That Was Then 1.19.07: Feedback-O-Rama!

Let’s kick it off with an email from one of my less judgmental readers, one Mark Win, who decided to give me his opinion on some pro-TNA comments I had made:

What are you fucking stupid?

No, I certainly am not.

TNA can’t lick the jock strap of WWE, let alone pull in ratings that threaten WWE at all… Even WWE’s worst show, ECW, is pulling in higher ratings…and on SCI FI as well…

Since when did ratings become a judge of the quality of a program? I think Friends is the most mindless drivel seen on TV in the last ten years, but it drew ratings like crazy. On the other hands, I thought Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was a much more fun program to watch that had the stupid humor, but also threw in action and cool storylines. I doubt it was drawing ratings like Friends. Same with WWE and TNA, WWE is drawing the ratings because they’re the recognized brand in the industry, so even if they’re putting on a far worse product than TNA, everybody coming in from the outside without any real knowledge is going to assume that they’re the best just based on the name.

Everything WWE does is wrong and what TNA does is right? Are you kidding me?

No, I am not. I honestly believe this, especially when WWE sometimes seems like it books its product just to be contrary to what fans want, almost like a kid who will go out of his way to do what his parents tell him not to do.

VKM…a laughable Fat Ass Samoa Joe vs. Angle series…

Okay, since you’re clearly a WWE booster I won’t bother describing Angle. Yes, Joe is carrying a lot of weight, but he’s not some fat slob like Viscera. He can move, he can actually wrestle and put on an entertaining match, and I’ve seen him go 60 minutes more than once and he’s none the worse for wear afterward. He’s had some amazing matches in both TNA and ROH. Or did you mean the series was laughable? Yeah, I agree the first two matches weren’t what I was expecting, and I haven’t seen the third yet, but I also don’t expect that they’re the last matches these guys are going to have against each other.

TNA being a completely incompetent company…

Could you be a little more descriptive than that?

Don West on commentary…

I’ll admit that he was horrible when he first came on, but he’s 100% better than he was in 2002. He’s worked hard to learn the moves, the way the business works, and how to tell a story without going over the top. I’ll take him over Lawler these days.

the shitty 6 sided ring…

I questioned that at first as well, but it does set them apart and also gives them more room to work in than the regular four sided ring, which comes in handy in those big X-Division schmozz matches.

3 min. matches,

That’s what they need to do given their TV situation. They’re in a position where they have an hour a week to get as many people over as they can, hence the short matches. The other option is doing what ECW does, have longer matches, get three or four people over, then have nobody to build a show around when it comes PPV time.

poor, horrible PPV buys…

Being that PPV buys are, by nature, a subset of the TV audience, these will improve with the ratings.

TNA being too afraid to leave their security blanket Orlando…

They did their biggest PPV of the year in Detroit and have been hitting the road for house shows at least a few times a month lately.

booking a 16,000 seat arena and only getting 4,000 lol…

When did this happen?

I think 411Mania should check to make sure you’re sane before you start spouting off more bullshit…

I’ll make sure to suggest to Ashish that this become part of the mandatory 411 Wellness Program.

Mark

Stu

It seems to me that a lot of the things you are thinking are things I thought myself before I got familiar with the TNA product, which tells me you just haven’t given it a chance. If you watch it for a while, it’ll probably grow on you as well. Give it a shot before you start tearing it down out of hand because it really kills your argument when you don’t have anything solid to back up your position.

From a much less confrontational Andrew Critchell:

Just a quick question on your well written column; you mention more than once how TNA is gaining momentum but how can that be since their ratings have remained virtually unchanged since their Spike debut despite the fact that they have been given better time slots with every move? It seems that no matter the day/time that TNA is shown, they remain constant at the 0.8-1.3 range. Even the addition of Kurt Angle has failed to provide the significant ratings increase many predicted.

Though I don’t think that a timeslot change is going to instantly result in better ratings, they have been slowly climbing as of late. While Kurt Angle has not directly resulted in increased ratings, much like Sting before him, his presence is a positive for the company. It’s easier for TNA to position itself as a brand worth taking seriously if their top guys include Sting, Kurt Angle, and Christian Cage than if they were trying to sell themselves on Christopher Daniels, LAX, and Samoa Joe who, while all excellent workers, have gotten their only national exposure through TNA. It’s a situation where TNA has to get some exposure from its workers instead of the other way around for the relationship to truly be successful. Plus, by having these former WWE guys around, they can get the homegrown TNA guys over by programming them together. Two perfect examples are Abyss and Samoa Joe. Both guys were respected and thought to be the guys who “are going to be carrying the company one day”, but by working with the stars, they’ve gotten there. Everybody thought Joe was the guy in TNA before, but I think that he’s easier to accept as a PPV main eventer by having him go 50-50 against Kurt Angle than if he were going 50-50 with AJ Styles.

