The News WeekTNA have had to change their plans in regards to the next PPV. They had an agreement that allowed them to stage their planned Barbed Wire match, between Abyss and Judas Messias, live in the arena at the Against All Odds show. The South Carolina athletics department seems to have suddenly changed their minds and left TNA in a bit of a mess. Obviously they have taken the only solution and taped the match before the show on the last series of Impact taping. This is a better solution than just cancelling the match and I'm sure it was a great match for the fans in the Impact Zone. However, this is extremely unfair and harsh on the fans attending Against All Odds. It will make no difference to the fans watching at home but the fans in the arena will have to sit there and watch a pre-taped match. This never goes well and the crowd generally hates it when they have to watch segments on a big screen - even backstage brawls, never mind whole matches.
Kevin Thorne returned and quickly disappeared off of our screens again. I thought they had decided that it just wasn't working with him, and figured that he may well be released pretty quickly. The latest is that he is being repackaged as a babyface though. He is currently trying out the gimmick and, if it works well with the fans, he will be brought back up to the ECW roster soon. I don't really know how well he will be able to pull off the face gimmick but it really does just depend what he is actually going to be doing. If he has a decent character then there should be no problem, but if he is just going to come back as a big guy that doesn't look angry - then he will fail.
When I first heard this CM Punk was still the ECW champion and I thought that this all pointed to Shelton becoming a heel champion in the near future. I felt certain of this as ECW is a bit thin on faces and so Thorne would have come in useful. Now that Chavo Guerrero has won the title, I wouldn't have thought that will change plans too much. In fact, Thorne may well be better suited to a program with Chavo than he would have been with Shelton Benjamin anyway.
In a very odd story, in a recent interview Mae Young has claimed that Stephanie McMahon has made her a promise; that on her 100th birthday, she will be allowed to wrestle Stephanie's own daughter Aurora Rose. What a strange one this is. She even seemed to be serious. Of course, the whole thing is feasible as Aurora would be just 17 and if she goes the way of the rest of the McMahon family, she will probably have been on our screens for several years already. Anyway, why does Mae want to wrestle on her 100th birthday when she doesn't wrestle anymore anyway!?
James Storm is rumoured to have been wanting out of TNA. Not many people seem to find this one credible as it isn't being reported by many sources and I personally don't think there is any real reason for him wanting to get away - other than the possibility of the WWE wanting both himself and Chris Harris as a unit, to reform their rather successful tag team.
Well here's the big storyline for next year then; an incest angle is being tried out in the development fed for the WWE. Apparently the two involved just come out as a typical wrestler and manager combination and are romantically involved (which is nothing new) but in interviews the two obviously refer to each other as brother and sister. There seems no real reason for this one and I am not sure what kind of reaction for it, but obviously Vince likes the idea and so it is likely to be used.
What makes this whole thing worse is that the male wrestler that is involved is Paul Burchill. Now I would love for Burchill to be called up again as he is an absolutely fantastic wrestler with a very unique move set to his name. However, he had a great heel gimmick in OVW for a while as The Ripper and that is now being scrapped completely for this horrible angle; Such a shame for the guy.
Update - This one looks to have now been approved by Vince and he has even been pushing for such an angle for many years - but at first he wanted it to involve either himself and his daughter Stephanie, or at least Stephanie and her real life brother Shane! I'm so glad this didn't happen!
The WWE's brand new HD sets are now in full swings and we have had a little time for them to sink in. The way they were plugged, I was expecting some really huge sets that were going to look really amazing but I don't know about the rest of you, but they don't do anything for me at all. The new show openings look pretty good but the actual titantron and stage looks pretty rubbish to me. Its just one big screen (which is very clear, I'll give it that) and then surrounded by loads of LED's which are supposed to change to colours that suit a specific superstar, but it all just seems very random and pointless to me, and I don't think it really enhances either the shows or the superstars at all. I know the previous sets weren't anything to exciting, but at least they had a bit of character about them. I hope they weren't massively expensive as they just seem to bring nothing new to the table at all.
Kofi Kingston made his debut on the ECW TV show last week and he made quite an impression in the quick match that he had. I had him pegged down as an all-new version of the Carlito Carribean Cool that we first saw when he made his own debut, but the guy has some seriously cool offensive moves and if he is as good on the mic as Carlito is (and his promo videos show) then ECW may have just acquired a very talented guy indeed. I have seen nothing of him before so I know very little about, other than what the majority of other views will have seen, so obviously I will need to see more of him and make sure that he doesn't just have one or two cool moves and nothing else, but I have to say that I have some hope that this guy is going to bring another entertaining factor to the ECW brand.
ECW's head writer, Dave Lagana has been released. This is quite a surprise as he used to be the head of Smackdown's writing team and he managed to get by without upsetting Stephanie back then. The guy hasn't been rumoured to be causing any problems so I don't know why this has happened. What I am concerned about is that ECW had actually gotten pretty entertaining (besides Chavo being given the title, but that might not actually have been his call) and that might all change now. Who knows if he was the guy behind the likes of Punk and Benjamin's pushes and for all we know, they are going to disappear now.
In one piece of news that did come as a complete shock out of nowhere; Bobby Lashley has quit the WWE. We were all considering how Lashley would fit into a program on Raw and whether he would be coming back as a power house face or some sort of indestructible heel. We knew he would be back any day around the Rumble and I even had him down as a likely candidate to retire Ric Flair - if he ended up with someone such as Vince McMahon as his mouthpiece. But all that is out the window now as he has turned around and quit the promotion. This wasn't revealed on WWE.com straight away and the initial announcement came from the man himself on his own website. Obviously there was a lot of scepticism about this and he apparently called several fans himself to confirm that the whole thing was true - and if that doesn't show that he was seriously pissed off and wanted everyone to know how much he wanted out of the company, I don't know what does.
