The Bell To Bell News Report 01.30.10

Posted by Randy Harrison on 01.30.2010

Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan deliver a state of TNA address that doesn't address a whole lot, Ring of Honor announces the first round matches for their TV Title tournament and the Honky Tonk Man turns down the WWE Hall of Fame. All those stories and my look at the weekly shows are just a click away in this week's Bell to Bell...




Hello folks and welcome to this week's edition of the Bell to Bell News Report! I'm your affable host, Randy Harrison, and I have to start out this week's column with an apology for missing last week's column. Things went a little haywire in the real world here as after the huge storm that cut through California last week, a tree branch ended up falling onto the roof of my house and causing some damage that needed to be sussed out and repaired, leaving me with precious little time to get the repairs finished before the next rain storm pounded through. I apologize again for missing last week, but I'll make up for it this week with a look at all the week's shows, as well as my thoughts on the Jericho/Hurricane arrests, TNA looking to move to Monday's permanently, the Honky Tonk Man turning down the WWE for the Hall of Fame and a whole lot more.

I've made my peace with the apology, I've ran down what you can expect this week, there's not much else left to do but get this party started!


You know the drill...





Ding Ding....









D-Generation X vs. Legacy - Winners: D-Generation X (pinfall, Michaels' Sweet Chin Music on Rhodes)
MVP vs. The Big Show - Winner: The Big Show (pinfall, chokeslam)
Maryse vs. Eve Torres - Winner: Maryse (pinfall, French Kiss)
The Miz vs. Kofi Kingston - Winner: Kofi Kingston (pinfall, Trouble in Paradise)
Gail Kim vs. Alicia Fox - Winner: Gail Kim (pinfall, boot to the face)
Sheamus vs. John Cena - Winner: Sheamus (disqualification, Orton-ference)


The last Raw show before the Royal Rumble suffered greatly from the lack of James Roday, who plays Shawn Spencer on the USA show Psych and was supposed to serve as guest host with his co-star Dule Hill. Roday was forced to undergo an appendectomy on the Saturday before Raw, severely limiting my excitement for the show as I am a huge fan of the show and of Roday's work on the show. As a guest host, Hill did alright on his own, especially his segment with Carlito and the call-in from Roday served to soothe my wounds a little bit, but I'm hoping that Roday gets his own shot to host the show again somewhere down the road to make up for missing this one.

In terms of the in-ring developments heading into the Rumble, the opening bout was heavy on foreshadowing as D-Generation X beat Legacy yet again, but not without a lot of tension between Michaels and Triple H, no doubt fueled by last week's announcement that Triple H would be entered in the Royal Rumble as well. I loved seeing Triple H and HBK hash it out before their match as too often, things like what we saw to end last week's show tend to get glossed over in the big picture. As for turns and tension, this is working really well because they both feel like they're right and justified in their actions, which is necessary to sell a great story. I still stand by my assertion that Triple H/HBK at WrestleMania would be a better match than an HBK/Taker rematch and would ultimately mean more as that match has never happened at a WrestleMania, so I am still hoping that we see them split between the Rumble and the February PPV with a slow burn all the way up to the big event. Anything else is going to feel like a little bit of a disappointment to me. All of that being said, Legacy has gotten about all the rub from being in the ring with DX that they possibly can, so unless they're going to be the team to beat DX for the belts to finish driving the wedge, I'd rather not see the two teams against each other again since it's feeling a little stale by now.

The WWE Diva Championship Tournament, also known as the Maryse's Crowning Moment Invitational, continued this week as we have a final in place between Maryse and Gail Kim, the two who pretty much anyone could have predicted would be in the finals when they started this tournament out. With all that they've done to build Maryse and the little that has been happening for Gail Kim seemingly since she returned to the WWE from TNA, the result of this one is all but decided, meaning that we'll probably get to see more interaction between Maryse and The Miz now that they'll both be holding gold and they've been teased as possibly aligning a few times in storyline terms. Maryse has a lot of personality, but she still hasn't grown on me in the ring and puts on some stinkers including the match on this show against Eve. If it comes to pass that Awesome Kong, or more importantly Cheerleader Melissa, are on their way to the WWE in short order, Maryse's reign could be a short-lived one.

