El-P

Wasn't Rocky Johnson basically considering Atlas as an Uncle Tom of sorts ? And I mean, Saba Simba…

Who booked after Russo was gone ? Mantell ? Dusty ? PPV 66 So, Jarrett’s second reign of terror begins after a pretty good but rather flat match against AJ Styles, who never looked in danger of winning, despite carrying Jarrett’s ass. I guess now the focus is all on Hulk Hogan, as the big angle was Jarrett whipping Jimmy Hart for bringing up Bash at the Beach 2000. Funny how Jarret came into his first title reign as a babyface after a build as a heel and how it was the reverse here. Nothing seems to work with this guy. Match of the show was Raven vs Slash in a good dog collar match, just enough blood and some good use of the gimmick, playing with the ropes and the whiplash effects and shit. I dread the up-coming Vamp match though. Triple threat match for X-div assured a spotfu between Chris Daniels, Chris Sabin and Micheal Shane, who came out to a production fuck up as they launched Shane Douglas' Perfect Stranger ripoff. Man, I really wonder who’s gonna be the one being apart of Douglas’ new Franchise... Clap clap clap. Match was actually decent for a while, with not too many ridiculous spot apart from a triple superplex. It's so hard to have a good triple threat match, this is such a bad match inducing gimmick. In another spotty X-div match, Kid Kash vs Sonjay Dutt at least was a good shwocase of Dutt’s amazing athletic skills and charisma. He’s clearly got tons of potential, but Kash is not the one to have a really good match with. More Abyss nonsense. Yawn. Diamond & Swinger vs Roadkill & Danny Doring was a watchable ECW on TNN match, but a far cry from the AMW feud. Roadkill was one of those ECW mirage, he really doesn’t bring much to the table. Gilberti carrying a tennis racket was neat both in a meta (the Russo friend making fun of Corny) and straight (Glenn is actually doing a good job as an old-school working manager) way. Meanwhile, AMW have a decent match with the Naturals, total Nitro rush style with a few nearfalls too many, but it could build into a decent little feud. Opener was pretty fun too, with 3 Live Kru against Siaki, Ekmo & Legend. And, oh, Siaki doesn’t seem to get along with Trinity, who costs him the match. Not this again... Trinity's been there and done this already. Russo gone, Hogan in, well theorically. The booking is making more sense as far as building feuds, but Jarrett on top is a major yawner, even as a heel. And not enough really good workers to carry the load, too many young guys without a clue and too many bad guys hurting the matches. It’s still much more watchable than before, although there’s been a lack of notabe matches lately. Jerry Lynn & D-Lo seemingly gone do hurt the cards overall. 2003/10/22 Raven vs Slash 2003/10/22 Jeff Jarrett vs AJ Styles

Indeed.

I need to bite my tongue on Cena. No. Just say that he's not a great wrestler by any stretch of the imagination, that his offense mostly looks bad, that his "great" matches are either pre-planned WWE formulaic self-conscious epics either overrated "selling clinic" against monsters who "played their role right". (and I like Cena)

I would agree with that, he had some of the best matches of his career in 1990. Having great matches with peer great workers. Maeada. And yes, Takada.

Hence, when Bubba showed up at that Royal Rumble, by himself, who did they pick to re-do the wazaaa spot ? R-Truth. The only reason : he's black, so he'll get the job for the token black guy in the team. (to me, D-Von's identity was "another terrible worker", who also happens to be the one everyone likes whereas his partner is a dick)

Norman Smiley in WCW was the closest thing to a "wrestler that is black" case up to the 90's. The fact he was British weighted more in the balance actually. Wasn't the Big Wiggle an element of his "blackness" that he used to get over though ?

Which is odd, considering he "debuted", at least his rise to megastardom, in the freaking Nation of Domination.

Well Booker T said it about brotha Hogan.

