Ragnal
Game Genie
Yanno what they say: All toasters toast El Dandy
Posts: 8,677,836
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Post by Ragnal on Jun 20, 2015 20:27:21 GMT -5
Watching Monty Brown squash the ever loving shit out of MVP was oddly satisfying. Yeah, that was-... I'm sorry, what?
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Dragonfly
Samurai Cop
...is no Barry Windham.
Posts: 2,482
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Post by Dragonfly on Jun 21, 2015 12:35:23 GMT -5
Watching Monty Brown squash the ever loving shit out of MVP was oddly satisfying. Yeah, that was-... I'm sorry, what? About seven or eight episodes into the series, Monty Brown plows through a jobber by the name of Antonio Banks. Banks is, or rather will eventually be, MVP. As for our progress, we just finished the 9/3/2004 show. The main story at the moment is Jeff Hardy versus Jeff Jarrett - "The Swanton versus The Stroke." While Hardy does appear on Impact from time to time in tag matches, the message is clear: If you want see Jeff work a singles match or cut a promo, you're going to have to buy the pay-per-view. Because of this, Double J has been doing all of the pre-match hype. It's fine, provided you don't mind hearing him yell for five minutes. It would have been nice to hear Hardy's side of the story, but I can't fault TNA for keeping his presence minimal. Making Jeff Hardy "pay only" was a smart business decision on TNA's part. (Now there's a phrase you don't hear often.) The other main story involves Vince Russo and Dusty Rhodes. Russo is the current Director of Authority (DOA), 2004 TNA's commissioner equivalent, while Dusty is the head of the Championship Committee. Russo is the sane reasonable one that wants what's best for TNA; Dusty (the clear face) is one step shy of being an escaped mental patient. Management really wants to get this over, going as far as bringing back The Midnight Rider for a night. It's not a bad story - far from it. It's just not worthy of being a main event. Other stories: Goldilocks keeps buying wrestlers contracts for reasons that haven't been explained. It's a one-sided story, since the other half of the feud, Desire and Erik Watts, are PPV-only. So all we get are Goldie's hideous acting, Abyss-centric squash matches and Alex Shelley wincing every time he's called "The Baby Bear." Elsewhere, AMW and Triple X are on match 47 of their best of three "respect" series due to the Tag champs The Naturals' inability to stay backstage. The story doesn't make much sense, but at least the matches are good. AJ is still feuding with Kid Kash and Dallas (Lance Hoyt). Ron Killings is also involved, as AJ "needed someone from the streets" to help him in his X-Division street fight. (Yes, they actually said that.) Petey Williams is the X-Division champ, but he's barely mentioned. Styles is clearly more important.
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King Devitt
Grimlock
It gets better the longer you stare at it
Posts: 13,721
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Post by King Devitt on Jun 25, 2015 5:50:11 GMT -5
Ignore the haters. It's awesome you two watch wrestling together. Let alone she got YOU to watch TNA from the beginning.
I'd love to have a partner that would be willing to do that with me.
As someone who watched from the beginning, you're bringing back fond and not-so-fond memories. Crushed hard on AJ back then, but Jarrett could literally have me yelling at the TV out loud. I hated knowing that he owned it all, and watching him just ruin people.
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Dragonfly
Samurai Cop
...is no Barry Windham.
Posts: 2,482
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Post by Dragonfly on Jun 26, 2015 2:02:45 GMT -5
...So we just finished 2004. The weekly pay-per-views are done. Dusty has the book. The Asylum is a memory, as is Russo. Elix Skipper walked the cage, Jeff Hardy challenged for the title twice (lost both times) and Hector Garza got the Roman Reigns push. And I have to say - it sucks. It's almost 2015 bad. Among the "offenses," for lack of a better word:
- Push young guys? Screw that! Audiences want Kevin Nash, a less than sober Scott Hall, Dustin Rhodes, Randy Savage, Johnny B. Badd, DDP, Roddy Piper (and Piper's Pit), Jimmy Snuka, a recreation of the "coconut" incident, Erik Watts and more WCW and (thinly veiled) NWO references than a Nitro in 1997.
- Remember the time Abyss and 3 Live Kru crashed the Royal Rumble ad taping and acted like total dicks for no reason? It happened in December. They obviously wanted it to be their "DX invades Nitro," but it tanked (pun definitely intended) hard.
- This is Dusty at his most incoherent, both on the mic and in the writers' room.
- Speaking of incoherent, there's Raven. I like the guy, but he's pretty awful here. He, DDP and Watts are feuding about... something. I think it has to due with the WCW title and Kimberly Page, but we're not really sure.