From Julius:

I brought up these questions b/c I’m a wrestling fan as a child, only to become skeptical of some of questionable decisions that occurred at WWE last summer. Think of what would the best ideas to this situation.

I love multiparters! Okay, here goes.

1)I don’t think so, because at the end of the day, everything has to go through Vince McMahon before it’ll happen. I also believe that Vince is enough of a businessman that if he sees someone as being seriousy detrimental to his company, they’ll be gone. It’s happened before. Would that happen with Stephanie (and Triple H by proxy)? I doubt he’d fire her, but if Creative got so bad under her watch that he felt that a change was necessary, I have to believe he’d reassign her somewhere else and put somebody else in charge. Obviously he wants he to be in a position to handle creative when he’s out of the picture and is going to give her every chance, but he’s not going to blindly let his company crumble because he’s unwilling to tell his daughter that she’s putting together a bad product.

2)I assume you’re asking when someone’s no compete clause expires. Typically, if they’re released or ask for a release ahead of the end of the contract, they have a 90-day no compete clause. On the other hand, if somebody’s contract expires, they’re free to go anywhere and do anything they want and WWE can’t tell them otherwise.

3)Bobby Heenan once said that it’s really easy to be rich by looking at what the poor people do and not doing it. Similarly, TNA would be wise to take all the things people complain about WWE doing and figure out a way to do it better. What are some of the main complaints about WWE? I don’t mean stuff like “Stephanie is ruining everything”, “John Cena sucks”, and “I’m sick of seeing Vince McMahon’s ass”, I mean legitimate, specific complaints about things that can be improved, such as WWE underutilizing cruiserweights, overpushing people the fans don’t react positively to, or giving away PPV matches on free TV. They also need to spread the word about TNA as much as possible, both with conventional advertising like billboards, posters, and commercials, and also by having TNA wrestlers making appearances wherever and whenever they can manage.

4)I wouldn’t imagine anyone would. If Paul Heyman goes to TNA whenever he’s no longer under contract to WWE, it’s not like there was anything anybody could have done about it on the WWE side. What are they going to do, chain him to the basement of WWE Headquarters?

This next one made me laugh. You know how I’m always asking for reader ideas on how to execute AJ Styles in Friendly Competition? Well, Dom Russo has a good idea:

I think tying AJ down to a chair and making him watch episodes of ECW on sci-fi would be good.

Never let it be said that wrestling fans don’t have a sense of humor.

Max Ridley fills me in on some information that may save my life:

According to some wrestling newsheets:

Dude. You called Joe’s girl a skank. You are so dead! Theres a lesson to be learnt from this: do be go using those deregotory comments about the extras until you’re sure they ain’t actually banging that 300 pound Samoan.

Well, at least it’s not as bad as the time I got caught on a Ring Of Honor DVD flipping Joe off on his way to the ring. He didn’t beat my ass when I saw him in the men’s room later that night, so maybe I’d do well to count my blessings. I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got this keyboard to hide behind, isn’t it?

Johnny Sorrow gives me his informed opinion on something I wrote in Part 1 of The Glory Days Of The Intercontinental Title:

they were slow, plodding contests between flabby brawlers and
over-the-hill “veterans” who were being rewarded with one last
title run before hitting the beach.

You can’t possibly be old enough to actually remember the first
few years of the IC title. Otherwise you wouldn’t make a
statement like that.

I am in awe. It must be incredible to have a talent which allows you to get the entire gist of a column from one sentence. I’ll make sure to open my columns with more of these moronic statements so I won’t force you to go to the trouble of reading the entire column and get what it was really about. But you’re absolutely right, I was totally out of line for daring to suggest that Pat Patterson, Pedro Morales, Don Muraco, and Greg Valentine did not have Herculean physiques. They were certainly of the same level of body type as some of the other names you dropped like Rude and Davey Boy Smith. I guess it must be because I was born the same year the Intercontinental Title was created. Good thing they had these things called videotapes so I could look back at these guys and say to myself “Damn, look at the abs on Pat Patterson!” Which is exactly what I say right after “Damn, these guys really, really suck!” And calling Pedro Morales the worker of the company in the 70s is like saying somebody’s the best garbageman in the entire Sanitation Dept. It doesn’t really take much to be at the top of the heap.

But wait! Johnny Sorrow makes my day by writing me twice in one day, this time in reaction to my comments on the Fingerpoke Of Doom:

The whole angle is widely regarded as one of the stupidest
things to ever happen in wrestling, and many point to it as one
of the main causes of the eventual death of WCW.

I should have waited. This statement is almost as dumb.

Wait a minute, I thought you didn’t have to read the rest of the column! WHAT THE FUCK?!?! I guess nobody else on 411 wrote anything you considered stupid enough that you felt inclined to write them about it, so you came back to my column looking for something else to flame me about. People like you really make my day, because the best indication of how good your column is doing is how many Down’s Syndrome-stricken, underwear-soiling rejects like yourself write to me tearing my column down without any real reason outside of a need to make yourself heard and hope you can get your letter in a feedback column so you can show your friends. Congratulations, you’re this week’s lucky winner!

