretty good. We don't get a great finish, with Traci Brooks running out and getting on the apron for reasons I don't care about and will never bother to look up, but I liked how the two wrestlers handled the final moments: Foley distracted by Brooks, Nash gives him and eyepoke and boot to the face before Foley can use his barbed wire bat, and Nash pins him by defiantly/desperately pulling that leg WAY back while sitting on his chest. This was an awesome old guy war, the kind of war that's tough for younger wrestlers to have because the added mileage of both men adds in every way to the brutality. This was legitimately great.

PAS: Cactus Jack was at one point my favorite wrestler in the world, one of the first comp tapes I made was a Best of Cactus Jack. I assumed he was completely washed by 2009 but this was a classic Foley performance, basically it was the WCWSN Vader match, with fucking Kevin Nash of all people playing the role of Vader, and doing a pretty solid job of it. The couple of insane bumps Foley takes are legit insane Foley bumps, when Nash kicks him into the guardrail you can see his head snap into the metal and hear the dull thud. The hipbuster elbow into the chair was lunacy, you could see the metal bend, and that eye wound that opened up was truly grizzly. Don't have a ton of nice things to say about TNA over its run, but they would always bring the plasma. Nash landed his stuff with real force, and I enjoyed how frantic he got as Foley kept coming, really good subtle in ring acting. Finish was kind of goofy and unnecessary but otherwise this was a treat. Eddie Marlin vs. Tommy Gilbert with insane bumps, can't ask for more then that

FUTEN Tag Review

Verdict:

PAS: I figured this would be a swamping. FUTEN tags are maybe my favorite thing in wrestling history, but Nash vs. Foley was really awesome. If it had a better ending I could actually see this being a discussion, but that run-in was pretty deflating and the FUTEN retains.

ER: This started when I watched the match a couple months ago on a lark. I'd seen it brought up in various places as a good brawl, and one late night I was in the mood for a short old guy wrestling brawl before bedtime. I never actually considered that the match would be worth writing up, let alone worth writing up as a challenger for our All Time MOTY list. But I was pretty blown away by the performances here, and can honestly say it's one of my 5 favorite matches in TNA history. The ending was stupid, and I would have been furious had I wrecked my body in a physical match only to have it end with an angle that nobody was going to remember. I think this match would have finished really really high if we had a 2009 MOTY List. It's not beating the FUTEN tag, but at several points during the match I loved that my brain was actually thinking "IS THIS MATCH GOING TO BEAT THE FUTEN TAG!?" That's a pretty wild accomplishment on its own, and I would heartily recommend everyone watch this match right now.

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 18: Ki vs. SAT vs. Red

Low-Ki vs. Amazing Red vs. Jose Maximo vs. Joel Maximo NWA-TNA 8/21/02-FUN

PAS: This was an elimination four way for the X Division title, which made no sense, but was undoubtably a barrel of fun. The Maximos are not rewarded by a deeper dive. There are a couple of pretty bad moments, including Jose getting hit with a dropkick and instead of bumping, pausing and then stumbling through the ropes. There were also some triple teams which didn't come off. I did dig Ki just kicking Joel in the face multiple times, and there was some fun Red versus his cousins spots. The Red vs. Ki stuff was great as always, I loved Ki countering the Code Red by hurling him back first into the turnbuckle. We had a bit of a kung fu standoff and a finish with Ki absolutely murdering him with a top rope Ki Krusher. The crowd was clearly ready for Red to get a win over Ki at some point, they blew it by never paying that off.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Step Into Ki's Zone and Get Blown