I enjoy Northcut, but the Red Shirt Security gimmick is stupid and lazy. PPV 65 Hogan is coming. Or he was supposed to at least. I totally forgot they ran an angle at the Tokyo Dome show press conference with Jarrett squashing a guitar on Hogan. Which makes him the heel after months of posturing as the big babyface of the company, and makes AJ Styles an afterthought in the process. Typical Hogan dealings, although the fact Russo resigned because of this is awesome. Last appearance after a crappy « street fight » against Jarrett. Nice opener with AMW & Dusty Rhodes vs Sonny Siaki, Ekmo & Legend. Pretty good although Dusty has more than overstayed his welcome as an active wrestler and even a character as a matter of fact. I'd settle for him on color sometimes though, only to hear "pay window". Match of the show was X-div title match between Michael Shane & Christopher Daniels, who will save this division if he works the way he did here. Although he’s technically a heel, he went toward babyface work during the match as Shane is a full fledge heel. Excellent work by Daniels showing he can get over in both roles. The whole disciples thing has to go, although them selling Daniels' injuries and reacting to his offense in real time is a funny idea. Building toward a three way feud with Chris Sabin, who’s showing some babyface fire too. Shane Douglas was taking notes. Scouting angles usually never go anywhere good, but I always loved them. Plus, judging from the vignette earlier, it seems like the Franchise is looking for a new valet. That's cool. A bunch of nothing matches like Abyss vs Kid Kash, Abyss showing what a clueless worker he is already. His goofy pose just annoys the hell out of me. You don’t have a body, you wear a shirt, why the fuck do you pose ? Plus you’re supposed to be some kind of monster, not a bodybuilder. Anyway, he’s gonna be useless like I feared. Erik Watts vs Kevin Northcut was a short hoss Nitro match, the most notable fact was the comeback of Goldylocks as Watts girlfriend. Wonder if she wears panties now that Russo is gone. A decent tag match with a nice ECW flavor, as Diamond & Swinger lost a non-title match against Danny Doring & Roadkilll of all people. Never was been a big fan, Roadkill doing his usual stuff (basically the only things he can do, really) while Doring lookes like his old self. They havent changed or improved a bit since 2000. A clusterfuck X-div tag match with some jabronies named El Fuego & Jerrel Clark (feel the star power with that name) vs Eric Young and the debut of Sonjay Dutt, who looked impressive as hell athletically speaking. They ran through a shitload of stuff they should have kept in their bags, but what can you do, that’s the indy mentality. The big angle was Raven almost hanging Jim Mitchell only to have Slash drop an elbow on him. From a balcony. Through a table. With a chain. And after a clusterfucky and short Slash & Vampiro vs CM Punk & Julio match, Raven does a run-in on the heels. The issue with this feud now is that Vamp sucks, so there’s really no match to look forward to, despite Raven being the most over babyface in the company. 2003/10/15 Christopher Daniels vs Michael Shane

Don't worry, you're not the only one. Mero said during his Johnny B. Badd days, lots of people thought he was black. Same could be said for Tazz. Those dark-skinned Italian bastards.

This is a joke on purpose, right ? Mero is italian. Like Kevin Sullivan said "Why do you take a cracka to play a brotha ?" Isn't this topic a little… racist anyway ?

Well, this one doesn't look like a very interesting edition...

I have no memory of Rodney Mack in ECW. What did he do ? PPV 64 I had hoped for a gimmicky three minutes angle match. But no. AJ Styles vs Dusty Rhodes went at it for nearly twenty minutes, Dusty working at a snail pace, bleeding and making AJ Styles look stupid, even getting a visual tap out on him. Dusty did not even put AJ over clean, he had to cheat his way into Dusty «passing out ». So, my best guess is that Dusty was booking. Amazing level you wankfest here. AJ did the best job possible though, but this is just wrong. Oh, and Russo is acting drunk as fuck. Horrible stuff, much like the post-match beating with Jeff Jarrett (now heel ? face ? who the fuck knows) saving Dusty’s fat ass. Rest of the show was not much better, Raven’s being hang again was redondant. The Gathering waiting for the last moment to jump in kinda made sense since Raven asked them to let him deal with this alone, but it felt like rehashing. Sinn doesn’t mind getting darts thrown in his back. Gross. In another booking fuck up , 3 Live Kru vs Diamond & Swinger & Gilberti elimination match was not only not too good, and Gilberti going over at the end is mind-boggling. Again, is Gilberti part of the booking team or what ? Konnan working more than thirty seconds is a recipe for awfulness eventually. David Young is a fool again, which he plays rather nicely. Abyss & Kid Kash finally split up, it seems. Their team sucked anyway, as they had another bad match with AMW, who have good matches with anyone. Abyss is the least intimidating monster ever. A mediocre Kazarian vs Daniels match in which Daniels didn’t care for reigning in Kazarian’s bad instinct. Again, Daniels had good matches with everyone else, says a lot about Kazarian. A pretty good but totally heatless X-division match between Chris Sabin & Michael Shane. Hey, both are heels, do you expect the crowd to care ? I guess only the opener was really fun, as the Red Shirt Security vs D-Lo Brown & Chris Vaughn was a pretty decent tag match, I’m getting into Kevin Northcut hoss offense, which Vaughn made to look big time, and D-Lo is working well in this undercard quick match context. Totally heatless crowd. The three coolest things on the show : Shane Douglas is reaching to TV-land to get a new Franchise in a B&W vignette that reeked of old-school; Don Callis cut his hair and is carrying a pipe, which makes him a thousand time more obnoxious. And there’s a new hot brunette cage dancer. Hey, gotta focus on anything somewhat exciting. 2003/10/08 Red Shirt Security vs D-Lo Brown & Chris Vaughn.