The best promo of the show was cut by John Cena as he verbally cut down Mr. McMahon in much the same way that The Undertaker and Triple H have in previous weeks. Vince came out and said virtually the same thing that he has said for the past two weeks before Cena cut him off and got in Vince's face by saying a lot of the things that the fans have been thinking. Not only did Cena shame Vince enough into bringing Bret Hart back next week, but it also set up the main event between Cena and Sheamus in a non-title bout. I really liked this segment (and I usually hate Cena promos) as it was constructive, not particularly hokey and Cena didn't seem like he was trying give a speech rather than cut a natural-sounding promo. Between that and the continued slow build that the Hart/Mcmahon angle has been getting to keep it hot come blowoff time at WrestleMania, I was a very happy camper.

Getting to the main event between Sheamus and Cena, Sheamus looked good in the match and while I tend to hate non-finishes, I understood why they had Orton interject in the way that he did to attack Sheamus to help put the final touches on the build to their Royal Rumble title bout. The one thing that I didn't necessarily agree with though was the way that Cena ended up standing at the end of it after taking Orton out with the Attitude Adjustment. To me, this felt pretty counter-productive as both guys who are set to fight for the WWE Championship end up playing second fiddle and looking weak compared to Cena, who is just in the Royal Rumble match with no guaranteed title shot coming any time soon. The fans already buy Cena, we get that. What they won't buy yet is a bout between two heels in Orton and Sheamus or Sheamus as WWE Champion and in one fell swoop both of those took a credibility hit. Tough way to end what was actually a pretty good Raw overall.





ECW on SyFy Results:

Christian and Kane vs. Ezekiel Jackson and William Regal - Winners: Ezekiel Jackson and William Regal (pinfall, Jackson's uranage on Christian)
Zack Ryder, Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft vs. The Hurricane, Goldust and Yoshi Tatsu - Winners: The Hurricane, Goldust and Yoshi Tatsu (pinfall, Tatsu's front kick on Baretta)


ECW this week was only a two-match show, but they were two pretty damn good matches as the brand tried to build to their title match at the Royal Rumble while also giving some of their new stars a chance to shine. The show started out with William Regal and Ezekiel Jackson throwing some verbal bombs with ECW Champion Christian and I think that all three guys did a really good job in verbally putting over the title match coming up. Christian also did a good job of referencing last week's beatdown and pointed to that two-on-one attack as his reason to pick the partner he picked for the tag match in Kane. While I quibbled a little about Christian and Kane's team seeming kind of random during the commercial break, I quickly forgot about all of that.

All four of those men laid it all out and put on a tremendous television tag team match, something that doesn't seem to happen very much these days. The beginning was a little pedestrian and felt a bit like it was just setting up the commerical break, but after the commercial it was gangbusters. All four came out strong, especially Jackson, who got the clean pin on Christian to put a stamp of approval on his contendership for the title at the Rumble. I was worried when I saw Kane on his way to the ring as I thought that the two big guys would be a real drag on the match and its quality, but that was not the case at all as bout Kane and Jackson more than carried their weight (no pun intended), while Christian and Regal did what they've been doing for months and months on ECW. Great stuff from the top of the ECW card and I hope and pray that Jackson and Christian get more than a couple of minutes of throwaway time at the Rumble.