Low-Ki vs. The Amazing Red NWA-TNA 7/24/02 - EPIC

ER: This provided the exact blend of dynamite and Piccolo Pete I was looking for. This felt like a really cool, forward thinking move for TNA to bring in Red and let he and Ki have a showcase for their exceptional talent. This was probably the first time these two got to do their thing to a national audience. I have no clue how many thousands of people ordered TNA PPV #6, but it was surely more than had been seeing them work this match in East Coast indies. It's the absolute best kind of juniors wrestling, as not only does it feel fresh and completely innovative (even now, with 15+ years of guys bastardizing matches like this, there were moments that stood out as unique in 2018), but you get the stiff strikes and big bumps, and most importantly ALL of the strikes are good. These two don't go through the motions on transitions. When Ki needs to be farther back to take a move properly, there are at least 5 different occasions where Red straight boots him in the stomach, hard, knocking Ki believably backward in recoil. Red really was amazing, so early in his career and his ring placement is phenomenal, dude somehow knew exactly where he was going and how he would land. Ki hits a nasty koppo kick and Red bounces off his shoulders and nearly flips through the ropes to the floor, hanging himself from the bottom rope by his armpits. Amazing indeed. They do a lot of cool strike stuff that isn't just timed combos, my favorite being Ki grabbing Red in a knucklelock and backing him into the corner with headbutts, Red trapped...until he uses the knucklelock to his advantage by posting off the buckles and heel kicking Ki in the face, trapping Ki in that knucklelock. It's great seeing new fans reacting to the Jackie Chan moments, there are more lightning fast violent spin kicks here than in Bloodsport, Mike Tenay drops knowledge that Ki takes his name from the Blackstreet song No Diggity (is this true? Either I learned this and forgot it, or Tenay is pulling the deep knowledge from Ki's enjoyment of popular 90s R&B), and this all rules.

PAS: This is one of my favorite match-ups in wrestling history, and was always great whenever it hit a new territory. This minimizes the Jackie Chan stuff, throwing near the end of the match, rather then the beginning, and instead has more of a juniors focus. Red was such a great in-ring bumper, he makes all of Ki's stuff look amazing, he flies insanely off the kappo kid, it was like Wile E. Coyote recoiling after an errant explosion, he really gets smashed by the Ki Crusher at the end of the match too, total full body compression. I loved how they worked out of the knuckle lock, and even after seeing a million variations of it the Code Red looks amazing. So much fun, and another example of how this match universally delivers.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Low-Ki Shoulda Been Called Don Robbery

Low-Ki/Elix Skipper/Christopher Daniels/Vince Russo v. The Road Warriors/Dusty Rhodes/Jeff Jarrett NWA-TNA 1/15/03 -GREAT

PAS: This is a WAR 8 man if I have ever seen one, and it ending up being a pretty entertaining southern tag. Ki, Skipper and Daniels spent the first part of the match pinballing for the Road Warriors, and they do a great job of it. Animal catches a Ki springboard mid air and plants him with a Liger Bomb which was totally awesome looking. You can tell Ki got a kick out of bumping around for the LOD. SEX gets the advantage due to some Russo cheap shots (which he is terrible at, his punches and chokes are awful, what a nothing turd that dude is) and they work over Jarrett, getting the crowd hyped up (Nashville TNA crowds smoked the Orlando crowd) for a Dusty Rhodes hot tag, all three XXX dudes take wild bumps for the bionic elbow. Just before Dusty gets his hands on Russo, Mr. Wrestling 4 comes in and hits Dusty with a chain, distracted ref counts the pin and the bad guys are victorious. Mr. Wrestling 4 unmasks as Nikita Koloff, which is something I have no memory. Heel Russo managed early 2000s Nikita seems like something you would dream after eating too much spicy thai food.  Pretty great example of the value of wrestling formula, get a hot crowd, build to a hot tag and have a couple of good wrestlers on each side and you can pretty much fill in the rest.

Complete and Accurate Low-Ki

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Is TNA Not Entirely Terrible Now? A Small Sample Curiosity.

So last night (6/7) for reasons I cannot entirely explain, I watched an episode of TNA Impact. Maybe it was because we're in a TV programming lull, maybe it's because Rachel was working on something downstairs so I couldn't watch anything that we typically watch together, maybe I somehow haven't learned my lesson after 14 years (btw, TNA has existed for FOURTEEN YEARS!! When TNA started I couldn't vote. What the fuck, Time??). Probably some combination of all of those things, plus I saw on the episode guide that Matt Hardy was going to face Drew Galloway on the show, and based on my cursory knowledge of who is actually on their current roster, these two are really two of the only guys I would care to see in a TNA match. So I DVR'd it, and...