The feedback doesn’t get any more complimentary with this letter from Jim B, who writes in to tell me about his biggest wrestling fantasy:

Stu is in the ring to have a handicap match against Bobby Lashley and Mike Tyson.
The match consistes entirely of Bobby and Mike batting Stu around the ring while saying to each other, “Ithn’t thith fun?”

The possibilities for something like this are so funny that I’m almost tempted to run this instead of The Weekly Execution Of AJ Styles. I probably would have done some kind of animated GIF of this if I had any artistic talent. But seriously, Lashley’s a terrible promo and the lisp kills it every time out. What do you want me to do, pretend I don’t notice?

Chris Jacobs should pay better attention:

what the hell is with the negativity on the thorn vs. mahoney match? It wasn’t just a hard shot, are you blind, he knocked the dudes teeth clean out of his damn mouth, you could see it on the replay and when they showed mahoney, he had like three damn teeth left on the top of his mouth, I don’t call that a boring win, I call it a mercy pin.

I hate to tell you this, but Balls Mahoney had three teeth before the match. As far as the negativity, I tend to get that way when I see the same crappy match week after week after week and then get it yet again, only this time it has a really shitty freak ending.

Eddie Gancos closes us out this week:

exactly HOW is punk jobbing? him and holly are feauding. holly needs a victory over punk to make it look like a strong fead. and bobby lashley is not that bad at all. certainly not in main event status, but decent. he can pull off some good moves most big men can’t. i don’t like your column by the way. I think you just write it so you can shit on both shows and talk about bobby lashley’s lisp.

How is Punk jobbing? Well, he jobs by having a match against a shitty wrestler and being put in a position where he’s lying on the mat with both his shoulders down. The aforementioned shitty wrestler lays on top of him while the referee slaps his hand against the mat three times. That’s the basic mechanics of doing the job, but if you want to hear some more advanced techniques, feel free to ask me after class. As for your assertion that Holly needs a victory over Punk, that’s really shitty logic. So you think that Punk should have been doing jobs to Shannon Moore during their “feud”? And if this is true, how come Tommy Dreamer didn’t get any clean wins over Khali to make it a real feud? The bottom line here is that Punk has a lot of potential that is being killed when he looks like an idiot for losing clean to a guy like Hardcore Holly who nobody has given a damn about in…well, ever.

As for Bobby Lashley, what good moves can he pull off that most big men can’t? I’m pretty sure that most big wrestlers can stumble around and fall down while applying moves if they really wanted to. Seriously, you make it sound like the guy is doing shooting star presses and chain wrestling with Shelton Benjamin. I seriously doubt his ability to do either, despite all the claims of his “amateur background”. His most complicated move is that overhead belly-to-belly suplex, and whenever he uses it I get terrifying flashbacks to Scott Steiner at Royal Rumble 03.

I’m sorry to hear you don’t like my column, but the fact is that if I’m going to write a column about wrestling, I’m not just going to sit there talking about the things I like and completely ignore the stuff that I think sucks. That’s what you call unbiased journalism. That’s not to say I’m the most unbiased writer in history, because I’m definitely heavily biased in a lot of ways, but people expect me to just sit there and talk about how great everything is and never point out anything bad about the shows. If something sucks, I’m going to call them out on it, and in Bobby Lashley’s case, he sucks really, really bad in every imaginable way. If he was doing 3 minute opening matches, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue, but when the guy’s your World Champion, it’s a really glaring problem.

And to be honest, there’s not a whole lot I like on ECW these days. I started doing The Week In Hardcore because I thought it would be cool to cover something that was going to be different, which it was for a while, but over the last couple of months, it’s gotten so bad that I’ve been hard pressed to find anything I like. I think Punk and Sylvester Terkay (yes, Sylvester Terkay) both have potential, but the way they’ve been booked makes it so hard to believe in them as competent wrestlers that the show’s almost not worth watching these days. I like a lot of what’s going on in TNA these days, on the other hand. To tell the truth, I like a lot of what’s going on in TNA these days. Yes, the TV matches have gotten really short, but the storytelling has improved a lot under Vince Russo. Everybody’s getting TV time, and just about everybody’s entertaining me in some way or another, even guys like Chris Sabin who I never thought I’d enjoy watching. Yes, the VKM thing is a little dumb, but it’s not the worst thing ever like some people will have you believe. In fact, if I hadn’t made it a combined ECW/TNA column, I probably wouldn’t want to write it anymore because ECW has gotten that bad, but TNA has made it totally worth keeping it going, especially since it gives me an opportunity to compare the two and say “this is good” and “this is bad”. Hence the name Friendly Competition.

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