Following that great match, we got a six-man tag featuring the mid-card of ECW and I wasn't terribly thrilled as Trent Baretta and Caylen Croft were basically the two guys with the most potential to move up the card besides Yoshi Tatsu, meaning that they were probably going to be featured prominently with a lot of focus on them as the heels. That turned out a lot better than I had thought possible as Croft and Baretta probably turned in their best performance to date. I don't know whether they're turning the corner or if it's just a bit of a coincidence, but they were much better off in this one than I thought they would be and they carried much of the match before Baretta ate a kick from Yoshi Tatsu and took the pinfall loss. I like that Tatsu got the win here, especially considering that he has been somewhat stagnant as of late. Best ECW of the year so far and probably one of the best in the past six months with all killer stuff and no filler segments or squash matches to drag it down. Someone needs to tell them that this is what they need to do every week if they want to even attempt to revive the ECW brand.





WWE Superstars Results:

The Bella Twins vs. Jillian Hall and Katie Lea Burchill - Winners: The Bella Twins (pinfall, Nikki's victory roll on Jillian)
Chavo Guerrero vs. Primo vs. Chris Masters - Winner: Chris Masters (submission, Masterlock on Chavo)
David Hart Smith vs. Matt Hardy - Winner: David Hart Smith (pinfall, big boot)


This past week's episode of Superstars was interesting in a few senses as we saw the show involved in big picture storylines two times during the show. The first instance saw Chris Masters, Chavo Guerrero and Primo Colon all battling it out for a slot in the Royal Rumble, something that is pretty rare to see on a show like Superstars that focuses more on one-off matches that don't really affect any of the runnings on the three brands. That's not to say that Masters is going to go far by winning this match or win the Royal Rumble or anything, but it was nice to see guys fighting for something on Superstars since we don't get to see it very often. Seeing one that meant something was a real departure from the usual matches on the show that tend to just be matches for the sake of filling an hour.

From there, we got to see another oddity on Superstars as Chris Jericho came to the ring to cut a promo about his entry into the Royal Rumble. As per the usual, Jericho's promo work was spot on, as he has been for about as long as I can remember, but this one served a dual purpose as R-Truth interrupted and got in Jericho's face before sending him out of the ring with a jumping kick to a big pop. This was a great segment as we got to see R-Truth look like a star heading into the Royal Rumble and even though we know damn well that he won't win the match, he still looks like someone that could be a threat to the main stars in the match. In a match with thirty guys in it, every chance that you can get to make someone look like a guy that could win means another layer of intrigue. Of course, this was before Jericho's brush with Kentucky's finest, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Truth eliminate Jericho as a bit of a punishment for what happened and to give Truth a little boost, though my money is still on Edge returning and eliminating Jericho to start their feud heading into WrestleMania.

The main event for the show saw David Hart Smith get his chance to shine as a singles wrestler against Matt Hardy and while Smith looked okay, this wasn't one of his best showings. It wasn't so much that it was bad, it was just very dull and bland with it feeling very much like something that was just out there to kill some time and finish the show. Judging from how well it went, I would rather have seen the three-way match from earlier in the show as the main event, especially since as I said earlier, they were actually fighting for something. I liked the finish with Hart getting the pin off of a distraction from Natalya at ringside, which fits right into the Harts' pack mentality of fighting together as a team, no matter what kind of match they're in. There was just something missing from this match to push it beyond average and into the territory of being a good match. It's hard to put my finger on it and I appreciate the effort, it just came up short.





TNA Impact Results:

Sean Morley vs. Desmond Wolfe - Winner: Desmond Wolfe (pinfall, Tower of London)
Christoper Daniels vs. Hernandez - Winner: Hernandez (pinfall, Dominator)
The Beautiful People vs. Tara, Awesome Kong and Hamada - Winners: The Beautiful People (pinfall, Rayne's ugly stick shot on Hamada)
Amazing Red and Generation Me vs. Brian Kendrick and The Motor City Machine Guns - Winners: Brian Kendrick and The Motor City Machine Guns (pinfall, Kendrick's inside cradle on Red)
X-Division Championship: Doug Williams vs. Amazing Red (C) - Winner: Dough Williams (pinfall, Chaos Theory)
Ken Anderson vs. Jeff Jarrett - Winner: Ken Anderson (pinfall, low blow)


