Welcome back to ringside everyone. If this column isn’t up to my usual standards, sorry, I’ve been a bit under the weather for most of this week and have not had a lot of free time. Before I talk Wrestling, I will take the road of Eric S:
In memory of Deshaun Holton aka Proof. Proof was shot at a Detroit club early Tuesday morning in the midst of an argument. If you don’t know who Proof is, he was the hype man for Eminem. He was also the mayor of Detroit Hip Hop and the founder of the rap group D12. He was 32 years old and was hitting the peak of his rap career.
“The Day that My Life is taken..I know I’ll be Drunk as Fuck in a Detroit Club//..screaming on Some dude about the ways I’m gonna f*ck Him Up//He’ll be afraid of My Knuckle Game//My Family and Crew will Cry..while Eminem fans saying its a Damn Shame”
R.I.P. Deshaun “Proof” Holton
In the wake of this I wonder what will become of the career of Eminem and D12. They were supposed to work on their next album this month but I can’t see that happening right now. Sources say that Eminem will return to old form (Marshall Mathers LP) and get away from his last release (Encore). He sure has plenty of material to do this as he just recently remarried and re-divorced his wife and his best friend was shot and killed. I wish Eminem, D12, and the rest of Shady/Aftermath well in this time of tragedy.
News & Shit
Final Saturday Impact Rating: 1.0
Pretty good news here for TNA. It’s not over exciting but it’s nice to go out with a good rating. They put on a good show and got a good rating for it. The bigger and better thing here is the lead in. The Ultimate Fight 3 (re-run) was the lead in for Impact on Saturday and will be the lead in for Thursdays. Now unlike previous TUF seasons, I’m actually watching this one. The names Ortiz and Shamrock draw in the casual fans like myself. If SpikeTV promotes TNA during TUF3, this could work out well for all three parties and could lead to a primetime slot for TNA once TUF3 ends.
Liger vs. Daniels is off
So due to one problem or another, the Liger vs. Daniels match at Lockdown is now off. This is not good news for TNA, it’s not entirely their fault, but it’s not good news. They announced the match and got people excited about it, and now Daniels is set to face a mystery opponent. Christopher Daniels would look real good on Team US in the World X Cup right about now wouldn’t he? And if TNA was smart enough, they could get it done. They could run an injury angle with Shelley taking out Dutt. That earns Shelley heat with his team (which they seem to be shooting for) and heat with the fans. Daniels could step up and be the leader and captain for the team. Instead, TNA will probably bring in an ROH guy for one show and have him job to Daniels. Hell, the mystery partner could be someone already in TNA, he’s still jobbing.
Sabu vs. Joe could be off
Rumors have it that Sabu was scheduled to be at the Impact tapings on Monday but did not show, now he may no show the Lockdown PPV. It’s reported that TNA did not clear the match 100% with Sabu. Good job TNA, first you’ve got a scheduling conflict with Liger and now you’ve just got a conflict with Sabu. As I’ve mentioned, this is a guilty pleasure dream match of mine, if this gets pulled from the show, then what happens? Do you have Joe face a mystery partner as well or do you have Joe take on Daniels? Hell, maybe you have Joe vs. Daniels vs. Styles, and have a mystery partner for Team Sting in the Lethal Lockdown match. So many options and all make sense but none are good. I say that because when a card in announced, people expect that card. I know that little disclaimer says Card Subject To Change but when a PPV card changes, somebody screwed up.
Spoilers That Aren’t Spoilers
So there’s good and bad with this new move to Thursday Nights in term of my personal benefit. The good thing is that I’m really the first person to cover TNA since this column goes up early Friday. The bad thing is that I now read the spoilers for the show. I love TNA and I love this job, but there’s no way I’m doing the Live Coverage of Impact and then typing up this column after midnight, sorry, that’s not how I roll. Of course the spoilers don’t have every little detail, which is why Shawn Michaels Mystery Partner invented editing.
