News to Start Your Weekend 2.09.07

Hello again, all. It’s Friday morning, and I’m here to welcome you to the last day of the week and into the weekend, just like I have been for almost 2 years now. I was looking in my archives, and I saw that I mentioned WSX for one of the first times, and that I was looking forward to the prospect of the Jack Evans/Matt Sydal match that they were set to tape. SmackDown was also still awesome, and RAW still sucked.

I spoke of WSX at the beginning because I realized earlier this week that WSX has aired 2 episodes and 2 webisodes, as I guess people call that sort of thing these days, and I haven’t written about it yet. I was following them quite ardently a year ago and followed the progress up until it finally aired a couple weeks back, and then I basically ignored that it even happened. That was an oversight I did not intend to make. Since January 26, the first night the show aired, people have been debating about it – is it a good show? A bad one? Good for wrestling? Bad for wrestling? Is it wrestling at all? Should it be taken seriously?

Originally, my stance was that it shouldn’t be taken seriously. The first episode was a big clusterfuck that had a 4 minute spotfest and a 13 minute multi-man clusterfuck spotfest. I’m saying that in a good way, though, because it was a lot of fun to watch. Especially for someone like me who is familiar with a lot of the guys who basically were getting their first introduction to mainstream America with this promotion/series. I saw the WSXtra last Wednesday and enjoyed the dark match they aired for it, which was a near 10 minute uncut triple threat between Puma, Luke Hawx and Human Tornado. It was basically a nice wrap-up of the first episode with an added bonus match and a preview of future episodes. I figured it was a cute, goofy, harmless little TV show that was going to be a fun watch, but once again, nothing to take seriously.

Then this past week’s show aired. Along with the WSXtra on the MTV website, the 45 or so minutes of new original content actually showed a lot of signs of being a competent wrestling promotion with a focus and some direction. I was surprised, but it was a good surprise. Now that doesn’t mean I’m going to be taking it as seriously as I do WWE, ROH and TNA, but I don’t see it as just a fun little TV show that has wrestling on it. As Kevin Kleinrock said in an interview on Dr. Keith Lipinski’s radio program, he’s not doing this in order to just put on a new TV show that happens to have wrestling on it, because it’s something different. He’s trying to change the mainstream’s negative perception of wrestling being just a bunch of big idiots falling on each other, and he wants to expose great wrestlers to the world in an entertaining fashion.

Kevin says that the long-term success of the WSX product lies in hooking the casual fan and says that is where TNA is failing and that no company has attempted this for ten years, although Kleinrock says it won’t be at the expense of the wrestling product.

The intention appears to be that they want to get mainstream attention for wrestling again. Kleinrock talked about how they’re having matches that are the same length of what you’re seeing on RAW and TNA, and that’s true. Plus, the matches aren’t boring. Before anybody says “but they’re spotfests”, what are the 3-4 minute matches on RAW? They’re generally a boring collection of spots, often botched or poorly received by the audience. Both WWE and WSX have web shows as well. WWE with Heat and WSX with Xtra. WWE has decent matches that tend to last longer than RAW matches. WSXtra has had three matches thus far, and they’ve been fun, good matches that were longer than the ones they’ve done on TV, and the show also furthers along storylines and has been establishing characters. The first WSXtra had the aforementioned triple threat match that led to a match that happened on the second TV episode of WSX. Heat showcases guys that are mostly good wrestlers that get wasted on RAW, and nothing they do on Heat has any influence on what happens on TV.

WWE has so much time on TV and the internet and so much talent, and a lot of both their time and talent are wasted. WSX has 45 or so minutes combined a week with their TV show and web show, and they have been establishing talent and letting them show off a lot of their talent, and that’s the intention. To show a small peek at what wrestling can be and is elsewhere (the indies where there’s little to no mainstream exposure) and to get people to want to care about wrestling again. There’s plenty of bad about WSX. It’s over the top (explosions and piranhas), and the commentators and that announcer are all awful.

I like the show, though. The characters are entertaining, they’re trying to establish some feuds, and the wrestlers know how to work and are being allowed to, short, clipped matches or not. The ratings are already good, and if they keep developing the characters, it’s going to be beating ECW in no time, I think. It’s already making TNA look silly as far as ratings.