After last week's Impact show that still seemed to be running at a scattershot pace coming out of the company's live Impact at the beginning of the month, this week's show was much more enjoyable for me as it felt like things slowed down quite a bit and both the backstage segments and the in-ring performances gained a lot from previous weeks. Based on the start of the show, which revolved around Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan and Mick Foley, I wasn't terribly optomistic about what was going to happen in the next two hours, but the company proved me wrong by doing what they tend to do better than any other westling show and that's putting on a tournament.

The 8-Card Stud tournament to crown a new number one contender for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship started with two first-round matches that were both great for what we got from them and had the right guys going over. First up was Sean Morley taking on Desmond Wolfe and Morley looked much better than he did in his match against Daniels, so he had that going for him. Wolfe did a great job, as he has done since he's debuted in TNA, and moves on after a solid effort that continues his hot streak. In the other match, Hernandez and Chris Daniels met in another match that did a lot to repair Daniels' credibility in my eyes. Instead of just looking like a jobber next to Hernandez, he really seemed like he had a chance to advance, which helped the match immensely. Hernandez gets the win to continue HIS hot streak that includes the TNA World Tag Team Title win and we're halfway through the first round without a Hogan cronie in sight, which makes me a happy camper.

By the way, I didn't get to mention it last week so hooray for the in-ring return of Angelina Love...





Ahem....uhhh...we now return you to our regularly scheduled Impact recap...

We had the fallout from last week's Orlando Screwjob come to a head as Hogan and Angle hashed it out in the middle of the ring in a pretty decent segment that saw Angle promise for seemingly the hundredth time to unseat AJ Styles for the title before Hogan came down to apologize for the screwjob taking place and Angle apologized for giving Hogan a loogie facial. This was about what you'd expect to happen until Syxx-Pac and Scott Hall hit the ring to beat Angle down. SHADES OF GREY PEOPLE!! Is Hogan with "The Band" or against them?? Spoiler Alert: He's probably with them since he's saying at the moment that he's not. Anyhow, I actually liked this one as it means that we can probably bury the screwjob part of all of this and just focus on Angle's chase for the title and The Band's chase of Angle. The sooner we can get past the silliness from last week, the better in my opinion.

This week's main event saw Jeff Jarrett getting back into the ring and taking on Ken Anderson and this was not only a necessary match to try to help Anderson seem more important than just another guy in the midst of TNA's midcard, but a necessary match to allow the fans to see Anderson in there against someone other than Abyss. Jarrett did a great job in helping to put Anderson over and Anderson ran with the ball and not only did his usual solid mic work before the match, but also managed to steal the win after a low blow. The finish was a little screwy, but I enjoyed it because it gets Anderson established solidly as a heel while bringing Jarrett back into the mix in TNA without having him end up swallowed up in the main angles in the company. The post-match attack by Anderson was just the icing on the cake and was a strong way to finish a strong show and I really liked it. Most weeks, it feels like the strong finish gets ruined by a commercial break and a two-minute reaction promo, but this time they let the moment stand on its own, which was refreshing.





Friday Night Smackdown Results:

CM Punk vs. Triple H - Winner: Triple H (disqualification, Serena-ference)
Chris Jericho vs. R-Truth - Winner: R-Truth (pinfall, jacknife pin)
No Holds Barred WWE Intercontinental Championship: John Morrison vs. Drew McIntyre (C) - Winner: Drew McIntyre (pinfall, double-underhook DDT)
Rey Mysterio vs. Shawn Michaels - Winner: None (no contest, Batista-ference)


I don't have a lot of time to get into Smackdown as I get close to the deadline, but I do have to say that while I don't appreciate the bait and switch of having the tag title match between DX and Punk's Army cancelled, but I did like seeing Punk and Triple H have a hell of a match to open the show after a lot of talky-talky that included Rey Mysterio and Teddy Long and also set up the night's main event. After seeing Punk going down the card for a while, he's gaining traction with his ever-growing heel faction and I'm happy to see it, especially with him going move for move with the guy that will probably run the company one day. He even avoided taking the pin by having his new follower Serena attack Triple H and cause the disqualification. I really enjoyed seeing this one and it just reminds me of what could have been if Punk had been given a longer chance in his various title reigns to get into a program with Triple H.

