Friendly Competition 4.28.07
Posted by Sam Caplan on 04.28.2007
What do TNA Impact and Seinfeld have in common? They're both shows about nothing. Well, at least the main event on ECW was really good this week. I analyze this and more, plus your favorite and mine...YOUR Dickhead Of The Week!
This week's episode of ECW On Sci-Fi was mostly good as usual, but Impact this week was not bad, just incredibly frustrating to watch because of the marquee matches they're just giving away to little or no effect on the ratings. But we'll get to that all in good time. For now...
ECW On Sci Fi Results 4/24/2007
-The show opened with CM Punk rallying the New Breed and also apologizing for what happened at the end of the Elijah Burke vs Rob Van Dam match from the week before. He shakes all their hands except Burke's and walks off...then comes back and tells Burke he was just messing with him and shakes his hand after all. Elijah's not sure what to make of all this.
-ECW Eternal World Champion Bobby Lashley defeats Umaga via DQ when Armando Alejandro Estrada made a run-in. Lashley beat them all up just to show how much trouble he's in this weekend.
-Backstage, Elijah has doubts about CM Punk, thinking that maybe it was a mistake to bring him into the New Breed. The others point out that it was his idea, and also his idea for Punk to toss the chair in the ring last week. Didn't think of that, didja, Elijah?
-Gene Snitsky defeated Balls Mahoney with the Foot Fetish.
-Backstage, CM Punk fires up the New Breed before they come to the ring for the main event elimination match against the ECW Originals, but when they get to the ring, Elijah finally puts his foot down and tells Punk to sit outside the ring for the match. It comes down to Elijah and Rob Van Dam, and Punk once again costs Burke a win against Van Dam, blatantly kicking him in the back of the head and tossing him back in the ring where Van Dam hits the Five Star Notebook Splash for the win. Punk comes in the ring and gives Elijah the Go To Sleep, and apologizes again. Punk is so cool.
TNA Impact Results 4/26/2007
-Sting and Kurt Angle went to a no contest in a #1 contender's match when Team Cage ran in and beat them down. This led to a series of updates on the condition of Kurt Angle throughout the show, but I'll cut to the chase. He probably has a concussion. But we're in luck, because while Christian is backstage gloating, Don West comes in and announces that TNA Commissioner Jim Cornette announced Sting vs Cage for the title tonight with Team Cage banned from ringside.
-In a match to determine the challengers for the X-Division Title at Sacrifice, Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt won a 4-way over Senshi/Shark Boy, Alex Shelley/Frankie Kazarian, and Jerry Lynn/Petey Williams.
-After Sting cuts a promo in what appeared to be a backstage disco, Robert Roode calls Eric Young out and tells him to reveal who his friend is. Eric says that he's going to be a man about it and fight his own battle and tells Roode to just fire him and be done with it. Roode is not satisfied with this and starts smacking him around, but to his surprise Eric knocks him out and then powerbombs Miss Brooks. As he turns his attention back to Roode, Brooks gets a low blow, leading to Roode beating him up with a chair and handcuffing him, but this draws out Eric's friend...JEFF JARRETT, who makes the save and smashes a guitar over Miss Brooks' head.
-Tomko and Scott Steiner get a shot at the NWA World Tag Team Title, but LAX interferes and costs them the match, leading to a postmatch brawl between the two heel teams.
-Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin hassle Bob Backlund in another shoot for Paparazzi Productions.
-Main event time, as Christian Cage gets a DQ win over Sting when Kurt Angle, in a neck brace, runs in and attacks Cage. Sting is pissed that Angle cost him his title shot and attacks Angle with his bat. Yeah!
Overall Top Ten Ranking
As voted by me. This ranking includes wrestlers from both groups, is done on a week by week basis, is based on a combination of how well they produce in the ring and how much they entertain me, and is entirely subjective.
