Isn’t Slammiversary XI Like An Important PPV?
Here is the card:
TNA Championship Match:
Bully Ray (c) vs. Sting
Bully Ray (c) vs. Sting
Kurt Angle vs. AJ Styles
TNA Tag Team Championships – Four Team Elimination Match:
Chavo Guerrero and Hernandez (c’s) vs. Christopher Daniels and Kazarian vs. Austin Aries and Bobby Roode vs. James Storm and Gunner
Chavo Guerrero and Hernandez (c’s) vs. Christopher Daniels and Kazarian vs. Austin Aries and Bobby Roode vs. James Storm and Gunner
TNA Television Championship Match:
Devon (c) vs. Joseph Park
Devon (c) vs. Joseph Park
TNA X Division Championship – Ultimate X Match:
Kenny King (c) vs. Chris Sabin vs. Suicide
Kenny King (c) vs. Chris Sabin vs. Suicide
Gutcheck Tournament Final Match:
Jay Bradley vs. Sam Shaw
Jay Bradley vs. Sam Shaw
Gail Kim vs. Taryn Terrell
Magnus, Samoa Joe, Jeff Hardy vs. Garrett Bischoff, Wes Briscoe, DOC
This isn’t the “Sacrifice ppv” here, this is Slammiversary and the card looks dreadful. The only match that interests me is the Tag Title match and I pray to god that the final two teams will be Bad Influence and Team Wet Dream. Angle vs. Styles is a match I have seen too often to get excited for yet again though I’m sure it will be good like it always has been. Bully Ray vs. Sting is awful, truly awful. I am sick of Sting getting World Title matches. The man is 54 years old and he shouldn’t get this spot. I accepted Sting getting these shots 4, 5 even 6 years ago because he was a legend, he was still new to TNA and he could still reasonably go in the ring. But it is 2013; give that spot to someone else already. Not to mention Brooke Hogan will most likely turn heel, two months after I gave a crap about her turning heel which will undoubtedly piss me off and not because of the kayfabe reasons. (Seriously why in the blue hell is Slammiversary a better time to turn her heel than 4/11/13 in Corpus Christi, Texas?) If your desperate to pit Bully Ray against a “big name”; Why not do Angle vs. Bully Ray which would not only be a far better match then Ray vs. Sting, it would also be a fresh matchup. (Shocking to me is that these two had a match on Impact last July so I cannot term it as a first time ever match like I thought it was before I did some research)
Devon vs. Park will be terrible, Rob Terry vs. Robbie E level of terrible. Jay Bradley vs. Sam Shaw is a match that can go either way so that’s not an enticing match going into the show but it could possibly be the best match of the night. Terrell vs. Kim had a nice build to the show so it’s probably the match I am most interested outside of the tag title match. The X-Division title match will be a good match but I have no emotional investment in any of the guys fighting for this belt. Suicide just came back, King barely gets any TV time to develop a character (All he does is defend the belt in 3-way matches) and Sabin just isn’t connecting with me to the point I will pay money to see him regain the X-Division Title. The 6 man tag can also be a good match or it could suck depending on which Aces and Eights show up on Sunday evening.
TNA cut down to FOUR ppvs specifically to make every event feel special because TNA had more time to build to each show. This ppv is special for all the wrong reasons. It is truly incredible how TNA had three months of TV to build to this ppv and this is what they give us, a card that would be viewed as nothing special if this ppv was named “Sacrifice”. For a Slammiversary card it is a dreadful card. For the first time in a number of years, I will not be purchasing the Slammiversary PPV. This card doesn’t deserve my hard earned money.
You Got To Model Your Product After Something
Last week when I wrote my return blog, I made an “off the cuff” remark about how I feel TNA should emulate the famed/disgraced (Depending on your viewpoint) “Attitude Era”. Well a few commenters dismissed the notion and stated that TNA shouldn’t model themselves after anything and TNA should work to deliver a fresh new show modeled after nothing. Look it’s a nice theory but it is incredibly hard to deliver something completely fresh in a business that has been around for over 100 years (A conservative Estimate) and about 40-50 years of that time with storylines to go along with the matches. Everything a company does today will be modeled after something that was done years earlier.
In the “WWE Kiddy Universe”, everything is fresh for them because their memory of wrestling pretty much goes back to 2009. For a lot of TNA fans like me, wrestling memories goes back as far as 1997. (A lot of TNA fans wrestling memories goes back farther than that) In 16 years, I have seen a lot of storylines and I have come to accept that storylines are recycled. In fact the only thing that bothers me about recycled storylines is when someone bitches about it being recycled. The fact that the finish to the Lockdown 2012 main event was the same as the finish to the main event of a WWF ppv in 1999 should mean NOTHING. The difference is 13+ fucking years (pardon my French), find a new angle to complain about that finish if you want me to listen. The stuff with “EMO/Loner” Styles and how it compares to “Crow” Sting of 1997 shouldn’t be a reason to complain about it. Even if TNA books Styles the exact same way WCW booked Sting back in 1997, that isn’t enough of a reason to tear into it because one happened SIXTEEN years after the other. Sixteen years is a long time and it’s fresh to many people. I could go on because just about every story told today is modeled after a storyline long time wrestling fans had seen years earlier.
