Welcome back to the very source of TNA news, rumors, and a whole lot of fun stuck in between. Last week was a washout due to things that occurred that was beyond my control. I tried to push it off to Friday, but that did not work out so well. I am here this week, so without further delay, let’s see what is going on in the land of the alternative.
Concussion City
While not TNA related, it does relate into wrestling and sports in general. Chris Nowinski and the Sports Legacy Institute was a highlight at a news conference in Tampa, Florida as they uncovered that repeated concussions in any contact sport speed depression and can cause dementia, along with other brain-related diseases that are normally found in older human beings. The case study revolved around an 18 year old high school student that died recently, as he suffered repeated concussions while playing football.
What this may mean in the wrestling business is that there could be increased pressure from the medical experts and possibly the government to develop a method that would reduce the occurence of concussions and force strict testing requirements of all competitors to make certain that they are not suffering from any kind of brain disease. For more details about this groundbreaking discovery, check out the article that is in the Los Angeles Times. It is an informative read.
TNA’s UK Tour a Success
From January 16 to January 24, TNA was in the UK for a tour. They performed in Dublin, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and London throughout the tour and attracted thousands of fans. One major thing to note is that while in Birmingham, Dixie Carter announced that TNA was negotiating to hold a live Pay-Per-View in the UK this year. For complete results of the tour, click here.
TNA Rapid-Fire
ShopTNA.com has new items stocked for you to spend your money on!
The Beautiful People are honorary “soccerettes” on SoccerAM.
“My Turn” by Hoobastank is your theme song for TNA Destination X on March 15, only on Pay-Per-View.
Kevin Nash is back home and is recovering from a severe staph infection. Rumor has it that he was at the last set of tapings. My job isn’t to spoil you.
TNA iMPACT Recap
We have TNA iMPACT coverage once again, so this spot will now be used to summarize the prior iMPACT instead of me force-feeding you results a week late. If you want the real-time coverage, check out Daniel Douglas’ report. If you want 10 thoughts, check out Jon Bandit.
Last week’s iMPACT featured a four way X Division Title match that lasted roughly five or six minutes, but on the plus side, it wasn’t a five or six minute match that had a commercial somewhere in there. Booker T and Shane Sewell had a heart to heart as that seems to be our next feud in the making in TNA. The Main Event Mafia complains about Team 3-D’s credibility to issue challenges, but Jim Cornette sweetens the deal and makes a four way match involving 3-D, Angle, and Sting for the title. It’s not like TNA had anything important to do for February. It’s smart money to hold off the Angle/Jarrett rubber match for Destination X since Wrestlemania isn’t until April. The sad thing, I just can’t see Angle/Jarrett in any “rubber match” that screams Elevation X. Hopefully that does not go down and they go Last Man Standing or Ironman/Ultimate Submission for the rubber match.
Team 3-D shows up on the program from Japan where they won the IWGP Tag Titles and they seem fine with a four way match. Meanwhile, it’s about R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the MEM locker room, as they want Petey Williams to suffer. This is followed by an uneventful Knockouts match that ends with an annihilation of ODB by Awesome Kong. However, Kong is afraid of baseball bats, especially when handled by Taylor Wilde and Roxxi. I’m guessing that the Kongtourage will be in a six Knockout match at Against All Odds where the title can change hands. It’s TNA, they do things like that.
Meanwhile, the Frontline Jobber Division takes on the MEM “Can’t Wrestle At All” Division. No offense to Booker, but Steiner was horrid. He’s going to kill someone one of these days. EY was eliminated and Petey Williams was the sacrificial lamb. It took an act of Sewell to stop it from getting worse. Unfortunately for him, it got worse. Matt Morgan completes the turn and he beats the holy hell out of Abyss and that can mean only one thing. The return of the real Abyss? Finally, after Angle decimated AJ Styles in the main event, Angle declares that this is the beginning of the end of TNA. This leaves a nice cliffhanger to our next episode.
TNA iMPACT Preview
Tonight, the Main Event Mafia will conduct a hostile takeover of TNA. There’s few details on this, but TNA Management will most likely take care of any threats of takeover by the MEM. I won’t even discuss the spoiler-free match listing since the spoiler free listing actually contains spoilers as to what the show will be like. It can’t be that bad, but you know how TNA does segments and paste them into the broadcast, so you can’t judge the show based on the matches. Tune into iMPACT tonight as the Main Event Mafia takes over TNA for one night!
TNA Ratings News
TNA scored a 1.1 rating last week, down from a 1.2 two weeks ago. TNA has proven that they can keep their audience and that they don’t need one week wonders like the competition does. It’s hard to compare the two, but if TNA can keep their 1.5 million viewers week in week out while RAW ranges from 3 million to 5 million depending on who is on the show, you got to give a little credit to TNA.
This Week In Wrestling
TNA iMPACT
WWE SmackDown
WWE Royal Rumble
WWE RAW
ECW
Pulse Wrestling Wire
Check out this week’s Widrospective.
Vinny analyzes The Wrestler.
Only in ROH would a 60 minute time limit match not last 60 minutes.
Ivan Rushfield asks the same question everyone else is asking.
Kurt Angle is #9 in the Top 100.
Until Next Time
Stay tuned to Pulse Wrestling tonight and throughout the weekend for news and real-time coverage of iMPACT and SmackDown! I’ll be back Monday for another dose of RAW. Follow me on Twitter at pulsepaul and follow Pulse Wrestling on Twitter at pulsewrestling. We’ll see you back next week for some more TNA news!