In the end, this show isn’t what I expected it to be when I first read about it, but it isn’t the travesty that it had been described to be after people saw it while attending the tapings. I like it so far. It’s not a joke but it’s not a fully serious wrestling show either. It’s just fun right now. The over-the-top stuff is forgivable and the rest is the kind of stuff WWE and, as Kleinrock alludes to, TNA should be trying to do. We’ll see in time how the rest of the season pans out, but right now WSX is firmly on my good side. Plus, Matt Classic = golden goldtasticness.

Leading to TNA, the 5 matches that will air on the 2 hour Monday night special in a few days (2/12) have been announced. Monday night will see matches from three different 2006 PPV.

Bound for Glory

Career vs. NWA Heavyweight Title
Sting vs. Jeff Jarrett

NWA World Tag Titles – Six Sides of Steel
Latin American Xchange vs. AJ Styles & Christopher Daniels

Eight Mile Street Fight
Christian Cage vs. Rhino

Slammiversary

NWA Heavyweight Title – King of the Mountain
Christian Cage vs. Sting vs. Abyss vs. Jeff Jarrett vs. Ron Killings

Genesis

Dream Match of the Decade
Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle

Sting, Christian and Jarrett appear to be the three guys they really want to emphasize with this special. There aren’t any real blow away matches here, with the Six Sides of Steel being the best one airing, and I liked the Ultimate X better. I actually enjoyed the one-on-one match from Hard Justice more, too. Not that the cage match is bad, though, because it was good stuff. I wish they would have put an X Division match in there, at least one. There will be a highlight package of it, but I’d have liked to see a full match. I’m also glad they chose the first Joe/Kurt match instead of the second. I really didn’t like the second one, and the third one was too long. The first was short, but even with Joe tapping it didn’t annoy me as much as the final 5 or so minutes, if not more, of the match from Turning Point.

All of the matches will be “enhanced by TNA Film”, and I’m assuming there will be different camera angles and some commentary or somesuch from the participants. That’s interesting. I’m also reading that the new concept match is going to be some sort of scaffold dealy. As long as it isn’t one of those awful ECW style matches where two guys punch each other on a tiny scaffold above the ring until somebody falls onto a huge pile of tables, I’ll be fine. Probably.

Hogan and Vince have had a falling out over that incident where Hulk revealed a bunch of prospective names for the Hall of Fame Class of 2007. Hogan apparently isn’t going to do a match at WrestleMania now. Awesome. Let’s all move on now, because nobody should care about Hulk Hogan after 1998.

Some quick stuff – Dusty Rhodes has moved to the ECW writing team, Melina and Johnny Nitro are disliked backstage, Eric Bischoff has a broken arm, Saturday Night’s Main Event will return on March 10, Carlito is apparently lazy, WWE wants Mistico and Shocker to work some dates in March. Other stuff surely also happened.

I hope Michaels vs. Cena is the match they stick with at WrestleMania. They could turn Cena heel or keep both guys face, it doesn’t matter that much, although a Cena heel turn would be interesting. Plus, he’s leaving after WrestleMania from all I’ve heard (though it has been a while since more news on the movie he’s going to film), so it can be an interesting out for him, and he could probably come back as a face if they want him to.

That’s all I’ve got, really. Haven’t seen Impact yet, and other than a few matches being added and a group of guys from the Dragon Gate promotion confirmed for WrestleMania weekend, there isn’t much new on the ROH front. You can, as always, check out Ari Berenstein’s Column of Honor for all of your Ring of Honor goodness.

Next weekend, also, we will be interviewing Jimmy Jacobs on RocketBusta Radio next weekend. That’s February 17. Not tomorrow night, but a week from tomorrow night, Saturday 2/17, RocketBusta Radio will have another interview with Jimmy Jacobs. I’ll be one of the two guys conducting the interview, and of course we’ll also have the rest of the fantastic show we always do. So enjoy that as well.

PPV this weekend, so here are some quick picks for Against All Odds:

Christian, Sting, Sabin, Team 3D, Rhino, Storm/Tennessee, Team Eckstein

Bye everybody.