Now as for this era of TNA being booked like the Attitude Era. I don’t mean rip off every storyline from that era as some of those storylines were quite absurd (But they still had its moments), I want TNA to model their product after the way the WWF Attitude Era presented its product. You can watch a Monday Night Raw from 1998 on Youtube and still remember watching that episode clear as day back in 1998. (I can't do that with an Impact episode from March of 2013) Hell I still remember clear as day “Triple H running the Unforgiven Gauntlet (His 5 opponents in the 6 pack challenge that was going to happen 3 days later on ppv) on the September 23rd 1999 episode of Smackdown where if he didn’t win 3 out of 5, he was out of the WWF Title Match at the Unforgiven 1999 PPV”: He faced The Big Show in a Chokeslam challenge (He Lost), he faced Kane in an inferno match (He Won thanks to interference from The Undertaker), he lost a casket match to Viscera and Mideon who subbed in for Taker who told Vince to go to hell (Taker than disappeared for like 8 months), he beat Mankind in a Boiler Room Brawl thanks to someone later revealed as “The British Bulldog” and he beat The Rock in a Brahma Bullrope Match thanks to help from the guest referee The British Bulldog who was then added to the 6 pack challenge. (I wrote that straight from memory because that night way back in 1999 was that memorable) The New Age Outlaws also reunited that night and regained the tag team titles from The Rock n Sock Connection.
The Attitude Era created memories each and every week and you went into a show not knowing what the hell was going to happen. TNA NEEDS that right now especially on the LIVE Impacts. The Live WWE shows are such a bore since you know who will win before the match starts (Gee I wonder who will win: The team of Sheamus and Orton or their opponents Cody Rhodes and Damien Sandow). Impact needs to get the hell away from that and the BFG Series could help fix that (I’m looking at you Jay Bradley who I hope wins at Slammivarsary) where upsets can happen on a weekly basis potentially. Last time out, I named a number of ways TNA could create the “anything can happen” feel to the show and I still feel that way (Obviously). It will keep fans on their toes guessing what we could see on a LIVE episode of Impact and it will help differentiate the TNA product from the WWE product as well.
One last thing on the Attitude Era in comparison to the current TNA product, they do have one noticeable thing in common: All the babyface characters on Impact are in some kind of duress and I love that. While the WWE have their babyfaces smiling like a bunch of tools who you’re supposed to cheer because they are smiling ear to ear like a jackass (It really ruins whatever momentum WWE heels have when the babyfaces laugh them off), the TNA babyfaces are not smiling at all. Chris Sabin is giving Emo/Loner Styles a run for his money when it comes to being a depressed loner type of guy (every time I see Sabin talk recently he sounds depressed), Styles is also quite depressed, Sting is angry that Bully Ray used him, Velvet is trying to grind out matches despite being injured, Hogan is pissed over what Bully did to his daughter and TNA, Angle is pissed off at Styles, Joe is always angry, Magnus just wants to fight, James Storm is sick of Bad Influences bugging him while Team Wet Dream just anger him and that covers all the TNA babyfaces except for Los Stereotypicos who seem to not be very light hearted about things. They all wear their emotions on their sleeve and they take everyone seriously which is very important to help fans make an emotional connection to the characters. The Attitude Era had that and Impact right now has that characteristic which is a step in the right direction in my humble opinion.
TNA Has Come Home
9 PM ECT/ 8 PM Central is the perfect time to air an adult themed wrestling show. For the most part, the top watched programs on regular TV have already aired and most sporting events are nearing its end. I know as a Ranger and Knick fan that at 9 PM on a Thursday, those games are entering its 3rd period and nearing the 4th quarter respectively at 9 pm. At which point you can potentially click off the game and put on Impact if the outcome is already established i.e. a blowout one way or the other which you can’t do at 8 PM since the game WILL still be hanging in the balance. Impact going to 8 PM last summer was a mistake and I knew that before the ratings in hour 1 always tanked. Thankfully TNA righted that wrong before Spike kicked Impact to the curb which was becoming more and more possible with the Impact viewership numbers getting dangerously close to going under 1 million viewers according to Nielsen. Lets also hope that the rating for the first week of Impact “returning home” was a one shot occurrence.