ECW World Champion: Bobby Lashley (Champion Since 12/3/2006)
NWA World Champion: Christian Cage (Champion Since 1/14/2007)
1)CM Punk
2)Rob Van Dam
3)Elijah Burke
4)Snitsky
5)Tommy Dreamer
6)Jay Lethal
7)Eric Young
8)Jeff Jarrett
9)Sting
10)Sonjay Dutt
Dickhead Of The Week: Kurt Angle
Seriously, for a tough guy Olympic gold medalist, he sure looked like a chump this week. First he fails to beat Sting to become #1 contender. Then he gets his ass kicked by Team Cage. Then we get an update every segment about how bad he got beat up. Then he staggers out in a neck brace and ruins the main event, costs Sting the NWA Title, and then gets his ass kicked again. It doesn't get much worse than that.
Vital Social Issues N' Stuff With Stuart
You know, I really do think that ECW has improved a lot from where it was in December, but for a one hour show, there's not as much ECW related stuff on ECW On Sci-Fi as I would like. I understand they have to push it if they want to make money off of it, but if I see one more trailer for the Condemned, I'm gonna flip. Meanwhile, the Bobby Lashley vs Umaga/Vince/Shane feud has absolutely nothing to do with ECW. Think about this for a minute, the ECW World Champion is totally blowing off defending his title against ECW opponents so he can feud with people from another show in what was, until recently, a non-title situation. Right now, the entire ECW creative direction centers around the ECW Originals vs New Breed feud and Snitsky's weekly squash. Not that there's anything wrong with that because it's been a great feud (The Originals vs New Breed, not Snitsky), but with a show that has half the airtime of Raw and Smackdown, half of the program is sucked up by Lashley's non-ECW feud and Condemned trailers, so essentially ECW has a quarter of the storytelling time available to them that Raw and Smackdown do. Being that ECW draws among the highest ratings of any show on the Sci-Fi Network, I think it's time WWE start talking to them about expanding to two hours. They need it just as badly as TNA does.
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Speaking of the ECW Originals vs New Breed feud, I have to say that it's turned out to be a lot more enjoyable that I originally expected. I think we all had a pretty reasonable expectation when the feud started that it would be completely one-sided and would see the New Breed treating the Originals like jobbers every week. On the contrary, the ECW Originals have dominated the feud, and now with CM Punk's involvement, this one angle has helped everyone on the brand except Lashley and Snitsky get over. The really fun part is that the feud can combine and make one big main event like this week or, on a week when the ECW Champion is mysteriously absent, we can get a loaded show full of singles and tag matches, so it's a winning situation either way. I think that after Lashley, WWE is finally seeing CM Punk as the next biggest star on the brand and are booking him accordingly, having both sides treat him like a big deal and getting him over big time as a major force. Depending on which direction they go with his character, they can have him turn on both sides and start his own group, possibly (and probably unrealistically) with Colt Cabana and Ace Steel to make it a three way feud. Seriously, if they could get rid of the Condemned trailers and Snitsky's weekly squash, this feud alone could make ECW, on average, the best booked product under the WWE umbrella given the amount of time they have to work with.
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So what about that elimination match on ECW this week, huh? That was such a good match, 20 minutes long and by giving it a new wrinkle by making it an elimination match, it gave all nine guys involved the ability to tell a great story like the old Survivor Series matches from the 80s did. When I heard about this match, I was worried that it would be one of those matches with an elimination every 30 seconds until it got down to the last two guys, but they took their time and told a great story with the match, and CM Punk attacking Elijah Burke at the end was a great cliffhanger because we don't know how the rest of the New Breed's going to react to the incident or whether this means Punk is even still with the New Breed. This, to me, is a terrific example of properly booking episodic TV: having a few shorter segments lead to a nice, long main event that tells a story, with a cliffhanger ending that makes you tune in next week to find out what happens next. Bravo, guys. Now, between this and the Cena-Michaels match from Monday, there is definitely something to be said about WWE giving away so many good matches on TV that it gives people no reason to buy the PPVs, but that's another argument for another day.
