TNA At Ringside: It’s Too Friggin Early

Columns

Welcome back to ringside everyone. Before we start, I send my congratulations out to the Carolina Hurricanes and Edmonton Oilers for making it to the Stanley Cup Finals. For those who care, I will be attending all home games the Canes have during the Cup Finals. Now, to the news:

* TNA Thursday Impact Rating: 1.2

Oooohhhh, highest rating to date. Good news for TNA as the ratings continue to be steady in this new slot. As I have stated before, if this keeps up, TNA will most likely move to 9 once The Ultimate Fighter wraps up.

Nothing else newsworthy this week. However, I will state that I did not end up renting UFC 60 and I’m kind of happy about that. That’s my problem with UFC/Boxing PPVs. You pay 40 dollars for the Main Event (for the most part) and you never know what to expect. Gracie/Hughes didn’t even make it out of the first round, yet it was hyped to be the biggest UFC fight to date. At least with wrestling, you know what to expect before you rent the PPV. Still, I will most likely rent UFC 61 when Shamrock takes on Ortiz and Arlovski takes on Sylvia.

For the record, I did see the Hughes/Gracie fight and holy shit is Matt Hughes a dominant son of a bitch or what? He destroyed Gracie right from the bell. I will give Gracie credit though; a lesser man would have tapped out to that arm bar.

Not So Shocking

Wow, so Jeff Jarrett is back into the Main Event scene (although we all know that he never really left) with his win over Raven. Now the question becomes, does TNA have the balls to keep the belt off of Jarrett? You have to admit, if they want to pull the trigger on the end of the reign of Christian, now would be the time. Of course, Jarrett is the guy that they know can carry the ball, for better or worse. If not Jarrett, then who? The other participants currently in the match are Ron Killings and Abyss. If they wanted to put the belt on Abyss, they would have done it by now. As for Killings, yeah, we won’t even go there considering it’s not going to happen. Which just leaves Christian and Jarrett. If Christian wins, who’s next? He’s already had a long term feud with Abyss and before that, he came off a feud with Monty Brown. What heels are left? Scott Steiner? Yeah, I’ll pass on that. Jeff Jarrett? If he loses at King Of The Mountain match, expect Sting to be involved. There’s nobody left for Christian to feud with if he wins at Slammiversary. As for Jarrett, he can continue his program with Sting, with or without the belt. So why not put it on him? It makes Jarrett happy because he gets another title reign in the record books and it makes the fans happy as there is no way Sting is losing this feud, meaning Sting will win the belt from Jarrett. That would of course set up the passing of the torch match between Sting and Joe. The only thing I wouldn’t like about this idea is the constant title switching. Still, to say Joe would be a short term champion would be ridiculous so I guess that makes up for it in the long run.

AMW vs. The Naturals, honestly, how many times have we seen this match? Seriously TNA, get some new teams or stop pairing off the old teams in the same match. Not only did we get the same match, but we always seem to get the same result. AMW cheats to win. I know they are heels but this was a non title match against a proven team. Would it have killed TNA to have Daniels and Styles to cost AMW the match and give The Naturals some sort of a rub before they hand them off to Shane Douglas?

So what’s with this Raven/Zybsko storyline? I understand Zybsko stopping Raven from using the guitar but why would he stop Jarrett? Doesn’t Zybsko hate Raven and wouldn’t he want Jarrett to decapitate him with the guitar? See, when Zybsko takes the guitar away from Raven that leads to Raven once again being screwed over. When Zybsko takes the guitar away from Jarrett, it just creates confusion. Thank god this storyline is ending at Slammiversary when Jim Cornette debuts and Zybsko is fired. Sadly, a match is bound to happen for these two and that match is bound to suck.

Alex Shelley and Kevin Nash could be the most entertaining team ever. They are both solid mic workers who bring the funny and Alex Shelley is the man in the ring. The match was Lethal was very good and I think it actually put Lethal even more over as he beat the odds and defeated Shelley with Nash at ringside. As most of us suspected, Chris Sabin will challenge Kevin Nash at the PPV. Now while I have no problem with this, I still think it’s the wrong guy to give the rub to. As I’ve stated many times, I feel that Sabin is on that platform below Styles, Daniels, and Joe. With those 3 in other divisions at that moment, Sabin is on the top platform. Now I understand the leader of the X Division stepping up to defend the honor of the X Division but Sabin already has that rub. A guy like Jay Lethal could use that rub a lot more than Chris Sabin. Still, as long as Nash is willing to put him over, I can’t complain too much.

You want know why Homicide could leave TNA and go to WWECW? Because he’s stuck in this stupid ass storyline. I pray that TNA gets Low Ki in there full time and they follow through with re-uniting Ki and Homicide. If not, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Homicide show up in WWECW.

In more news concerning Slammiversary, the “go home” edition of the show won’t air until 12 o clock midnight. Great, so on the eve of TNA’s second biggest PPV, they get screwed over on time. Why not just have the show on Friday at 8? I bet it draws higher ratings than Smackdown.

YouTube Match Of The Week

Tough choice this week but I decided to go with Kevin Nash, I have no clue why.

Match: Kevin Nash vs. Goldberg
Event: WCW Starcade 1998
Rating: *1/2

Plugs

Ian & Steve debate on current affairs. I found this to be a very good read as I enjoy the works of both writers.

Daniels discusses ECW.

Brashear explains the storyline that made Neeley fall in love with Jarrett.

Eric types a column and most likely takes a well deserved break.

The End

Enjoy the weekend folks. I’ll be back next week with some brand new shit. Drop me a ling at AMPLine4Life@aol.com and join me next time At Ringside.