The other thing I want to touch on from Smackdown was the tremendous no holds barred match between Drew McIntyre and John Morrison for McIntyre's Intercontinental Championship. These guys just tore the house down and had as brutal a match as they could have in today's WWE-PG Universe. I loved this one and it reminded me of what Intercontinental Championship matches could be and used to be back in the day. It's taken me some time to warm up to McIntyre's IC Title run, but he's starting to win me over and I think that seeing him and Morrison fight it out over the belt for another month or two would be just fine with me. Great work from Morrison and McIntyre and one of the best IC Title matches that I've seen since Mysterio and Jericho were fighting over the belt.







-- The biggest story of this week started out like it could have been something huge, but has been turning more and more into a non-story as more information comes out of this. Chris Jericho and The Hurricane were both arrested at a gas station in Kentucky this past week and charged with public intoxication, or as many other Canadians like Jericho would call it, Thursday. On Tuesday night, Jericho posted on his Twitter account that he was having a Grey Goose contest with The Hurricane and he was winning it. Soon after, both men left the club that they had been drinking at with Matt Hardy and some ladies in tow, taking a taxi to wherever they were headed. Helms and Jericho started to playfight in the back of the cab and that's when things went a little off-kilter.

With both guys drunk, things got a little more heated than one would expect, the cabbie pulled over at the gas station and the police got involved. The good news for Jericho and Hurricane is that they were not arrested for further incidents where Hurricane allegedly struck three people during the "fight" as the state of Kentucky requires those involved to charges to be pressed by the victims for an arrest to be made unless police are witness to the incident. It looks like both will end up paying $159 in fines and court costs and the incident will pretty much go away, unless either decided to challenge the charge, in which case they would have a February 16th date in court. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't already paid the fines and the legal side of the situation was already finished.

Outside of the legalities of everything, including one of the people that Hurricane allegedly struck, Ashley Storer, saying that the whole thing was blown out of proportion partially by her own doing, there is the issue of where everyone involved goes from here in the day and age of the Wellness Policy and public scrutiny on wrestling as a whole. First off, this is no different than three bankers going out and getting blitzed and causing problems and the only reason this ended up making the news to begin with is because they're celebrities. This didn't deserve nearly half the play that it's gotten in the media and is more than likely only getting the attention it is because it's wrestling and "they're all criminals and horrible human beings" or some other such crap.

Jericho is easily the biggest name involved in this whole deal and I'd expect him to end up coming out of it relatively unscathed as he has been one of the top performers in the WWE for the past two years, hasn't had a lot of trouble in the past fifteen years of his career in WCW and WWE and seemed like someone that was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Hurricane decided to start acting like a Hurri-dick. Yes, he was involved in the rough stuff, but he also had enough control to not go blasting people next to him with elbows and stuff, so he's going to get a pass.

Hardy has been off of the WWE's radar for a while now, even with his brother leaving him twisting in the wind by heading back to TNA while fighting drug charges. There's not a lot that WWE can do to punish him outside of releasing him (which they won't do because that would just be handing TNA a Hardyz reunion on a silver platter), so expect to see Hardy continuing on with job duties and tagging with The Great Khali while winning the odd match here and there to avoid having him look like a total jobber for the next guy he has to put over. Shame considering how much potential he showed with V.1 and with his ECW Championship run, but there's only so much that can be done and Hardy's pretty much hit his ceiling.