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I knew it was coming and everything, but I still can't believe that TNA just gave away two marquee, PPV main event cailber matches like Sting vs Kurt Angle and the currently scheduled Sacrifice main event of Sting vs Christian Cage for the NWA Title. It's bad enough that they gave both away on free TV, but they gave both of them away in a single episode, which boggles my mind. What's worse is that each of the matches got about 3 minutes that made the air, and both showed glimmers of being something that could have been really special if given a proper amount of time. I guess it could be looked at as a tease, and at least neither went to a pinfall like Angle did on AJ when he first arrived a few months ago, but as far as I'm concerned none of these guys should come into physical contact with one another unless it's at a PPV. Not that we got to see enough of Sting vs Kurt Angle to say "Well, I saw it all and now I don't have to buy a PPV with these guys", but they just threw away the first singles match EVER between those two guys, and they did it all as part of an angle. So...damn...frustrating.
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Speaking of frustrating, here's a little window into what it's like to be an internet wrestling columnist. In case you don't keep track, every week in the Vital Social Issues N' Stuff section of this column, I like to take six items that I can get a nice, thick paragraph out of, and typically like to do three apiece for ECW and TNA. The problem is that lately, it's been really tough finding stuff from Impact that's worth writing about. The main problem is that there's not a whole lot going on in TNA. This might sound like a ludicrous thing to say considering how much crap gets crammed into each segment, but how much of it is really worth talking about? I mean, we've got the Christian-Sting-Angle NWA Title feud, the Eric Young-Robert Roode-Jeff Jarrett situation, and I guess we now have a feud between LAX and Scott Steiner & Tomko. People stopped caring about Eric Young and Robert Roode a long time ago, and I honestly don't know what the hell the progression of events with the other two are. I'd be willing to bet that in a week or two, Jim Cornette's going to show up on Impact and make five or six matches in one shot to flesh out the rest of the PPV instead of, you know, giving them any kind of build or anything.
The main problem is that right now, TNA is like Seinfeld: it's a show about nothing. I think that's as appropriate an assessment as I could come up with because there's literally nothing going on that I care about. Not that the previous creative regime was setting the world on fire or anything, but at least then the wins and losses meant something and every match didn't end in a DQ, outside interference, or some other screwy finish. The matches went longer and gave you a reason to tune in for more than the last show before the PPV when 75% of the card gets announced. Believe me, I am SO hip to the idea of an alternative to WWE, but they have to give me a reason to care and right now they're just not doing that. I think we all knew what we were in for when Vince Russo came back on, and even though it's a committee which also includes Jarrett and Dutch Mantel, the fact is that we're seeing a style of booking that wasn't there before Russo came back, so regardless of what Dixie Carter's telling us about who's writing what, I think we all know who has a hand in the stuff we're seeing.
The thing is that he can be a productive member of a creative team when he has an effective filter because he does occasionally show the glimmer of a good idea, but he needs somebody who can take his raw ideas and shape them into something that can fit into the context of a wrestling program instead of giving him free reign to write Short Attention Span Theatre. If Jeff Jarrett's his friend and won't do that, and if Dutch Mantel's happy to just keep his mouth shut and let it go, then heads have to start rolling because if they ever get that second hour like they want, we're going to be sitting through two hours of crap instead of one, and I think that will actually make people LESS likely to tune in. Don't get me wrong, I really hope they get that second hour, but I think that have the wrong creative team in place for it right now and won't be able to take advantage of it.
Bayani Domingo gives his analysis of what's working in TNA, what needs to be fixed, and more in Truth B Told.
Larry Csonka and Stephen Randle seem to be glued together when it comes to Fact Or Fiction, and they're at it again in week ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE as they debate whether Randy Orton should be fired, among other things.
In all things, there is at least one lesson to be learned. Here I will impart upon you what I took away from the weekly television of ECW and TNA. You too can learn important life lessons from Kevin Thorn and Maverick Matt, and are encouraged to send in your own revalations.
This week on ECW On Sci-Fi, I learned that...
-At this point, the ECW Title exists only in theory.
-You never trust a snake.
-Flunkies are always happy to have a cooler leader.
This week on TNA Impact, I learned that...
-A good Christian will beat anyone up, even if they have a concussion.
-There's a disco backstage at the Impact Zone.
-PPV buys don't matter when you need a second hour of TV.
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That's it for me today. I'll be back tomorrow with the Ominous Thoughts News Report. Until then, BEWARE.