I ended up enjoying the entire show. Now, to be clear, by "entire show" I mean "I fast forwarded through any and all talking segments and paid attention to three of the matches while casually paying attention to the other three matches". So there was a lot of fast forwarding, but not nearly as much as there could have been. For a promotion who never has gotten the detail work right, this was a surprisingly well paced show (even fast forwarding through 75% of your average Impact episode would tell you whether or not the pacing was good) with a more professional look than I'm used to after 14 years of blunders and bush league presentation (I should remind you again that TNA has been around for FOURTEEN YEARS! When TNA started, Kanye West was known as "Producer of The Blueprint", or "Kanye West: Man with Fully Functioning Jaw"). I enjoyed the announce crew of Josh Matthews and Pope. For a totally insufferable human being, Matthews plays nicely off Pope, who in turn does color commentary like the best parts of Tazz and Booker T. They complement each other nicely, which I don't think I've been able to say about any TNA commentary crew ever.


The matches were surprisingly enjoyable as well. Even when TNA has had workers I enjoy, the company style always felt detrimental to match quality, and it always felt like it had that early MLW or 2000s Guadalajara (and possibly current Guadalajara?) vibe where wrestlers I like go to have matches I dislike. There was a TNA stink on even their best workers and matches, and last night I didn't smell any sort of TNA stink. The short and inoffensive matches were short and inoffensive, and the matches given time to be something more delivered.


I really enjoyed Eddie Edwards/Trevor Lee as an interference clustered cruiser match, with Lee really throwing himself into Edwards' offense, a big Lee bump where Edwards caught the apron punt and swept Lee's leg to make him faceplant on the apron, a big Edwards dive, nice Lee suplex, good nearfall based on interference, just a fun match. More noteworthy was a 10 man tag that was probably just 8 minutes, but really good. TNA throughout its history has been hilariously inept at large multiman matches. This in theory should be one of the easiest matches to lay out, as with 10 guys even the worst wrestlers should have one or two cool tricks they can do so nobody has to be exposed, and you can keep action moving with constant saves and tag ins. Yet somehow TNA multimans (specifically the always laugh out loud bad multiman cage matches where you'd end up with 80% of the guys lying around the ring breathing heavily after just a few minutes) always flopped, always turned into an awful mess, never felt like they had enough action. So here were 10 men - 5 of whom I had at least heard of before, 3 of whom I could at least pick out of a lineup - 10 men of varying abilities working a tight 7 minutes with no filler, some smart, simple spots, and a satisfying finish. Jessie Godderz had a couple nice press slams, there were a couple stocky little guys in striped tights who came in gunning low with elbows and nice aggression, Crazzy Steve seems like he might be good, even Abyss had a cool moment where he made a save by just grabbing a guy by the throat.


The main event of Matt Hardy vs. Drew Galloway was really good and with an actual conclusive finish I was already prepared to nominate it for our MOTY list. Hardy looks insane right now, like a methier and/or draggier Toecutter, which...well would actually work pretty well as a wrestling character. But these guys beat the hell out of each other, constantly lobbing nice punches and elbows, Hardy takes a backbreaker on the ring apron, Galloway takes a side effect on the ring steps, Galloway threw a big belly to belly, they found a nice way to set up some tree of woe stuff with a blocked superplex leading to some Hardy headbutts, and then when Hardy was taking too long to set something up I thought it was going to look silly when Drew took a move after hanging out for so long, but instead Drew was just playing possum and sprang up to launch Hardy across the ring. More big chops, more great Hardy punches, more great Galloway elbows to Hardy's weird head. Yeah we got a run in finish but this was a fine match, exactly what I was hoping for out of these guys.


So there I was, enjoying TNA, actually thinking about watching TNA one week from now, which is a thought I don't think I've ever had. Watching TNA has always been more of an accident, or something to throw on for a laugh when people are over and you remember it's on. I don't know if I've ever actively planned to watch TNA a week in advance. But this show won me over. There were still some silly moments, my favorite being their apparent heist of the WWE never-going-to-get-over name generator, - used here for Pepper Parks - who is now known as "Braxton Sutter". I recognize that it's entirely possible I just tuned in on the one competent week of programming they've had since joining Pop! I know I tuned in a couple of times when they were on Destination America and it was dreadful. So this could have been luck, or they may finally be onto something, 10 years too late.

