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Column: The Real iMPACT - TNA Just Doesn't Get It
By: Brandon Vokac Ok so, I’ve been having a hard time picking a topic for my column because of everything that has happened in TNA in recent weeks. The reason isn’t because there’s been a lack of topics to discuss but I just don’t know where to begin. So I’ve just decided to discuss a wide variety of things that have happened in TNA and some of the bad decisions that TNA has made. Kaz Released So let us start with the rumored departure of TNA wrestler Kaz. It was reported over the weekend that Kaz had asked for his release from the company Monday. There was even a statement made on the TNA wrestling website about his release from the company. It said that he would fulfill his obligations of competing at this weekend's live events in North and South Carolina. It also said Kaz would appear on the premiere episode of the new "Karen's Angle" interview segment this Thursday night on "iMPACT!" to comment on his departure and his reasons for doing so. Let me just start of by saying that if it is true TNA made one of the biggest mistakes in its history by letting him go and not doing whatever they could to keep him there and happy. With that said this looks to be a complete shoot and let me say that this was poorly executed. I personally, think that this TNA’s way of trying to “get one over” on the wrestling internet community. If they really wanted us and everyone else to really believe this story why not have Kaz win a title shot this past Thursday on iMPACT! instead of just getting a title shot (which TNA does way to much) and then have Kaz lose on iMPACT this Thursday so that they could break the story over the weekend. This would then make people really believe that it is true. It is a known fact that TNA tapes iMPACT! and does it every Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, (depending on weather there was a PPV or not). If this were to be true then, how could Kaz appear on Karen Angle’s new talk show (which will be discussed in the second part) that was taped last week? As this website said earlier, the TNA site is saying he requested his release today (Monday), and will be on her show later this week. Like they reported earlier, if that's the case, they'd have to fly both Karen & Kaz in to some remote location, as well as their production people, put together her fancy set for the show, and film it, this week. That is something TNA wouldn’t do, go out of there way for a guy who just quiet their company. I think I get where TNA is going with this, Kaz just lost an x-division title match and the world x cup for team TNA in the same week. He’ll be mad at himself and doubt that he can wrestle with the best anymore and want to quiet. I get it, it’s a good angle to go with Kaz after everything that has happened with him (b/c of all his short comings) but they’ve made their own storyline hard to believe because they didn’t manage to think that the TNA fans might realize that this is a shoot b/c the segment would have already been taped. It was also said to keep in mind that when Kaz came to the ring at a Sunday night house show he wasn't smiling at all and looked really pissed off. If this is a work, he would have to come to the ring pissed off because like I said he just lost an x-division title match and the world x cup for team TNA and at the house shows this weekend he lost to TNA X-Division Champ Petey Williams. Anyone who’s happy after losing that much is in the wrong business. Just so it’s on the record if during the segment this week Tomko comes in and ruins the Karen’s show and Kaz decides all of the sudden that he wants to wrestle again and goes into a feud with him or Kurt Angle that it further proves that TNA just doesn’t get it. Next Topic. Let me start off by saying that I love watching TNA wrestling and haven’t missed a PPV or an episode of iMPACT! since I started watching it back in December of ’05.It was reported recently that a TNA wrestler currently in the midst of a push made the following remark to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter: "iMPACT! sucks so much I don't even watch myself on television anymore." When I first heard this I wanted to know who said it because I wanted him out of TNA. But after last week’s iMPACT I can not disagree with this TNA wrestlers comment. I mean the main event was Booker T. vs. Consequences Creed in a Stretcher match. WTF!? First off Consequences Creed has no business being in the main event at all. I mean he isn’t even a serious contender for the x-division title and then have a random match type in a stretcher match. I just don’t get what TNA is trying to accomplish here with this. I get that they were building up for Samoa Joe jumping Booker out of the ambulance but there are so many ways they could do this with out wasting a main event and ruin a great stipulation match like the stretcher match. Like Zach Fenell said “Why couldn’t they face off in a 1-on-1 match? The stretcher gimmick was not only unreasonable but also simply unnecessary.” I couldn’t have put it any better my self. If they wanted Booker to put Creed in the ambulance and have Joe jump him then have Booker call the ambulance because he plans on showing Joe what he can really do by hurting Creed that night. In the match Booker wins and then destroys him afterward, which then warrants the medical