Interinactivity Summer Bash 2013: Day 1 – The Hardys, TNA, ROH & Chikara

Columns, Top Story

Welcome to the Interinactivity Summer Bash 2013! It’s going to be a fun week. I had WAY more responses to Interinactivity than I was counting on, so much that it had to be split into different parts to really be readable. So I’ve grouped them all into 5 articles, one for each day this week. They’re also separated somewhat by subject, for your convenience.

Monday: The Hardys, TNA, ROH & Chikara (responses to Scott Keith, Matt Harrak, CB, Zork & J-Train)
Tuesday: Shaemus, Mark Henry & The Miz (responses to CB, Swayze, Chris Sanders, Jonah Kue, Rhett Davis & PUSSBOT 3000)
Wednesday: Mid-Card Titles, Hall Of Fame, Older Wrestlers & Racism (responses to HH, IS, SS & W)
Thursday: CM Punk, The Shield & Reinvigorating Wrestling (responses to Mike Gojira, Steven Gepp, Jonah Kue, James Sawyer, Zork, Caleb Hamilton, & Wrestling Facts)
Friday: BD, Pulse History, Swayze & Commenters (responses to Martin Shaw, CB, James Sawyer, Chris Sanders, Bob Loblaw & Cynical Bastard)

(If you don’t see your entire comment one day, chances are I split it up to give the articles some flow so the rest of it will appear on a different day.) I won’t waste anyone’s time with a long intro, as there’s a lot of reading here as it is. Enjoy!

 

Scott Keith: What’s the best move for TNA from a storyline and business perspective: Headlining Bound for Glory with the winner of the tournament beating Bully Ray, or Bully losing the title beforehand and headlining against Hulk Hogan?

BD: Without really being up on current TNA, I’d have to say that fighting and beating Bully Ray would be the way to go. It’s been said to death, but this Hulk Hogan nonsense needs to end – he’s basically crippled at this point anyway. Call me insensitive if you must, but I don’t think it means a lot to beat Hulk Hogan if Hulk Hogan can’t even run the ropes or drop a leg. And the Bully Ray thing – although it’s been a pleasant surprise over the last couple years, it has a shelf life. This would be the time to pull the trigger on someone going over him, clean and decisive.

Keep in mind though, it will only matter as long as the winner of this thing is someone who is actually worth it. This is where TNA usually drops the ball – I had to look up who the BFG participants are this year, and in my opinion the only ones who could really make a difference for the company in the main event scene are Aries, Daniels, Styles, Joe and maybe Kaz.

Hardy’s usefulness to TNA has been debatable from the start, but at this point it’s next to nothing. I got nothing against Roode, Magnus or Park, and enjoy their work, but they’re not the guys to carry a company. Mr. Anderson is a waste of time, and I have no idea who Jay Bradley is so I can’t really comment there.

The only other guy is Hernandez, whom I have always enjoyed, particularly in LAX. I think he’s got a lot more to offer than what TNA has shown, and I think he could make a decent go of it. I think I’m in the minority there though, as I’ve never seen a lot of praise for Hernandez’ work.

Being that you’re Scott Keith and all, I’d like to hear who YOU think should win it this year.

 

CB: So I just got done watching The Call, and it was actually a pretty good movie. What is your favourite movie or movies starring a pro wrestler?

BD: I’ve watched one WWE film over the course of my life, and I refuse to watch more. Watching those movies is like putting bleach in your contact lens solution and hoping you don’t go permanently blind. I’m tempted to say “They Live”, although I will (embarrassingly) admit that I did actually enjoy the last two “Fast” movies with Rock… which is pretty rare for me and “Fast” movies.

Ugh. I feel like punching myself for saying that.

Swayze: The Kurt Angle one where he punches out a lady dressed as a clown and kidnaps her mentally challenged daughter.

Yes, this movie does exist.

 

Zork: I’ll have a question, but now I want to talk about the Hardys, way to go Blair. I always thought Jeff was a sloppy in ring performer and that’s where Matt excelled more, he could have some pretty solid matches. Jeff usually had to be carried in my eyes. Jeff did have more natural goth charisma than Matt did, Matt just sounds like a stupid redneck. The best thing he had going was his Mattitude V1 gimmick in 2002, the only other time he was worth anything was when he came back to feud with Edge after being fired, Edge carried him and the right guy won that feud because in the long term Matt Hardy isn’t worth much. I still remember hearing about “Cold Blooded” Matt Hardy in TNA and then I saw him with his beer gut and stupid dreadlocks, that shit was FUNNY. Jeff though, he’s just one of those guys that has that intangible thing that makes him popular despite the fact that he’s not all that great of a wrestler or talker. I liked them as a tag team way more than I ever did like either one of them separately.

