Note to Spike: I Don't Wanna Hear about Dick Punching During Styles/Daniels

Rebney

So, I gave both shows on my DVR the major fast-forward treatment so that I only really watched what I liked this morning. On Impact, that included a match between AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels, possessors of the mythical and some-would-say "bullshit" (I'm not one of them, by the way) quality of match charisma. Any time these two tangle, it's going to be good. To my surprise, there was a special third announcer for the match. I didn't recognize him, but once he was identified as Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney, I kinda groaned because I feared what was about to happen. And of course it did. Over the course of the match, Rebney, Taz and Mike Tenay talked over the action in the ring to hype Bellator's arrival on Spike TV.

Obviously, Taz and Tenay have had problems in the past staying on task calling the action in the ring, but it's usually to hype up something else happening on the show. It's regrettable and stupid, but at the end of the day, it's mostly inoffensive. Shilling for another different kind of programming though is FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU-inducing. That being said, I don't blame the announcers at all for that debacle. I blame Spike.

Ever since losing UFC to Fox, my guess is they've been panicking to replace them. Bellator isn't nearly as strong a brand as UFC, so why not use Impact to get the product over. Same audience, right? Except it really isn't. Like I said on the CCB, there's overlap, but there are a lot of people who watch one but not the other. Furthermore, it just serves to annoy the people who want to hear announcers talking about the match rather than talking about something they're not watching.

I guess Impact Wrestling isn't strong enough an entity to tell Spike to fuck off, but really, the time to advertise MMA on Spike isn't during AJ Styles against Christopher Daniels. And Spike wonders why people continue to treat Impact like an afterthought. They do too.