- Cracks started to appear within the Kings of Wrestling (Jarrett, Nash and Hall) when AJ Styles and D-Ray 3000 sucker punched Hall and ran in the other direction. I'm not joking.
- Hall and Nash are currently feuding with Hector Garza. They keep trying to get into his head by dressing in sombreros and ponchos and pretending to sleep. Real tasteful guys.
- I have no idea who is holding the tag and X Division belts and I don't care enough to look. So I'll just say it's Team Canada. It's easier that way.
- Did you know that Matt Sydal and Brian Kendrick were in TNA in 2004? Me either. It lasted for approximately five and a half seconds.
- Monty Brown is surviving solely on charisma. He has to be - he barely had any real non PPV ring time as of late.
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BlackoutCreature
Grimlock
The Ultimate Popcorntunist!
Posts: 14,444
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Post by BlackoutCreature on Jun 27, 2015 9:24:15 GMT -5
- Speaking of incoherent, there's Raven. I like the guy, but he's pretty awful here. He, DDP and Watts are feuding about... something. I think it has to due with the WCW title and Kimberly Page, but we're not really sure. Oh Oh Oh, I remember this one. Apparently after DDP won the US Title in WCW in 1997, he decided to celebrate by "sharing" Kimberly with Raven and Erik Watts. Supposedly Raven showed up DDP so badly during this that it caused Kimberly to leave DDP several years later. Raven though claims it was Erik Watts who got Kimberly to leave in this whole ordeal. Of course nobody can actually say any of this on the air so they all have to use hints and subtle innuendo to get the points across. You know, even with all the incredibly stupid stuff modern TNA has done, I still think this is probably the stupidest idea they ever came up with.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2015 11:37:20 GMT -5
Raven's horsecock wins again.
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Hypnosis
T
Posts: 97,360
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Post by Hypnosis on Jun 27, 2015 11:41:15 GMT -5
Other stories: Goldilocks keeps buying wrestlers contracts for reasons that haven't been explained. It's a one-sided story, since the other half of the feud, Desire and Erik Watts, are PPV-only. So all we get are Goldie's hideous acting, Abyss-centric squash matches and Alex Shelley wincing every time he's called "The Baby Bear." Shelley had a rough start in TNA.
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Post by amazingoopah on Jun 27, 2015 11:59:35 GMT -5
This feels like that part in Interstellar where Matthew Mcconaughey's character is seeing videos of his kids from years ago while Earth is dying around them... I want to cry for you and your wife like that.
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Dragonfly
Samurai Cop
...is no Barry Windham.
Posts: 2,482
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Post by Dragonfly on Jun 29, 2015 16:14:55 GMT -5
Last show watched: 3/18/2005 (The first Impact after Destination X).
Dusty's Impact is, in a word, terrible. It's not needlessly convoluted like Russo or cringe worthy like Billy Corgan. It's just dull and derivative. That might be even worse. But before I get into the bad parts - and believe me, there are a lot of bad parts - I need to mention the one thing that was ridiculously awesome: The rise of Christopher Daniels. I'm not talking about the matches, either. I'm talking about the story. But first, a little background.
Shortly before Impact went on the air, AJ Styles was moved back to the X Division. While AJ the on-screen character claimed it was so he could "go back to [his] roots," the real reason was likely due to the state of the division itself. While there were some good "parts" (Chris Sabin, Petey Williams, Sonjay Dutt), there was no clear "face." AJ was deemed to be that guy. So off he went, abandoning the NWA title scene to "save" the style he made famous. In those nine or so months, he had won the belt twice, held off an X Division mutiny led by Kazarian and Michael Shane and had a feud with Kid Kash that never seemed to end. By January he was pretty much untouchable; an odd combination of John Cena, Roman Reigns, Goku and Superman. It quickly reached a point where the exploits of "The Phenomenal One" were more important than the belt itself, which would have been fine if his stories were interesting. More often than not, they weren't.
Christopher Daniels spent all of Impact 2004 as one half of Triple X. The matches between them and America's Most Wanted were great. The story... not so much. What was obviously supposed to be a "best of three" rivalry between two great teams slowly turned into a nine month mess. There were victories that didn't count. There was involvement from both The Naturals and Team Canada for some reason. There was even a month where a few "injuries" forced Chris Harris to team with Elix Skipper and Daniels to team with James Storm. (Both "wife swap" teams won the belts, by the way.) In the end, and despite Primetime's best cage walking efforts, Triple X was forced to disband at the end of the year.