The fact Tenryu's execution of some moves is shit has nothing to do with his "character". It has everything to do with him not being very good at doing those moves and still doing it. And us brushing it off, and at points even getting fond of it because we like the guys and become used, even fond of, his shortcomings too, like we usually do with the loved ones. "Character work" doesn't excuse shitty execution.

Certainly not to me. When he drops one of these horrible looking enzuigiri, I don't find it cool and he doesn't look more dangerous for it. It just looks terrible and I'm just brushing it off like "Well, that's Tenryu for you...". Same thing for the powerbomb. What makes Tenryu great is what he's great at (which are many many things).

That's actually called having double standart. Which is also why John Cena gets a pass despite most of his stuff looking like shit. I love Tenryu (my #6 or 7 I think), but I could do with him throwing a good looking enzuigiri and a devastating powerbomb instead of shitty ones. His sloppyness is absolutely not part of his appeal. Everything else great about him is.

Nah. RVD just sucked. And Kamala wasn't good because he was supposed to suck. This is the expressway to complte relativism. Although I'm tempted to use it to defend Sandman, who's supposed to be a bumbling drunk. But then again, when you watch closely, Sandman's execution of small things was actually good, so there's that. Piper was supposed to be a wild scrapper, but his offense looked like shit, not like wild scrapping. So. There's no such thing as good bad execution. Plus, Sabu was fucking up some spots on purpose to the point it was like Flair's top rope failures. It gets obvious when you watch it chronologically, you can see him adding "failed" spots from time to time and repeating it the exact same way he did before (not to say he didn't actually blew spots, but that's another matter). And if Tenryu actually had great looking powerbombs and enzuigiri, it would only make him better.

One of them, clearly. It's amazing that a veteran like Jarrett would just not have the sense to understand thet it looked like shit.

PPV 63 This plays like a fun equation : you’ve got Jeff Jarrett & Dusty Rhodes (in tights, yick) vs AJ Styles & Vince Russo (with hockey/football protection, don’t ask me these sports are too exotic). Jarrett is having his big title shot (which he’ll win, of course) in three weeks against Styles. So, who pins who ? Wait : Jarrett is basically the owner of the promotion; Vince Russo is still the head-writer; Dusty Rhodes is most probably the soon-to-be head-writer of something. So, who pins who ? No, the answer is not «one guy in the title shot match pins the old guy or the non-wrestler ». The answer is, old Dusty Rhodes pins AJ Styles clean and spanks his ass. Yep. And gets a gimmick title shot next week, so Jarrett ain’t happy. I guess he’s channeling Hulk Hogan now, as he’s acting like a petty little prick. Dusty looked better than you thought he would, but this booking is horrendous. However, Raven is fucking over and the biggest star in this company. He cuts a would-be-money-anywhere-else-promo after his run-in at the end of 3 Live Kru vs Vampiro & Slash & Sinn, which was watchable all things considered, despite Vamp looking like his old self (sucky like only Vamp can). Shane Douglas announces at the color mic that he’s having big plan for a new Franchise. At least things are moving forward. 3 Live Kru are an over bunch too. Mic work gets you that far. Not much notable stuff, as this show was really about forwarding angles and feuds, which at least is a good, logical thing. Except during the awful main event, you can feel Russo’s influence fading away pretty clearly. A few decent matches on the undercard : _Jerry Lynn vs Micheal Shane, who didn’t click that well together. Total overstatement of Jerry Lynn’s career going nowhere if he can’t win that title tonight, because he’s 40, you know. No idea where this is going, but seems like Lynn is getting the old WCW Dean Malenko/ WWF Vader treatment. Meanwhile, Shane will feud with Sabin. Two heels. _Chris Daniels vs D-Lo Brown was good as a Nitro sprint, but it’s getting obvious now that D-Lo has some limitations in term of building a match, too weak on selling, not that great on fiery comebacks. He’s right at his place in the undercard having solid match which can be spectacular and fun in terms of spots. That’s why he’s still feuding with Sonny Siaki & Ekmo I guess, who win a decent JTTS match against Shark Boy & Mad Mikey. For all the old hype about Erin O’Grady back in the days, he sure never went further than comedy guy. Kinda sad. AMW are going to feud with Abyss & Kid Kash, but their first match wasn’t too good. Because Kash & Abyss aren’t too good. At least it keep them occupied while Simon Diamond & Johnny Swinger have their little reign. Good interview segment with Tenay. Gilberti is an asshole to David Young, whose gimmick seems to be « perenial wannabee » after months doing deeds for Siaki. They beat him up after he loses to the Sandman. This bunch have a decent little chemistry as characters. The product is way less crazy than it was, makes more sense and has more developped feuds. The main event scene is still dead because of the booking and presence of Russo, and now Dusty. AJ Styles has really been wasted big time. 2003/10/01 Jerry Lynn vs Michael Shane 2003/10/01 Chris Daniels vs D-Lo Brown

