On Sunday night’s TNA LockDown 2014 PPV 3/9/14, the end of a particular storyline era happened that I felt was truly worth noting here in this space.
No, I’m not talking about Team MVP beating Team Dixie Carter to end the Dixie-Land saga, for something tells me that Dixie will still be jockeying for power come Thursday night’s TV airing.
However, the way Team Dixie lost the match is my particular focus for this piece, since it involved the face turn of one Bully Ray.
Say what you want about TNA’s failures over the years, but one thing that was done mostly right was the heel persona of Bully Ray. They built up the heel character by doing a classic storyline involving the breakup of Team 3D, which worked because Ray and Devon were together for so long and so the story had some substance behind it.
With that said, most of the credit must go to Ray himself, who delivered some great lines about “The Twittahs”, his calves, and of course, the always-rhetorical question:
“Do You Know Who I Am?!”
While the Aces and 8s saga lasted way too long, the formulation of the group with Bully Ray at the helm was a solid idea. The problem was that TNA decided to litter the group with wrestlers and non-wrestlers who really couldn’t be taken seriously: Garrett Bischoff, Wes Briscoe, Mike Knox, Luke Gallows, Taz, Mr. Anderson, Brooke Tessmacher, etc.
This group wasn’t going to set the world on fire with that lineup, and yet Bully Ray still did a good a job as he possibly could with the awful general material he was given.
Ultimately, while I do think the Bully Ray character did run its course and it was a good time to make this change, a part of me will actually and truly miss the over the top bad guy antics that helped Bully Ray prove he could hang with the best of them as a singles heel character:
http://youtu.be/uuYllWp1aB8
That’s all from me — CB.