That only leaves The Hurricane and his happy elbows and for him, you can just take everything I said about Tyler Reks a few weeks back and multiply it by about a hundred. Hurricane is a mid-level guy on the WWE's C show and even at that, he's not involved in anything that can't just be dropped. He won't bring anything to TNA other than another body to fill their already bloated X-Division and he wouldn't be able to come in with his well-known Hurricane gimmick meaning that everything that he's worked for up to this point in the WWE would be virtually useless when it comes to TNA banking on any of his WWE star power. With all of that in consideration, I'd expect to see him gone whenever the WWE decides on their next purge of lower-card talent, either before or after WrestleMania. Even with everything I've said, I would be shocked if he didn't end up in TNA shortly after his non-compete is up, likely shooting on how he's not a cartoon character and he's a real wrestler, blah blah blah.



-- The other big story this week has been the rumors and rumblings that TNA is planning on a permanent move to doing more live Monday shows as of March 1st. It doesn't appear that they will be doing live shows every Monday as the Tuesday after their live show on the 1st will see TNA tape more TV. TNA and Spike executives were both pretty happy with the ratings for the first live Monday TNA show on January 4th and I'd expect them to get the full promotional push for their next live offering, but there are some problems that I can see for TNA when it comes to trying to pull this off as more than just the odd one-off special.

First off, TNA's 1.5 rating for their January 4th special came off of about a million shocks, surprises and debuts, none of which they can afford to do the next time they go live or on a week-to-week basis if they needed to. Relying on surprise to pop a rating is fine, but that option won't be there for TNA the next time they go live, which is a scary proposition for them.

Secondly, their show looks way less produced than WWE's show, even at the best of times when it's taped and edited to perfection. Running live week after week will only serve to give more exposure to the gap between TNA and the WWE in terms of their live television products, especially if TNA continues to run live in the Impact Zone and nowhere else. For a company that is surviving basically as a TV entity (house show attendance and PPV buyrates aren't close to being even a blip on the radar), they should be better at TV than they are and they're not. Seeing that every week will only reinforce the perception rather than change it.

Lastly, this is it when it comes to TNA. The TNA apologists have said repeatedly that "all we need is X" to compete with the WWE, with things like weekly TV, Spike TV, big stars and more all being used in the past. With every one previously, the ratings would either raise slightly or maintain at the same level and TNA can't afford that here. If they're not able to begin to pull decent ratings with live shows every Monday or every other Monday, then the hope that TNA could possibly be real competition for the WWE will begin to get even dimmer.

Whether all of this means that they're easing into a week-on, week-off live schedule for a short time, doing another live special and then heading back into taping schedules, or beginning to transition to being live every Monday night remains to be seen, but it looks as though things could get more interesting in this TNA/WWE war in the very near future.



-- Sticking with TNA news, TNA has a new Global Champion as Rob Terry defeated Eric Young to win the title on TNA's UK tour. According to reports from people in attendance, Terry actually put on a pretty good match and was really over in front of his home fans. This also makes news because this marks the first time that any TNA title has changed hands at a house show and the first time that there's been a title change outside of the United States. Whether this translates over to Terry being that over or that good in the ring when TNA returns to the US and he has to start defending the title on a regular basis remains to be seen. That being said, it gives The British Invasion both of TNA's secondary titles and will keep them front and center in TNA for the forseeable future. The only negative that I can find here is that yet again, Eric Young has seen a push that was going places aborted and virtually forgotten about. The guy has done everything that TNA has asked him to do and then some and still can't get a bone thrown his way. You've got to feel for someone like that, especially someone as talented as Young is.