So of course I have to start with Samoa Joe defeating Christopher Daniels for the X Division Title making Daniels a WWE Transitional Champion. I honestly don’t know what TNA was thinking here. The easiest solution might have been a Sabu run in, and that might have been the plan if Sabu had showed, but they didn’t go with that. They could have gone with a DQ on Joe because even if he gets disqualified, he still stays strong because he’s Samoa Joe. So the question is, was this Bound For Glory booking by TNA? So many things seemed to play a factor in this match. They knew Liger wasn’t going to show at Lockdown, Daniels couldn’t beat Joe on TV, and Sabu didn’t show at the tapings. So I guess the only solution was to put Joe over Daniels. This really sucks for Christopher Daniels. He was the longest reigning X Division Champion during his first run and he didn’t even make it to the next PPV on his second run. Now the question becomes, who beats Joe for the belt? Does TNA go the route of a three way or “non-pin” match to take the belt off of him or do the repay Daniels by allowing him to be the first man to defeat Samoa Joe in a TNA ring?
Also, what happened to getting Joe out of the X Division? Zybsko claims that he wants Joe to move on to bigger and better things, then TNA sticks him in an 4 Way X Division Match, has him win it, and then beats Daniels for the X Division Title. That’s not really the way you get a guy out of the X Division. TNA has booked Joe very well up to this point, don’t screw it up because of some things that could be out of your control.
Ok, now how in the hell does a street fight end in a DQ? Am I to believe that a schedule 6 Man Tag at Genesis is allowed to go all over the arena with no DQ but a normally no DQ match…ends in a DQ? Something is screwed up right now. I’m also sick of this whole “Double Feud” Team 3-D is involved in. Are they feuding with Team Canada or AMW? Make up my mind. I also don’t like Spike Dudley coming in now. I think he would have been better suited coming in at the May PPV and helping Team 3-D to win the Tag Team Titles. Instead he comes in on Impact (and isn’t it ironic that Team 3-D debuts on the first Saturday Impact and Brother Spike debuts on the first Thursday Impact?) and causes a street fight to end in a DQ. Team 3-D needs to be over and done with Team Canada, move on, and beat AMW. Did TNA not hear the pop for Team 3-D at Final Resolution when we all thought they won the belts? They should have on the fly booked that decision to be final.
Ok, so Sting announced that his team would be Ron Killings, Rhino, AJ Styles, and Himself. Most of us saw that coming based on previous episodes. So are those the guys on Stings speed dial or is he planning on debuting a new man after his team wins at Lockdown? I honestly think that this was the best decision for TNA. There was no need to hype a “mystery partner” when the inevitable would have happened. There would have been all this hype only to be followed by the debut of Luger, a debut nobody wants to see. With this team Sting as assembled, we are guaranteed a *** match at worst. Why? Come on, AJ Styles is in this match, that alone gives the match *** credibility.
So overall, it was a good Thursday Night debut. Three solid matches that all seemed to be important from the start. TNA claimed that they were going to start focusing more on storylines and strong matches as opposed to jumbled mess and squash matches, well they are off to a good start.
YouTube Match Of The Week
I went with a Jushin Liger match this week since we won’t see him at Lockdown: (sorry about the Japanese announcers)
Match: Jushin Liger vs. Black Tiger (Eddie Guerrero)
Rating: ***3/4
Event: NJPW
The E-Mail Bag
Hey man…been a long time since I contributed to the six-sided ring circus known as TNA At Ringside. Just a few things.
~I agree that they blundered the Joe DVD. Given, RoH puts out their own material, so I wasn’t expecting stuff from there. Commentary would have been fantastic, especially if they could get Daniels and Styles to comment on the matches with Joe. That would have made it worth the purchase.
~Joe/Daniels is an interesting case for the first Thursday iMPACT. On one hand, you could have Daniels beat Joe and end the streak, but it will kill Joe’s momentum. You can have Joe win and recapture the X-Division title, but it takes away from Daniels/Liger at Lockdown. Or you can have a schmozz to end it all, but that would be a problem because (A) Sabu has been non-existant in his feud with Joe, and (B) Liger’s not around either. The only way to salvage anything is to make it non-title. Otherwise, TNA has backed themselves into a corner they cannot get out of.
~I would die laughing if Luger came in. Chances are, he’s in a similar situation to Marty Jannety (house arrest, can’t leave state, etc.), so I don’t think we’ll see him coming in anytime soon…would have loved to have heard the “You killed Liz” chants, though.
~I think Sting is going to swerve us and pick Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Sean Waltman as his teammates. I have a feeling at least one of those names will appear…
~I called Christian/Abyss for the belt at Lockdown back in December. Dunno, was just a hunch, considering Christian was going to get the belt at the beginning of the year and Abyss is a Lockdown Main Eventer, so there ya go. As far as the match goes…I think it’ll be good. Christian knows how to work with big men, and Abyss is one of the better big guys in the sport, so I’m expecting at least three snowflakes for this one.