Now here is where things get interesting. Instead of focusing on Super AJ, the story was focused on the mind of Christopher Daniels. In his worldview, AJ was a lucky spoiled brat that had everything handed to him by the DOA and the NWA Championship Committee while he, a "veteran with over ten years experience," had to fight for everything. Daniels was suddenly the one with all of the mic time and the "squash a jobber" matches. AJ was still clearly the face, but it was different. Thanks to his (purposefully) limited screen time combined with the Fallen Angel's superior promo work, he didn't seem so perfect anymore. The end of their Against All Odds match - AJ wins a 30 minute Iron Man match by glorified fluke in overtime - seem to bolster Daniels' claims. By the time their Ultimate X Challenge match (an elimination match that with the final two participating in an Ultimate X) rolled around, the borderline amoral Daniels was now a Tony Soprano/Walter White style antihero. AJ, the old fashioned hero, was now a monster that needed to be put down. Daniels ending up winning, but in grand antihero fashion, had to turn on Elix Skipper to do it. He's still the he heel in his feud with Primetime, but it doesn't matter. The booking made it known that just this once, it's okay to root for the bad guy.
Elsewhere...
- The only other thing that could be considered "good" at the moment is Chris Candido. He went from barely mentioned jobber to a semi-active manager with a stable of heel underdogs (The Naturals and David Young) in less than two months. He is definitely a highlight of these shows, which makes what's going to happen to him all the more heartbreaking.
- Speaking of David Young, his 0-93 losing streak is the only storyline left from the weekly PPV days. It doesn't even seem like a story anymore. He's now a bald, tattooed Meg Griffin with a decent looking backbreaker. The wife and I are waiting for the moment where Mike Tenay (easily his biggest detractor) kicks him in the nuts and laughs at him for five minutes.
- For reasons we can't quite figure out, Dusty and company felt that having DDP be number one contender for the NWA title belt was a good idea. It all boils down to this: DDP runs through crowd, makes a few references to WCW 2000 and yells "it's time." Jeff Jarrett, in turn, stands in the ring and says "slapnuts" a lot. Jarrett wins due to shenanigans, repeat as necessary.
- February also saw the debut of Jarrett's new bodyguard, The New Age Outlaw. The former Billy Gunn is basically Lex Luger in late 1995/early 1996, but it's just not working.
- One interesting thing about The Outlaw stuff: We get to see the foundation of will eventually be LAX. Angry Konnan is fun.
- Hector Garza, Scott Hall and Randy Savage are gone. Dusty tried to fill the holes with whoever was available - Gran Apolo and Shocker for Garza, Sean Waltman for Hall, Nash for Randy Savage - but none of the quick fixes are working. The only good thing to come from all of this was the unceremonious dissolution of the horrible Kings of Wrestling stable.
- Monty Brown had a disastrous feud with Trytan, a supposed "monster heel" with a Terminator gimmick, then promptly turned heel himself. If my choices were to fight the roided-up stiff from Red Shirt Security (not Kevin Northcutt or Joe E. Legend... the third one) or cut promos in lieu of Jeff Jarrett, I'd pick the latter every time.
- More from the "Dusty has lost his goddamn mind" file: He booked himself as a genius sex machine that both Traci Brooks and Trinity just can't get enough of. The women and their "boys" - The Harris Twins for Traci, Phi Delta Slam for Trinity - fought for the right to become Dusty's secretary. In the end, he made enough room for the both of them. Oh... And Dustin Rhodes is getting a major push. What a shocker.
- Abyss is still feuding with Jeff Hardy. And by "feuding," I mean "Jeff watches Abyss wreck shit while sitting in the scaffolding."
- Oh... And we got to see Fox's NASCAR analyst Jeff Hammond shirtless! The less said about that, the better.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2015 16:25:49 GMT -5
Meh. I still enjoyed it. Truly felt like an alternative to WWE which I hated at the time.
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SUPES
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,373
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Post by SUPES on Jun 29, 2015 16:44:36 GMT -5
There's nothing really worth revisiting until Daniels vs. Joe on the Thursday debut. And that match is one brutal classic that's only gotten better.
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Post by Brandon Walsh is Insane. on Jun 30, 2015 1:18:21 GMT -5
At this point, I was just about done with TNA. You didn't mention how horrid Jon my Fairplay was!
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Post by ________ has left the building on Jun 30, 2015 7:26:49 GMT -5
There's nothing really worth revisiting until Daniels vs. Joe on the Thursday debut. And that match is one brutal classic that's only gotten better. It was a banger. Impact starting off with Joe just murking Daniels. Daniels getting some hope spots but Joe was at his most brutal and f***ing him up until he mercifully ended it.
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Juice
El Dandy
Wrong? Oh he can tell ya about being wrong.
I'm the one who raised you from perdition.
Posts: 8,172
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Post by Juice on Jun 30, 2015 11:45:02 GMT -5
I'd live to watch the old tna stuff again from ppv days to fan and early impacts. If there's a free option to do so.