I feel like we need to poke at this a bit. I've been saying this for years. The Worm is hideous. At least the People's Elbow looks cool because of the Rock's maneurisms and the Mutaesque snap. Cena's version with the shitty fist-drop is ridiculous.

"L"ascenceur social", as we say in French. But really, yeah, good for her though.

You got a laugh out of me.

PPV 62 The Raven vs James Mitchell feud keeps on carrying this promotion, with strong promos, logical build and this week a chaotic and bloody six-men dog collar match between Raven & CM Punk & Julio Dinero vs Shane Douglas & Slash & Sinn, which had a few interesting spots and, despite an anti-climatic finish not even caught on camera (nice TNA prod), felt like an old IWA Japan match. That’s a positive. The post match with a group hanging was actually very good, CM Punk doing a great job looking hung. Jeff Jarrett has its first good match in a while against Chris Daniels, who’s got a bunch of creepy zombi-looking minions with him. That gimmick feels pretty forced. 3 Live Kru is a perfect instance of the whole being better than the sum of its parts, as their match against Gilberti, Diamond & David Young (subbing for an injured Swinger) was pretty good and heated. Of course, the tag titles were on the line despite only Diamond being a legit tag champ. Always hate when that happens. Anyway, 3 Live Kru goes like this : Konnan does his sequence with funky submissions and rool-up sequences then tags out to catch his breath for the rest of the match, Ron Killings does athletic spots then sells, and James gets the hot tag and does his routine. It kinda works. Russo is a petty mysoginic pussy. Why ? Ok, a useless Dusty Rhodes vs AJ Styles bunkhouse match which ends with AJ getting a bare ass spanking, then Dusty threatens to hit Russo with his leather belt only to have Trinity (in a short dress, that’s important) putting her body on the line and getting, yes, a spanking too. So, World champ AJ Styles and former powerful female figure Trinity show ass, while Russo doesn’t even get one belt lash. Big fucking pussy. The X-div elimination match between Jerry Lynn, Chris Sabin, Juventud Guerrera, Frankie Kazarian & Nosawa was pretty decent since they didn’t need to sell a lot, although it kinda degenerated into a little bit of a cluster when they got to the final three. Kazarian hits on every hot girl now (Lollipop this week, can't blame him), so I guess he’s a heel now. The Kid Kash stuff against Terry Taylor was bad, with Rooster looking worse than pretty much every other veterans that have showed up (not working since 1995 probably explains it though, as he was in really good shape physically), and the Red Shirt Security vs Black Shirt Security was kinda ridiculous aesthetically, although not that bad as Kevin Northcut looks like a decent power hoss. The Black Shirt are complete jabronies though. 2003/09/24 Jeff Jarrett vs Christopher Daniels 2003/09/24 3 Live Kru vs Glen Gilberti & Simon Diamond & David Young 2003/09/24 Raven & CM Punk & Julio vs Shane Douglas & Slash & Sinn

What new show ? Total Diva ? Well, good for Foley who manages to still get a paycheck from them.