‘Til next week,
~Ramsey~
Yeah, having no ROH matches on the Joe DVD hurts the DVD as well. Luckily, I have all 3 Joe ROH DVDs so I’m not missing too much. Styles/Daniels commentary on their matches along with Joe would have owned. I would love to hear the commentary from Styles/Joe on their Turning Point Match considering how stiff it was.
Looks like they got out of the corner by putting the belt on Joe.
Looks like there will be no Luger, Waltman, Hall, or Nash.
Yes, I have high hopes for the Christian/Abyss match. We all know that Christian is a great worker and I think most agree that Abyss is an above average big man. This should be a good “fight for survival” match for Christian, something he can pull off pretty well.
Glad to see the e-mails are back from you.
I enjoyed your Don’t Kill the Champion column. However, I would like to throw in my two cents in regards to what you wrote about the Samoa Joe vs Christopher Daniels match.
I agree that booking this match as each competitor is preparing for extremely important pay-per-view matches is dangerous. But I think there is an additional train of thought that could be applied to the possible finish: instead of having one man go over cleanly on the other or a schmozz as the finish, why not do a 30 minute broadway? Have the guys show the TV audience exactly what they can do, and what kind of incredible athletes TNA has that these two guys could last 30 minutes against each other without one of them getting killed. A broadway means both come out smelling like roses – Daniels proves that he can go against the larger Joe, and Joe proves that he can withstand the challenge of a quicker, more agile opponent.
I don’t know, just a thought – you could have a run – in after the bell rings and the referee has declared the draw. Then from that I would slowly build to a Samoa Joe – Christopher Daniels NWA World title match sometime at the end of this year or the beginning of next (it can happen if done right, see Hogan-Savage circa 1989)
I don’t get a chance to watch TNA though so I don’t know all the ins and outs of the promotion. This was just off the cuff.
Enough from me. Keep up the good work.
Jason
A 30 minute draw is actually a good concept but there was no way it was going to happen. TNA can’t afford to have their matches go 30 minutes on a one hour show. That would really limit the time of other workers already limited time. I would have loved to see that happen but I think we both knew it wouldn’t. Very nice suggestion though.
“They either have Daniels end the undefeated of Joe on TV and not on PPV, they give the belt back to Joe less than a month into Daniels run, or they piss me off and end it in a DQ.”
Well, they could always have Sabu’s run in give Daniels a fall, which would give their feud a little more intensity, since it would be personal and all. It would seem like a waste to end Daniels’ run or Joe’s streak on free TV, but I could see the latter being done as a way to make their inagural Thursday show more memorable. I could also see Joe vs. Sabu for the belt, too, since they could say Sabu was X-Division before their was one or whatever. Good on you for giving Micke vs. Trish its due, by the way.
Brad
Having Sabu run in and help Daniels match was the last thing TNA needed. Remember how lame it was for Hall to use the stun gun on Goldberg to give him his first loss? A first loss on a streak like that should be remembered, not tainted. ROH did a great job with Joe. They built him to be the most dominate wrestler in the world and then gave the rub to Austin Aries cleanly. TNA needs to look at that and follow that trend. A guy like Daniels or Styles for that matter doesn’t need that rub. A guy like Lethal or Shelley could really benefit from it though. The Sabu/Joe feud has been non-existent but that wouldn’t have been the way to add fire.
Trish/Mickie deserve their due, they put on a good match at Wrestlemania. Furthermore, the whole role reversal on Raw was a nice touch. WWE is doing well with this feud…the same can’t be said for Kane.
Plugs
Ian takes a look at WM21 and 22.
Haley takes a look at WM22.
Hevia gives a list of reasons on why Randy Orton was suspended. My thoughts on the situation? AHAHAHAHA
Eric S. talks Golf in a Wrestling column. Hey, somebody has to get on him since I catch heat for talking Hockey in a Wrestling column.
David B. looks at a storyline almost as bad as Dean Douglas.
Gorid goes all e-mail.
The End
Before I end, I must say that I’m upset that I won’t be attending the TNA House Show in Virginia. All I can say is that I have indecisive, non-responsible friends and leave it at that. Next week I return with more TNA goodness and since the playoffs will begin, some Hockey goodies. Drop me a line at AMPLine4Life@aol.com and join me next time At Ringside.