-- The WWE's Hall of Fame Ceremony to take place at this year's WrestleMania festivities will have a little less hair gunk and rhinestones as this week saw the longest reigning Intercontinental Champion of all time, The Honky Tonk Man, turn down an invite to become a member of the Hall at this year's event. While Honky and the WWE have had a contentious relationship since Honky left the company and he has been one of the more outspoken critics of professional wrestling in the past few years, the reason for Honky declining the invitation is actually rather sensible. Scheduling conflicts with the Wizard World Comic Con, which takes place on WrestleMania weekend, the loss of future Wizard dates if Honky no-showed the WrestleMania weekend festival and a non-compete clause for showing up to the Hall of Fame ceremony that would take a lot of money out of Honkey's pocket all played a part in why we won't see wrestling's greatest Elvis impersonator getting his day in the sun this year. Given Honky's propensity for outbursts and saying whatever is on his mind, I'd love to see Honky get another crack next year, but I have to give him props for doing the right thing and honoring his prior bookings when the offer came this year. It could have been easy for him to jump ship for a big chunk of money, but he thought long-term and rationally and I commend him for that.



-- Last week, Ring of Honor announced they would introduce a Television Championship to their promotion, partially in honor of their TV presence with HDNet and this week they announced the first round match-ups for the eight-man tournament. Here's how they stack up;

Kevin Steen vs. Rhett Titus
Colt Cabana vs. Eddie Edwards
Delirious vs. Davey Richards
El Generico vs. Kenny King

Now I haven't been able to follow a ton of ROH as of late, but based on what I've seen, I'd put Steen and King as favorites for the tournament, though I would also put Davey Richards in there with an outside shot (a better than outside shot if he is pulled from Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE due to a new ROH contract as has been reported). If I had to absolutely make a pick, I'd say that King is probably the guy that could come out on top as he has the most to gain from a run with a singles title. With all eight of these guys likely included in the list of challengers following the tournament, it looks like it's going to be a lot more exciting to follow ROH's mid-card than it has been in the past.

As I said, I haven't been able to see much of the ROH on HDNet shows in the past few months, but I will be making sure that I get to check out these matches because it looks like it has the potential to be a great tournament full of future stars.



-- Finally, I was able to catch the Hulk Hogan/Eric Bischoff state of TNA address on the Bubba The Love Sponge show and while I don't enjoy Bubba...at all, there were some interesting tidbits to come out of the conversation. Among them are Hulk's assertion that Abyss could be his John Cena (Eric Bischoff just likes him), they both love D'Angelo Dinero and they both think that Desmond Wolfe is going to be one of the best things going in TNA very soon. I agree with all of that of course, but there's not a lot to go on as those are the same guys that they've had good things to say about from the beginning. The interesting point to me was how both Bischoff and Hogan seemed unwilling to address anything even remotely negative surrouding their tenure so far as well as their statement that they will push the envelope to get away from a family-friendly WWE-style of programming.

Both of those speak to them wanting to just do what they want to do, regardless of what the fans are wanting or telling them they want. That works out all well and good in the case of guys like Wolfe, Dinero and the like that are great performers and fan favorites whether heel or face. However, when it comes to the rest of the product (the change back to a four-sided ring especially), it looks like Bischoff and Hogan are just going to do whatever they want to do and if fans don't like it they're the ones that have the problem, not The Two Musketeers. To me, that seems like a really dangerous way to do business as it seems confrontational to the people who have been following your product before the changes and almost dares them not to like what is currently happening. At this point, TNA can't afford to lose any fans and if Bischoff and Hogan alienate some of them with their decisions, things could go from smelling like roses to smelling like trash in Orlando pretty quickly.


Well, that does it for me this week. Again, I apologize for missing out on last week's report, but I will assure you all that I'll be here next Saturday for your weekend news fix including all of the fall-out from the Royal Rumble as the Road To WrestleMania will kick into high gear. Randle's got you covered on Monday with the News Experience, enjoy the Rumble and in the mean time and in between time I'll be back here next time with a brand-new edition of the Bell to Bell!


If you're a fan of MMA, be sure to check out Nokaut.com for more of my work.