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jagilki
Patti Mayonnaise
Nobody notices him; No, we noticed him
f*** Cancer
Posts: 33,594
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Post by jagilki on Jun 30, 2015 12:26:56 GMT -5
I have the entire Fox Sports Net run on Video Tape (Plus the first year or two of Spike) But no VCR
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chrom
Backup Wench
Master of the rare undecuple post
Posts: 84,561
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Post by chrom on Jun 30, 2015 12:49:04 GMT -5
Wasn't there a show where they played an old match from before (between Team Canada and Mexico) but with different audio and commentary?
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Dragonfly
Samurai Cop
...is no Barry Windham.
Posts: 2,482
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Post by Dragonfly on Jul 4, 2015 1:48:50 GMT -5
Wasn't there a show where they played an old match from before (between Team Canada and Mexico) but with different audio and commentary? There were two "best of" specials in between the website episodes and their debut on Spike. It was one of them.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Jul 4, 2015 2:06:48 GMT -5
Man, I thought Nash and Hall dressing up in Elvis suits was pretty damn fun, actually.
Mind you, my exposure to this time period of TNA is solely the PPV DVDs they used to put out, which is clearly the best of the best this promotion had to offer. And very little of the mind-numbing angles on TV.
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Dragonfly
Samurai Cop
...is no Barry Windham.
Posts: 2,482
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Post by Dragonfly on Jul 5, 2015 18:17:05 GMT -5
Last show watched: 10/22/2005 (The night before Bound for Glory)
Dusty's departure has been good for TNA. Sure we lost "prestige drama antihero" Christopher Daniels, but it's a reasonable tradeoff. The wife and I will take a watchable show over one lone story any day. The big problem now is the pace. For whatever the reason, Scott D'Amore and company feel the need to cram an entire weekly PPV's worth of happenings into 43 minutes. It's not crash TV either. It's just moves at a bizarrely fast pace.
As for what's going on:
- The time between television contracts was, for the most part, entertaining filler. AJ initially had the title, but lost it to Raven in a King of the Mountain match. Raven, in turn, feuded with Abyss, James Mitchell, Rhino, Larry Zybysko and whoever looked at him crooked. Sabu was eventually brought in to even the odds. Cassidy Reilly also started dressing like Raven because... Reasons, I guess. They purposefully didn't explain it well. Elsewhere, The Naturals picked up Jimmy Hart as their manager and went after Team Canada. The Naturals as the default sympathetic faces - no one was going to boo them after the death of Candido - worked better than we remembered. They still have the collective charisma of a dirty tire, however.
- Beyond the filler, TNA did a lot heavy lifting in these "Internet-only" episodes. Everything from the roots of Jarrett's paranoia to AMW's heel turn to Rhino's eventual title win were either shown or foreshadowed. It was really great writing. There's only one problem: No one saw them. The rest of the story seems rushed when you remove the first three chapters.
- That said, TNA's wrestling centric remake of Scorsese's Gangs of New York is still one of my favorite stories of all time. Jeff makes a wonderful Bill the Butcher. He's got the "immigrants are coming to screw over 'the natives'" rhetoric down perfectly. (Note: Raven losing the title in Canada works better if you take it as a recreation of the "gang war" at the beginning of the film. In this scenario, Raven is Liam Neeson.)
- The Team 3D funeral is still one the greatest things they have ever done. It still holds up.
- Christopher Daniels here is basically the guy we all know and love, only slightly more serious. I completely forgot how much fun his rivalry with AJ used to be.
- Joe isn't really doing much at the moment. He won a tournament created to get him over as a submission expert, stared menacingly at the camera and has beaten the likes of Sonjay Dutt and Jerelle Clark so many times they probably saw him in their sleep. Yes, there was the classic Unbreakable match, but even then he's not exactly a threat. Here's the thing though: The "not a build" build working. You just know the second he decides to go after Daniels, he's going to kill him. And the anticipation for that moment is great. We need more builds like that these days.
- Man, Mike Tenay can be downright vicious when he doesn't like someone. I didn't think I'd hear the phrase "How do you like that, fat boy?" (directed towards D'Amore) so many times in my life. He also still finds time to remind the viewer that despite his recent upturn with Simon Diamond's Diamonds in the Rough, David Young still generally sucks at life. Remind me never to get on his bad side.
- Poor Monty Borwn. He's gone from "the man" in The Serengeti to "person number three" in Irrelevant City in a mere six months. They are currently building to the idea that he might be Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio), but we all know that it's never going to happen. (That role eventually goes to Christian, who isn't around yet.)
- Can someone please take 3Live Kru off of life support? It's the story that just doesn't freaking end.
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