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Hey, This Happened: Bart Gunn and Saturn Stiffed the Hell out of Each Other, 13 Years Ago

Mike Barton vs. Perry Saturn TNA 4/9/03

13 years ago Mike Barton made his one TNA appearance, as he and Perry Saturn stiffed the holy hell out of each other, and none of us saw it because we were all in our early 20s and we weren't watching TNA. The match starts in the back (a clear reminder of who was in charge...) and Barton throws a dozen hard left hands right at Saturn's eye as they brawl to and into the ring. Saturn fires back with an occasional stiff right of his own, Barton fires him meanly into the guardrail, Saturn gets busted open over his right eye, and - it being TNA - the camera also zooms in to watch him blade his left eyebrow. Barton hits a cool shoulderblock off the ropes, and Saturn hits an awesome springboard dropkick (looks even better while bleeding) plus a couple of awesome German suplexes. We get a tremendous spot where Barton holds up the bleeding Saturn in a loooong delayed vertical suplex, and you can see the blood dripping off Saturn's head and down Barton's chest. Saturn really has no problem leaning into all of Barton's shots, and the finish was really great. Barton threw one of his hardest lefts, and then shook his hand out afterwards and started kind of pulling at his glove. Saturn pounces and maneuvers around Barton, takes him down and starts wrenching on Barton's hurt hand to get the tap. I love a good brawl, and I was a wild teenage super mark for the Brawl for All, so this was really fun to see all these years removed. Saturn ending a fight by capitalizing on a guy possibly breaking his hand from too many punches, improvising a street fight submission on Barton, was a pretty high concept finish for a match nobody knows about. 

Also, as a fun aside, one of the first email conversations Phil and I ever had was about Saturn. Phil and I traded tapes in the early 2000s, and I would make compilation tapes of lucha and WWF Metal/Heat matches so he could watch guys for DVDVR 500 consideration. On one of the last WWE syndicated comp tapes I sent him I was REALLY impressed by a wildly resurgent Saturn. Saturn had come back from injury and was really tearing up the early 2002 WWE landscape (at 1 AM on Saturday nights on my local affiliate). I have fond memories of doing my midnight to 2 AM college radio show, then picking up Taco Bell, going home and watching the episodes of Metal and WCW Worldwide that had aired during my radio show.

Well, I searched my old ass email inbox and found one of the earliest email conversations between Phil and I, from 4/30/02:

Eric: "Just wondering if you got the Lucha/B/O WWF Metal/Heat tapes I sent you. I sent them a week ago, so I was hoping the WWF comp would be there in time for the 500 ranking. I guess if it didn't get there in time, there will be some sad WWF undercarders who won't get their rightful place. Anyway, good luck with the 500."

Phil responds: "Yup got it watched it all, you were totally right about Saturn. Although he is hurt so he won't end up preposterously high on the 500 like he would have. Me and Tom totally dug the Metal and would be into future tapes like that every six months or so. Really fun wrestling, although it was frustrating to watch Funaki refuse to mat wrestle even with jobbers or Saturn."

There you have it. Two guys bonding over their love of 2002 syndicated Perry Saturn matches. Still going strong today! <3 .="" 3="" p="">

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His Rhymes are Homicidal, He'll Take Your Title He's Ricky Banderas far from Billy Idol

Ricky Banderas v. Slash Venom IWA-PR 10/18/03 -EPIC

This is exactly the kind of blood soaked spectacle I was hoping to unearth. I think I had seen clips of the finish before, but never the whole match. Slash Venom is awesome southern indy wrestler Flash Flanagan and he brings the crazy right to Banderas. Banderas works him from pillar to post early busting him open with chair shots and big bombs. Venom takes over a bit and hits a spring board elbow to the floor through the table, which gets crazy height, totally memorable highspot which is really overshadowed by the bat shit finish. Venom sets up a table and they brawl to a balcony legit 20-25 feet above the floor, they tease a couple of falls before Banderas chucks Venom over the rail, causing him to take a flat back bump on a gym floor after a 20 foot plus drop. It was as crazy, if not more crazy then the Foley HIC bumps or that time New Jack tried to murder Vic Grimes. Finish would have made it memorable no matter what, but this was a corker before that too.

