2014 Pro Wrestling Thread

I figure he won't come back for a couple of years. For a comeback, he either has to need the money, which is doubtful, or that he just misses the action. He's only had a few months of relaxation and fun. Eventually, he may want to change things up.

 

Eh, they only talked about him for a couple of minutes at the top of the podcast. I didn't think that was anything out of line; I think "is Punk coming back?" is probably still the biggest "what if?" out there. I found it much more egregious that Rosenberg wasted more time than usual putting himself and his radio show over, and specifically put some low-level WWE guy on blast.

 

Speaking of Cheap Heat, any recommendations for wrestling podcasts focused on the product rather than interviews or reminiscing? I like JRs and Jerichos for that but looking for something else to add to the rotation

 

Cheap Heat is really the only current-day podcast I listen to, but The Observer and Figure Four Weekly both have podcasts too, I believe.

 

I can't stand Rosenberg. Rosenberg isn't a lifelong fan. He comes off as more into brown-nosing so he can rub elbows with the talent. He always puts over the Total Divas while turning his nose up at AJ and Paige, probably because knowledge of the division is limited to the E! show. He's always name dropping from other things he's doing in the music world, and I don't listen to Cheap Heat for that shit. I don't want to hear about Rosenberg going to the BET Awards, I want to hear Shoemaker talk about wrestling.

Anyway, for other podcasts that deal with the product, on occasion Stone Cold will get some good stuff from guests about the old days. He's had a few multi-part episodes with Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff, and they get well into their thought processes for creative.

 

RIP, TNA?

pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/TNA_News_1/article_79833.shtml

Spike TV is not renewing Impact when the contract comes up in October. They have three days of tapings in early August in NYC that gets them to Bound For Glory. After that? With few house shows drawing fewer fans and scant PPV revenue, if they can't find TV fast, they're probably fucked.

 

Wow, shit. As of a couple weeks ago, Meltzer thought they would get a renewal, but he did note that Spike was dragging their feet and taking their time to evaluate. (Note: I haven't read the Observer this week to see if he had anything on it.) But TNA without TV means they're essentially going to have to gut their roster to continue, since (IIRC) they get almost all of their revenue from the TV contract. I'm not sure who they could get to broadcast at this point - WWE didn't get any bidders besides NBC when they went out a few months ago, and Jarrett's company might be more appealing to stations looking to just start fresh with their own wrestling product. And any entity bidding on TNA knows they don't have a good back-up plan, and definitely won't pay as much as Spike did.

On an individual level, it probably means they have absolutely no chance of retaining guys like Kurt Angle and Matt Hardy; their contracts are either up soon or temporary. It also means that guys like Mr. Anderson (Kennedy), Abyss, Samoa Joe, Beer Money and Jeff Hardy could soon become available, since they're on guaranteed deals and might ask out, or TNA might let them out because they can't pay them. While the WWE hasn't shown a ton of interest in some of them in the past, I think they would at this point, knowing they could get them cheap.

 

Pretty sad. Wrestling needs a viable No.2 to give Vince some competition. They never recovered from attempting to revive the Monday Night Wars with Hogan and Bubba the Love Sponge. They had some really good stuff among the crap that they also used to have.

 

For the short time they were around, at least two of my five favorite matches ever came from TNA: Styles-Low Ki-Lynn from the early days, and Styles-Daniels-Joe.

In fact, Samoa Joe in the X Division was perhaps my favorite storyline of the decade.

 

Short time? Believe it or not, TNA has somehow managed to survive for 12 or 13 years.

Oddly, my fondest memory of TNA will not be anything that ever happened inside a ring. It's their PR department.
Two or three years in a row they ran house shows in our area, and as the office's resident wrestling fan I got tasked (after asking, since no one else in the office would've taken it seriously) with writing a preview-feature. Did one on TNA's viability as a No. 2 promotion (right around the time of the Monday Night Wars debacle), one on the rise of women's wrestling as a fixture on the card (TNA did a really good job with that), and one on cage matches ahead of their Lockdown PPV (got to interview Kazerian and Daniels as they drove down the highway and goofed on each other, which was kind of fun).
Every time, TNA's PR department got me who I asked for or a suitable fill-in, and was ridiculously prompt. They said they'd call at noon, and they did. Not 11:59. Not 12:01. Noon.
I also got a long sit-down with Jimmy Hart, which in a weird way is a career highlight. Caught him coming off a radio show in a nearby town, and he was in that weird window of having a couple of hours to kill before catching a flight, where you have too much time to sit around and do nothing, but not enough time to do anything fun. So, we sat and talked for probably close to 90 minutes. Incredibly nice guy, answered every question I had, and seemed to let his guard down a bit and drop out of character once he quickly realized I knew what the hell I was talking about.
I've never had to deal with WWE's PR folks. I assume they're much the same way. But I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for TNA's office and PR people. They're the ones, of course, who will really get hurt by the company going under.

 

I only dealt with WWE PR folks once, for a feature leading into a Raw in the late 90s. The guy -- can't remember his name -- was nice enough but was on the line for any of the interviews I did -- Vince McMahon, X-Pac, someone else. He wasn't a barrier to any of the questions (it wasn't like I was gunning for quotes to build a drugs in wrestling expose), but it was still a bit unsettling at the time.

What I remember most was that I threw out some of the names I wanted to interview (Austin wasn't available). He kept pushing me to talk to this one guy, a mid-carder who had just turned heel. I remember not being impressed that much with the dude, but the PR guy pushed him at every opportunity, so I figured what the hell, if it greases the skids for other interviews, I can talk to this guy.

This guy being Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

If I wasn't his first interview for a decent-sized media outlet, I was probably on a short list.

They did comp me pretty promptly for a PPV show the night before and Raw, so that was good.

Ah, dumb kid days of yore.

 

Would love to see Beer Money and Anderson in the WWE. Not sure the rest would garner interest or be welcomed back (The Hardys).