Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Liars in Orlando

Liars and Frauds


Ladies and gentlemen, we've been bushwhacked. Bamboozled. We didn't land in the Impact Zone, the Impact Zone landed on us.

We were fed the lies that Hulk Hogan was going to come into TNA and change the wrestling landscape. He said he was going to come in and rip up the scripts and let the guys perform organically. He was going to fire writers, and he made it seem like it was only a matter of days before Vince Russo was packing his bags and looking for whatever smalltime indie fed would take him in as a creative consultant. He was going to push the young lions of TNA and build fresh, exciting new wrestling superstars.

I was skeptical at first, but you know what? Hogan has been around the business since the regional days. He knows what worked and what failed. You had to have hoped that he knew why certain companies failed and that maybe, just maybe, he'd actually get it. It was a faint hope, given that if there was one person in the business with a larger ego than Vince McMahon, it was Hulk Hogan. Still, there was hope.

Then, they opened their landmark 1/4 show with an unsafe cage match that ended in disqualification. Okay, but Eric Bischoff ripped up a script! And they let AJ Styles and Kurt Angle go wild in a TV match! These were surely signs that they were going to turn things around, despite the fact that the show had Vince Russo's slimy fingerprints all over it. Okay, maybe it was residual thought. Russo was sure to be neutered, right?

Well, no, he wasn't. In fact, Hogan was working everyone, and he and Russo were working closely together on crafting the three-hour show and the direction of the company in the time when Hogan was blasting writers and questioning Russo's future with the company. Okay, but Russo was okay when he had Vince McMahon to keep him in check. Hogan knows what he's doing, Hogan will keep Russo in check.

Then Genesis happened, and yeah, AJ Styles won clean over Kurt Angle in the main event, but Christopher Daniels, a guy who had been in a main event World Championship program for the last two PPV cycles, jobbed out to Sean Morley, whose hottest cup of main event coffee came when he was getting no reaction trying to oppose the Rock 'n Sock Connection in 1999. In a botched finish, no less. Okay, maybe they have something in mind for Daniels to work around the loss, or maybe they really got something for Morley and think he can draw.

Then you get to the tapings, and you see Orlando Jordan, a guy who hasn't been relevant in five years, going over Pope D'Angelo Dinero and Ken Anderson wrestling Jeff Jarrett despite the fact that they're both heel. Okay, maybe the matches were good, or they had good booking reasons. It's hard to judge a simple Wrestler X d. Wrestler Y, no matter how egregious the decision might look, without actually seeing the match and seeing the context.

But no matter how much you spin anything, no matter how much you strain to find a reason to defend it, you can't come up with a reason for this:
Hulk Hogan came out with Kurt Angle. Hogan said that he's changed his mind about Genesis being Angle's last title shot. Good one. He announces Angle vs Styles as the TV main event. Wow, three days.

A.J. Styles b Kurt Angle with the ankle lock. Earl Hebner was referee. They did the Montreal finish. Apparently they want people to remember it as the Orlando screw job. Styles, Flair & Earl Hebner all ran off. Hogan came out and Angle spit in Hogan's face.
Spoiler courtesy of F4W Online

There is no defending it. None at all. Another bait-and-switch? That's different from the BS that WCW did in its final days, what TNA had been doing forever with Russo at the helm, what the WWE gets criticized for all the time, most recently with the Jericho-on-RAW angle how? That's changing the game how?

Revisiting the Montreal screwjob is original and edgy how again? At best, it's a faded facsimile of what was the most contentious moment in the last 20 years of wrestling. At worst, if you've got the mental capacity of a paramecium (i.e. an Impact Zone mutant) and believe that Montreal was a work, this is plagiarism. Are they fucking delusional? Does Vince Russo think people are idiots? No, scratch that, he's had to deal with the Impact Zone miscreants who come to each show and display a collective IQ of Pi, so maybe he's onto something. Seriously, the wider audience isn't fooled by that anymore, and they've shown it by flocking away from a wrestling program that they outgrew in the early '00s. It all just screams fake anymore. It all just screams heavily scripted. I guess the script that Uncle Eric ripped up was the one for RAW from two weeks prior, because the script for TNA Impact was still in his fucking back pocket.

This wouldn't be so infuriating if it were the status quo, if we weren't promised change. If this were just another Russo reboot, it would be lulz inducing at the very worst, another reason to laugh at a company that has failed to get the formula for success right. But it's not.

Hulk Hogan and Dixie Carter told us they wanted to change the wrestling industry, that they wanted to change TNA and make it different from the WWE, make it an alternative. They very clearly lied to us. They kept the same pieces in place, the same processes, the same scripted bullshit, the same diluted wrestling, the same stale characters, the same glass ceiling and they tried to peddle it as fresh, exciting and an alternative. I feel like I've been had, even though I told myself going in not to expect too much. Still, you wanted to believe that maybe, you'd have real choice, the glitz, glamor and mainstream cred of the WWE against a more down-to-earth, Southern-style promotion in TNA.

What you got were two liars looking to make a quick buck off you. Shame on Hulk Hogan. Shame on Dixie Carter. And for good measure, fuck you Vince Russo. You get no more good will from me. Good day.