team to come out and take him to the ambulance. Booker follows along the way taunting Creed about how bad he hurt him and then have Joe jump him. Then at the PPV have a stretcher match. That would be a great Main Event for Hard Justice and would have been something different for TNA. The rest of the show was joke, it consisted of one ok match (Kaz vs. Petey Williams for the x title) and a bunch of fillers for the rest of the show with one that had any meaning. t just feels like TNA doesn’t care about how there show comes across just as long as people buy the PPV. TNA problem is that basically sacrifice one or two weeks worth of iMPACT! Just so they can build for one ok show. They keep building for what’s going to happen next week, instead of building a great show every week. I get that it can get hard to come up with new ideas for a show every week but part of the problem is that their storylines are sometimes WAY to long. People then begin to lose interest and it becomes harder to make matches for a show every week. Which leads us to… TNA needs to keep its storylines short and do a better job of intertwining them. For example TNA has intertwined the Kurt Angle vs. AJ Styles feud with the Christian & Rhino vs. Team 3D feud way to much where it’s at the point that it’s boring as hell to watch the promos or to watch the matches because they’re the same thing every time. AJ Styles, Christian, & Rhino get the advantage, then 3D, Rhino, & Christian fight outside, Kurt & AJ start to fight alone in the ring when AJ get the advantage and then Frank Trigg comes out distracts AJ & costs them the match. What I want to know is why TNA hasn’t just kept it Angle vs. Styles and Christian/Rhino vs. Team 3D. With Angle vs. Styles you have a dream match that could go into several types of matches: Last Man Standing, Iron Man Match, or some good old fashion one-on-one fights with no interference from Frank Trigg or Karen Angle. This is suppose to be a dream feud but has turned into another boring feud that doesn’t really seem to have a good ending to it. I can’t really tell where they’ll go from here after this feud. With Christian/Rhino vs. Team 3D I thought that they were going into an angle where they couldn’t trust each other and, what I thought would lead to a Rhino heel turn. TNA needs to change things up. They need some heels to be faces and some faces to turn heel. When some things aren’t working you need to try new things but the only thing is that they need to make since. As I was saying before about TNA better intertwining the feuds, why not have Kurt Angle and Booker T. team up on occasion to face Samoa Joe and AJ Styles or Team 3D and Booker T. face Samoa Joe, Christian, and Rhino. This gives you several matches for main events while these feuds are going on. Instead of having the same matches week after week with the same results makes you not want to watch iMPACT! Look I don’t know everything or pretend like I know everything but I’ve watched wrestling long enough to know what works and what doesn’t and I hope you agree with my points. As many of you may have picked up on while reading my columns, I’m a big Samoa Joe fan and I’ve been very critical of how they’ve used or misused Joe in the past. But while I was watching the Booker T. vs. Samoa Joe match at Victory Road I was already thinking of how I was going to rip TNA for having Booker, basically, manhandle Joe and have Joe barley escape with the win But then something happened that I thought that TNA wouldn’t have Joe do, they had him snap and destroy Booker T. I mean this is what we saw from him when he started feuding with Chris Daniels & AJ Styles, but then really disappeared, only to see glimpses of it every once and awhile. I then had a thought: In order for Joe to destroy his opponents, does He have to be heel? My thought is no because the fans were crazy for Joe when he didn’t give a sh*t about his opponent and destroyed them. They need Joe to keep destroying his opponents and not give a sh*t what management thinks. What Joe needs to be is something of that what Stone Cold Steve Austin was back during the Attitude Era. Now I’m not saying in any way shape or form saying Joe is the next Stone Cold but should be like him. He needs to have that DTA (Don’t Trust Anyone for anyone who doesn’t know or forgot) attitude about him and do what he wants when he wants without giving a sh*t about what anyone thinks about it or him. The fact is when Joe beats up his opponents like he did at Victory Road people go crazy and love it because people love violence. This leads us to… As many of you have read TNA plans to cut down on Abyss use of weapons. Many Abyss fans were really upset by the fact that he really won’t use weapons anymore. Many of the hardcore wrestling fans (I mean the people who love hardcore wrestling not diehard fans) have stopped watching wrestling because ECW is dead now (no matter what WWE says about it’s WWECW) and WWE has stopped using hardcore matches on its shows and have toned down the level of its hardcore matches on its PPVs. TNA used have an anything goes mentality about its matches until people were upset at how Abyss won the NWA World Title from Sting at Genesis two years ago. So the art of hardcore wrestling has diminished to independent show having hardcore matches to get peoples attention. The odd thing is it usually does yet TNA or WWE doesn’t pay any attention to it at