Judas Mesias v. Abyss TNA 1/22/08 - FUN

This was a barbed wire massacre match, basically a no-rope barbed wire match with barbed wire weapons. This isn't a match which is going to pump up Mesais reputation. It had several gruesome visuals, and some nastish bumps (Mesias goes stomach first on a barbed wire board which had to suck). The fact they had an actual feud building to it, puts it above a throw away IWA-MS Mad Man Pondo garbage match, but not by much. Abyss will bleed a ton but man is he shitty at lots of other things you are supposed to do as a wrestler. Mesias didn't look much better in the basics category either, there is one point where they are on their knees exchanging "punches" which was about as bad as I remember seeing. Also the backstory of this some bad Russo knock off Kane shit. Apparently Father James Mitchell is Abyss's biological father, and he has brought his other son Judas Mesias in to destroy Abyss. Tenay for some reason keeps calling Mesias, Abyss's step brother as opposed to his half brother. Is the gimmick that Mitchell married Mesias's mother and help raise her blood splitting son?

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE MESIAS

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2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

14. Low-Ki v. Drew Galloway TNA 3/16 (Aired May 1)

PAS: This was a nasty little compact 10 minute brawl between two really good wrestlers, only slightly marred by TNA bullshit. This was a pipe on a pole match, where the pipe falls off the pole and never gets used. Despite that, both guys beat the crap out of each other. Low-Ki has been off my radar for a bit, but he is still an asskicker, he lands some especially nasty elbow smashes on the head. Galloway comes in with taped ribs and Ki kicks him in them and lands a warriors way on a standing chair. Post match brawl with Ki's group (Kenny King, MVP, Homicide) and Galloways group (Haku's other son, some NXT scrub) wasn't much, but I'll check out anytime these two matchup

ER: I really dug this, Galloway has been on an absolute tear the last year, and parts of this match felt like a grimy Necro Butcher brawl. The Warriors Way while Drew was draped over a chair was totally sick, one of the best garbage spots I've seen. Drew really muscled Ki around, dug his all arm lariat to knock Ki to the floor, then all the ringside brawling was mean and sloppy-in-a-good-way. I've been so conditioned to think I guy is going to chop the ringpost that I found myself cringing during moments. These two lace into each other nicely, and we get some honest to god believable fighting on the top rope. Normally it looks like two guys cooperating to maintain their balance, here it looked like two guys fighting while trying to maintain their balance. HUGE difference. The pipe falls off because it's TNA and whatever is hanging from a pole will always fall off that pole. Ki takes too long to set up a tree of woe stomp, and the announcers are already talking about how Drew's leg must be stuck, so I'm getting ready to eyeroll but then Drew yanks Ki messily off the top into a chair and the spot makes total wonderful sense within the match. I liked Ki going for the Pablo Sandoval tomahawk chop with the pipe leading directly to Drew hitting his nasty double arm DDT right on a chair. Match went the perfect amount of time, and was great because I love these two guys, but not great because now I'm going to have to start DVRing TNA just in case they pop up.


2015 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Wrestling With Death: Thoughts As I Watch It and Waste My Life

I had to add that colon into the title so that people wouldn't misinterpret this as me having an internal struggle and wrestling with my own disappointing mortality.

So Derrick King is on a national network. That's weird, right? He got married to a gal named Jaime, who possibly set a record for "BumpIt Use on Wedding Day" and the family he married into has an indy fed in Arkansas. And a funeral home. And he works at both. I am completely unfamiliar with Mid Southern Championship Wrestling. I mean, I'm unfamiliar with Arkansas. I would wager before it became known as Bill Clinton's home state that it was our least talked about state in the union. That would probably be Delaware now. The hashtag for this show is #WrestleInPeace. I have never heard of Lafonce Latham - owner and proprietor of both MCW and the funeral home -  before but he seems like a guy I would have dug. He's clearly in his 60s now and from the clips shown he still seems like a guy I would dig. I would definitely go to these shows if I lived in Arkansas. Also, living in Arkansas, I would have already made a series of several horrible life decisions by that point.