BD: Truthfully, I think that BOTH the Hardys needed to be carried if they were to have a great match. There might be the odd exception, but I thought Matt was quite over-rated in the ring as well. Mattitude was an… okay gimmick, I suppose? Really, if you take away the stupid Windows Media Player “buffering” knockoff entrance and the Matt facts, there wasn’t much to it. I agree though, Jeff has a MASSIVE appeal that Matt never did, that doesn’t work for me personally, but he was a license to print money for Vince during his last WWE run.

Incidentally, this is why I find it funny when people talk about how Orton’s however-many strikes may make WWE “hesitant” to put a belt on him. I don’t claim to know anything about backstage goings-on, and I truly believe that anyone who does is usually full of shit. But trust me when I tell you that WWE does NOT factor in how many strikes Orton or anyone else have against them when considering who to do what with. They do not give a fuck, whatsoever.

And I don’t need fake or even real knowledge of backstage goings-on to know this. All I need to do is look at WWE’s history in such matters. Jake Roberts, Scott Hall… the list goes on and on. And Jeff Hardy is the perfect example of this. WWE gave Jeff Hardy a main-event slot after he’d burned himself right out of the company in 2002, AND had two strikes against him ALREADY AFTER he’d already come back the second time.

And being that this is a special edition of Interinactivity, I’m going to bring back this old gem – you could donkey punch Linda McMahon during forced anal, and Vince would still bring you back (with increased pay) if he thought you could make him a fucking DIME.

 

J-Train: On the topic of Matt Hardy, does Reby Sky get creeped out about Matt Hardy still being obsessed with Lita? He probably should just get over it already.

BD: Christ, Al Qaeda thinks that Matt needs to get over it. Matt is so far above his station with that Reby girl, it’s hilarious. Good on him, really.

 

Matthew Harrak: When is CHIKARA going to finally be considered the #3 promotion?

BD: Never.

Don’t misunderstand – I’ve not seen as much CHIKARA as I’d like, but I have seen some, and I have no trouble believing that they deliver a better product than ROH at this point in time. If you told me I had to watch one or the other in it’s present form, I’d pick CHIKARA every time.

But until either Ring Of Honor fully goes under or CHIKARA does something to actually get on the map in a much bigger way than they have so far, then Ring Of Honor can tread on it’s legacy. Most wrestling fans at least know of Ring Of Honor’s existence, even if they only know it as the place that CM Punk and Daniel Bryan came from. CHIKARA doesn’t have that. Even people who aren’t into ROH anymore, like myself, remember how good it was from it’s inception all the way through 2008 or so. So although it’s taken a huge nosedive since then, even though CHIKARA is better at the moment doesn’t mean it was ever as good as ROH at it’s peak.

I truly believe that ROH during those years was better than the original ECW. It certainly produced more stars – CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins, Antonio Cessaro, Austin Aries, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe and many more all owe their professional existence to ROH for getting them noticed and developing them as wrestlers on that stage. Their indy cred shot up, and the cred of the promotion as a whole shot up as a result. It became a reliable place to find talent (similar to how WWE and WCW raided ECW for the same thing). CM Punk is actually the perfect example of this – look at Punk when he started in ROH and when he finished. He developed there. Not that he wasn’t good when he started – he was. But he matured as a wrestler and a performer there, in a way that you can actually see on screen.

Unfortunately, when ROH lost those guys and SO many others, they just couldn’t recover. Not that The Briscoe’s and others weren’t able to do their part to make it entertaining, but it just wasn’t the same. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Ring Of Honor because the shows still deliver what they promise, but they’re not nearly as progressive or fan-friendly as they used to be, and now they seem to have trouble creating more memorable stars on their own. Remember at the end of ECW, how the main-event was Tommy Dreamer, Justin Credible, Jerry Lynn, CW Anderson, and Rhino? I got nothing against any of those guys, but that’s the state that ROH is in right now.

CHIKARA though, while I enjoy them (especially for what they are) and think their current product is better than ROH’s current product, they also have not made enough noise to really get noticed, and they haven’t really developed any wrestlers that have made anyone stand up and take notice of the promotion, in the way that, say, CM Punk and Samoa Joe did for ROH when they had their series (just to use the most famous example).

And that’s what it will take for wrestling fans to consider them the #3 promotion. It’s the same reason wrestling fans will always consider TNA to be the #2 promotion, no matter how bad or good it gets – barring someone else making a much bigger move than has been made by any wrestling promotion since the year 2000.

Hell, in most wrestling fans’ minds, there’s only one promotion really on the map anyway. Unfortunately, they’re not totally wrong on that either.

 

Well, that’s it for Day 1. Make sure to check out Day 2.

I want to thank everyone for participating in this. I said it already, but I didn’t expect this much response, and had a ton of fun writing this.

This has been “Interinactivity”. Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.

I’ll be in my trailer.

Yours,
BD

BD writes about professional wrestling on Inside Pulse until he has to stop because he's about to have a stroke. Any “errors” that are made on his part are, of course, intentional and represent an artistic choice. He acts as a kind of fly paper for the emotionally disturbed.