all. WWE has gone over to the G side of ratings and is trying to appeal kids instead of adults. TNA jumps back and forth about whether or not they want to have hardcore stuff. I say that because if they wanted a more violence in the show then Joe would use his whole old arsenal that he use to use. But yet the main attraction when it comes to fighting is UFC because of its real hardcore fighting style. I’m not saying TNA should be more like UFC but what I’m saying is why not have a more hardcore type of wrestling. Have all of your matches be No DQ so that it cuts down on all of the DQ’s we have for finishes for matches. Instead of having the ref knocked out every time so that someone can interfere in the match is ridicules. Why not just have the wrestler come out knock out the guy and that be the end of it because I think most people are sick of seeing the ref get knocked out long enough for the guy to interfere and then all the sudden is fine and can make a three count. While violence is not good it’s what people want to see, so why not give it them. It’s a great way to get your ratings up too. With that said we need to move on to a subject that I think that needs to think about addressing. Over the past six years TNA’s announcing team has been that of Mike Tenay and Don West but recently I’ve grown tired of hearing the duo announce TNA’s matches. When I first heard the two doing an iMPACT! Broadcast I was just happy that it wasn’t Jim Ross screaming about the carnage or Jerry Lawler talking about tits and how he wanted to bone every diva in WWE. Over the past couple of years I really like listening to the team of Mike Tenay and Don West calling the matches but recently I just really don’t like listing to the two call the matches. First let’s start with Don West; Don has never had any experience calling wrestling matches before when he started with TNA. He was a QVC type host who sold several types of thing on a show before joining TNA. Basically he’s TNA’s version of Mike Ademle and hey it looks like Don West won’t be winning the Wrestling Observer’s Worst Television Announcer thanks to WWE signing Mike to a contract. Anyway he has a way of just annoying you by stating the obvious several times or calling things the wrong name the can sometimes leave you yelling at your T.V Now we have Mike Tenay or as many know him by “the Professor”: Mike has a great knowledge of wrestling and has always given us new info when a wrestler debuts or that has been around for awhile that we never knew. But lately he just feels off his game, miscalling moves and just not putting on a good performance when it comes to announcing. Maybe I’m being to harsh but I think that TNA should look into getting some new announcers. Mike Tenay and Don West have done a good job for TNA in the past but I think they may need to replace on or both. If they did do this one might ask what TNA would do with them. To that I would say Don West should continue with his Deals of the Week that he does on the TNA website and Mike Tenay could go into the booking of TNA with Jeff Jarrett, Dutch Mantel, and Vince Russo. People would also ask who would replace one or both, and I really don’t know. I would start by trying to get Joey Styles from WWE because he knows just about as much as the “the Professor” Mike Tenay and can call a show by himself as he did in ECW. The only other thought is Mike Goldberg of UFC. He knows how to call a fight live and tapped as well as the fact that he does know some wrestling. The other part about it is that he works for the UFC, which is on Spike T.V. the network TNA is on! He wouldn’t even have to leave his job if they worked out some kind of agreement saying that he wouldn’t miss any UFC dates because of TNA and like wise for TNA. It’s a win-win. From there I have no idea who they should try to get. My only input is that it be someone with enough experience that it won’t take long for them to get accustomed to the flow of wrestling. Now we move onto… Last week we saw the debut edition of Karen’s Angle and I must say while I was impressed as to how it wasn’t a complete waste of time I could help but think why not just have her host the TNA Rough Cut segment that they have now. The TNA Rough Cut segment has been around since about April and I think has been one of the best ideas that TNA has come up with for a segment in a long time. It gives the fans a little bit more info on the wrestlers we love to watch and we get an idea of where they used to be and where they plan to go next. When I was watching Kaz on Karen’s Angle, I just kept thinking how much better it would come off as if it were done as the TNA Rough Cut segments are with her asking the questions. This maybe my personal opinion on the matter but I just feel like they really didn’t have an ending for her and Kurt’s separation so they just gave her a talk show for something to do. Now don’t get me wrong I love it any time she comes on T.V. because she has to be one of the hottest milf’s ever in wrestling or in the world. Anyway I just feel that if TNA is going to use her as a interviewer then why not just have her host the TNA Rough Cut segment. If you have any comments or just anything you want to tell me send them to me at savetheembers@yahoo.com! I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of the Real iMPACT! Until next time, peace! 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