I wonder who or how many people TNA would murder to get on a network like this. WGN is pretty huge. TNA is on Destination America right now, which I just confirmed yesterday is an actual television channel available to watch on televisions. 90% of the programming on Destination America appears to be advertisements masquerading as actual programming. Tuesday is filled with hilarious Disney "programming". They are supposed to be actual shows, but they have names like "Inside Disney Cruise Lines" or "Behind the Scenes: Walt Disney World Resort". The channel also shows an incredible sounding show called "Buying Log Cabins" which officially has to be the most niche reality show ever. Buying Log Cabins looks like a joke that got cut from UHF. Looking deeper at their schedule, and 40% of the channel seems entirely focused on the Alaska real estate scene. And literally all Friday is episodes of TNA Impact on a loop, 18 hellish hours. 6 AM to midnight. At what point in that 18 hours does Impact turn to Suicide Pact?

And here's this show, on an actual network that produces original dramas and shows Cubs and White Sox games.

I stopped watching after 20 minutes or so when I noticed MeTV was showing an old Gunsmoke episode with Anthony James as a hillbilly trying to operate a secret still.

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Rifling Through the Trash: The Unfinished Segunda Caida

We here at Segunda Caida all watch a lot of wrestling. We also start a lot of projects. More projects than we can ever ever possibly finish. We start watching something, write about it, don't finish writing about it, and there it sits. We have about 80 unfinished drafts dating back 4 years. Some of them may get finished some day (IWA-MS show reviews, WAR show reviews), others are kind of pointless to ever finish (old CMLL TV write-ups, reviews of WWE Superstars episodes). Still these write ups all took at least SOME time out of our schedules, and it's only fair that we get SOME use out of them. Tom used his best shitty tag team name from his "shitty indy name" rolodex AND made fun of RPGs in almost the same sentence.

The FINAL snippets from TomK's review of ROH's "Take No Prisoners":

Vulture Squad v No Remorse Corpse

TKG: Huh? Why? The bonus match from other show on ROH PPV is kind of a staple, but why this match? Did someone say “hey this show is missing a big moves workrate tag”? This whole entire card has been really well paced with every match being different than the one before, and matches ending without long finisher exchange sequences and excessive kickouts to protect the main event. There is a reason not to do a workrate tag with hot finisher train. The opening Ruckus v Rocky Romero mirror missed stuff was every bit as laughably bad as you’d expect. Where is Julius Smokes? Jigsaw without the mask looks like a guy who should have been on the second season of the Wire. Maybe not White Mike, but White Mike’s skinny cousin. When Ruckus eventually joins Eddy Kingston, I want a Smokes managed Jigsaw/Grim Reefer tag team. Is “Eight Myle” a shitty enough tag name? I also don’t think I’ve mentioned the shitty “pokemon” style tales of the tape that they’ve been doing before each match. I didn’t mind this when they used it for the Aries v Nigel main event as they where actually building the match around the idea that the two knew each others stuff. But really if these are the talking points, give them to the announcers to make. Putting it up on the screen really feels like someone is laying out the profile pages from a role playing game.

Notes for Phil: I think you liked this more than I did and thought the spike piledriver was a good finish and finish train wasn’t too long or something like that. You're wrong. But that's what you were arguing.

Phil reviewing IWRG 6/17/10:

Bombero Infernal v. Dr. Cerebro

PAS: This really felt like heavyweight professional wrestling. Just a pair of big guys throwing big bombs (indy lucha big, I am sure Dr. Cerebro is like 5'4). Infernal jumps Cerebro outside and whoops on him for the first fall. Cerebro has a really great looking trickle of blood rolling down his face. Cerebro fires back with some soup bones, including a spectacular elbow smash plancha which looked like the ghost of Misawa. Finish was decent, although the low blow finish is such a lucha cliche, I don't want to see it infecting IWRG.