This whole thing seems to have boiled down to two things; one being that he wasn't contacted regularly whilst he was out injured, which I guess is quite bad but I don't think it is anything quit about, and the second is the deal with his girlfriend Kristal being fired. Kristal was pretty much hated backstage and was eventually released when she refuses to participate in a storyline. Lashley is claiming that this wasn't right as the storyline was very racist. It's great for the man to stick up for his girlfriend, but I hope they are going to be together for a long time and he doesn't end up regretting this. Obviously he has time to get back into the big leagues, as long as he hasn't burnt his bridges permanently, but only time will tell on that one.
ECW Thoughts
This week's show opened with Shelton Benjamin taking on Kane. These kinds of match-ups are always interesting; to see how the different styles mesh together, and also to see who the WWE favours. Kane can only lose so many times and let his push slide, before people stop believing that he is an unstoppable monster, but Shelton was on a massive push and was actually undefeated on the ECW show. He also needed to make up for the embarrassment of what happened to him at the Rumble match on Sunday and needed to re-establish his character after that quick exit.
The two actually meshed quite well and Kane got in most of his better power moves whilst Shelton got to show his speed early on before showing that he is still credible on the mat against a big man. The match soon picked up again with Kane's powerful comeback before Shelton walked out after being unable to jump around the big man. This wasn't the finish I was expecting but if it leads into a decent feud and overall impressive victory, for Shelton over Kane, then it could work really well.
Kelly Kelly comes out to the ring (after we saw her looking absolutely ridiculous as she tried to ignore the camera that was following her backstage) and takes on Victoria. What a drop down for the former women's champion, and what a non-contest this should have been. Victoria really is above this sort of match and should have been able to legitimately pick up the win here after a minute or so. Tazz and Styles actually picked up on how good Victoria is in the ring, and hinted that they would like to see her challenge Beth Phoenix, but unfortunately the storyline here is between Kelly, Layla and the new diva - who say at ringside with Layla to watch the match. The match didn't last too long and Kelly's offence didn't actually look to bad, I just find it hard to imagine her competing with Victoria. Soon after her flurry of offence, the Widow's Peak was used and the match was over, much to the delight of the two ladies at ringside who then got in the ring and "beat Kelly down", and I use that term very lightly. Afterwards, the two joined arms with Victoria and I am actually wondering if they will start to accompany her around, now that Kenny Dykstra is injured, as that may actually be a half decent use for them.
Colin Delaney, looking very similar to Shark Boy by now (I hope he doesn't turn into Steve Austin!) is shown wrapped up completely in bandaged before he heads out for his weekly ass-kicking. Tazz gets a few nice quips in at the lad's expense (not sure why the fans boo him so heavily) before he had to take on both John Morrison and The Miz. Delaney actually managed to last a few minutes here and got some, well I wouldn't call it offence, but he moved out of the way a couple of times! The champions just enjoyed themselves for a while though and then made the cover after refusing to pin the guy a few times. After an attempted beat down, the man himself Tommy Dreamer came out for the save and it looks like we now have an idea where this kid's storyline is going; a partnership with the ECW hero and a feud over the WWE Tag Team titles - not too shabby for a guy that was randomly picked at the last minute because his friend was too big for the role of a scrawny jobber!
In a reunion from the major ECW title feud of last year, Elijah Burke took on the now former-champion CM Punk. These two only ever seemed to have a decent match if they had a lively crowd that were more than happy to really get behind them and drive the action. The crowd at this show wasn't particularly vocal during the match but the pair still put together a nice, oddly intense, singles match. Both men got a fairly equal amount of offence (which I guess wouldn't be expected so soon after CM Punk was the top dog - but he is apparently in trouble backstage at the moment) with Burke actually looking the stronger of the two quite often, due to his technique and submission moves. Then, all of a sudden, as if he was Randy Orton, Punk picked up the win out of nowhere with his Go To Sleep.
The trend of continuous matches with no backstage segments continues as last weeks debutant, Kofi Kingston, comes out to defeat a random jobber. The guy certainly has some very good energy and just looks fun - which I guess is his gimmick. I really think that this guy is going to catch on with the fans but I don't know if he will be able to carry it past a typical gimmick guy, with quick paced moves, to the next level. I just don't see him holding a title belt at the minute, but it is obviously way too early to tell.
Ah, now I see why there have been so many matches without a backstage segment; the main event was a title celebration ceremony for the new champion Chavo Guerrero. This started out just horribly and didn't particularly get much better. It started out with Estrada (remember the GM?) in the ring with some sort of band that the fans were just hating, and not in a good heel-heat type of way. Nothing much really happened when Chavo came out except that Edge did a video message explaining about how Vickie is injured at the hands of Rey and congratulating him on his title win. Edge actually looked rather good here and seems to have got his character down to a tee. This was followed up by a nice video package for the ECW champion before we returned to Chavo in the ring - who had nothing of importance to say. Just when I was thinking that this segment was absolutely horrible (and believe me, it really dragged on) one of the musicians turned out to be CM Punk. He took out the champion and finished the show stood high above him.
That last segment only actually lasted for around 8 minutes but, until Punk arrive for the last 20 seconds, it was truly terrible. If I completely ignore that, then this was a great show. It was basically just crammed full of matches but all of them were at least watch able and all were of a very unique style. So basically this show had something for every wrestling taste out there. I guess that's what these shows should be about so it was successful in that respect. I just wish it hadn't ended on such a stinker.