Mickie Segura/Trauma I/II v. Los Gringos VIP

PAS: 2010 IWRG is so good that the baseline for an average match is pretty high. It will consistently put out solidly worked excellent matches with occasional flashes of brilliance, that it is kind of hard for a match like this to stand out. This was six very good wrestlers having a very good trios title match. We got a long first fall of mat work, it isn't normally what you expect out of the Lucha Libre VIP team (outside of Avisman, who is the guy who doesn't work the mat in this match), but they are pretty good at it. I especially liked El Hijo Del Diablo v. Trauma I, which was really a pair of powerhouse using their strength to move in and out of hold, Diablo is having a hell of a year. Second fall was rudo triple teams and brawling, which was done well, although there was no huge bump or blood or anything to distinguish it. Third fall was a traditional title match third fall, down to the step over toe hold comedy spot which you see a ton of in classic lucha (the spot which ends with the Technico wiggling in a pinning all three guys.) Good workman like lucha libre, which won't register when we look back at 2010, but is certainly well worth spending 20 minutes watching

Notes from EricR watching the 3/27/14 TNA iMPACT:

~Davey/Edwards vs. Magnus/Abyss: Wow Davey Richards is just a hilariously bad wrestler. I mean, not as horrid as Abyss, who seems to fight every natural way to take bumps and go against every body instinct to fall in the most ridiculous way possible. So Eddie Edwards always does a spit take bump in his matches, and here he took an elbow from Magnus and ended up accidentally spitting directly into Davey's (on the apron) eyes. And what's amazing is Davey sold it! He didn't just casually pretend another human being, his partner, didn't just accidentally spit directly into his eyes. He sold it. But he didn't sell it like a normal human would sell the indignity of feeling another human's warm spit hit your eyes and face, he sold it like Eddie Edwards was a Dilophosaurus and he was Nedry getting acidic mucous spit into his eyes. The goggles! They do nothing!!! He also later took the most hilarious back bump, where it looked like he was jumping up and landing back first on a big trampoline, just 11 year old me getting bounced higher and getting sick air, landing on my back. Or doing a cannonball into a swimming pool, with all the grace of a "mom watch me dive!" child.

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Giving TNA Credit Where Credit is Due

TNA is the Springfield tire fire of professional wrestling. It feels like it's been around forever and no reasonable person can justify its existence. At this point it just exists. It's there. It's stink can be smelled from many states away. It's useless. It's ugly. It somehow will not die.

But as the old saying goes, even a burning tire yard is right twice a day. And last week while watching TNA something happened to me that I'm not sure has ever happened to me while watching TNA: I was genuinely interested, engaged and excited about what was onscreen, for all of the reasons intended.

TNA has been around for a long time. I still lived with my parents when TNA began to exist. I own a home now. I was still in college when TNA began. I work for the government and have some gray hairs now. Beck came out with "Sea Change" around when TNA began. Now he just released "Morning Phase", which is his only other album that sounds a lot like Sea Change. Many of my friends have gotten married and had children since TNA's existence. Others have married and already divorced. My first pet, Inky the cat, did not live as long as TNA has lived. TNA has still not ever done anything as cool as Inky a) catching bats, b) catching a rabbit, c) learning how to turn on/off a light switch.

But they got me excited for 7 minutes. Last week the show started off with an Abyss/Eric Young brawl, and it was awesome. Abyss is clearly the worst worker in the world over the last decade. I'm sure there have been some individual performances that have been worse, but he has turned in a full 10+ years of shockingly horrible work. I'll save more Abyss talk for a future post dedicated to Abyss and nothing else. This "match" was all about EY and he looked killer. A lot of his shots really landed hard on Abyss, and TNA's stupid faux-NYPD Blue backstage camera work actually made this look, dare I say...cool? This felt like one of the most violent things in TNA history, culminating with EY getting choked out over the ropes with a chain. EY took nasty spills the whole match (including getting tossed face first into a chair) but good god his face was turning purple while getting choked. The whole thing actually felt unique and interesting, which is something TNA has NEVER felt like to me. It actually made me want to tune in the next week...

And they started the 3/27 Impact with 27 minutes of talking. Never change guys. We'll always have those 7 minutes on 3/20.

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