The Right, The Wrong and the Downright Confusing TNA Style

Last night was the debut of Hulk Hogan in TNA, which also saw tons of other surprises, some decent wrestling and a fair dose of botches Here's my brief rundown of the show, starting off with the right.

The Right: Creating Intrigue
From the moment the show went on the air, TNA was working on overdrive to create intrigue. Even though the online dirt sheets were starting to post spoilers, TNA was already on the air and most people weren't spoiled to big returns like Flair and Hardy. Jeff Hardy came off as a huge surprise and for the first hour you really didn't know what was happening in TNA.

Secondly, TNA was able despite some inconsistencies to showcase that they have talented wrestlers. In a pure RAW versus IMPACT showdown, TNA had the better matches. The AJ/Angle match was an epic contest and completely overshadowed the opposing WWE Title match. It also highlighted some of the best workers in TNA and is easily a forerunner for TV Match of the Year, already and it's the first show of the year. In a lot of ways, this match also saved the show in terms of wrestling.

The Knockouts Tag Title match was great and showed the clear difference between WWE womens matches and TNA ones. WWE put on a 3 minute botch fest between two of the worst women's workers in the world (three if you count both Bella twins) while TNA had some of the best women wrestlers in the world tearing it up. It should have been a slightly longer match and the commercial breaks brought it down a tad.

The ODB/Tara match was decent, but forgettable which is disappointing since both ladies could have a better contest and the squash match later in the night seemed tacked on. However, Abyss versus Samoa Joe was a good big man contest. TNA had an added advantage of having three hours to put their wrestling on, but if you wipe out TNA's first hour, they still had more and better wrestling than WWE. That's always a plus.

Ric Flair was great to see, but he didn't talk which makes his appearance less captivating. Even though smarks will be quick to rag on the Nasty Boys, they were entertaining last night and they served their role well. Playing Hogan's cronies whom he's trying to distance himself from and setting up a feud with Team 3D. It's pretty obvious that could lead to a decent feud that hasn't been done before.

The Wrong: Lack of Focus
TNA's first hour was a bit of a mess. Between long commercial breaks and random segments, there wasn't much to go on. This is similar to the old WCW first hours, where if they had big things planned for the second hour, the first hour was thrown to the wolves. While the first hour technically had the two biggest shockers, Flair and Hardy, they weren't executed as well as they could have been.

The Steel Asylum... I'm not even sure what to say about this. Even as a big supporter of TNA, this was an absolute disaster. Had Jeff Hardy not come out at the end of this segment, this would have been a huge albatross on the whole show. It was just barely made passable by Hardy's appearance. WHY MAKE THE MATCH A STEEL ASYLUM?! There was no point in it. You could have done the exact same finish, but made it logical, by doing a normal X-Division multiman match. The whole point of showing off the Steel Asylum should have been to highlight the awesomeness of the match. Instead they booked a non-finish to the match (I have less of a problem with the DQ as from a logic standpoint you should rule a match like that a no contest if that happens, but my problem is the use of the gimmick at all for that result) and instead of making the Steel Asylum showcase TNA's differences, it just came off as a giant clusterf***. Whoever is responsible for the Steel Asylum booking, needs to be fired. I don't care if Hogan booked it, Russo, or Jesus Christ himself, he needs to be fired. Adding to it is the fact that Homicide couldn't even escape the cage and this becomes instant WrestleCrap. If I do a 2010 worst things in TNA, this will undoubtedly be #1. Thankfully Jeff Hardy salvaged the whole thing.

Bobby Lashley has spent months in TNA getting decent receptions, but after a decent feud with Steiner and a couple of pretty darn good tournament matches he finally got an EPIC pop last night. He was truly over like rover... So he comes out and Kristal cuts a heel promo?! All of the good faith that Bobby had built up, disappeared. You could tell Lashley was a bit miffed at having to flush his face pop down the tubes. To make matters worse, Bobby coming out and running down TNA, served no purpose and made TNA look bad. The angle itself isn't a terrible idea, but you probably shouldn't have someone cut down the company on the night when more eyes are watching the company than ever before. Massively bad idea. Plus it went NOWHERE. This should have been saved for a few weeks from now or simply not done at all. Just because Bobby didn't catch on immediately, doesn't mean you turn him heel. As soon as he caught on, TNA turned him. The whole Kristal as a heel, Bobby as a face thing had a lot of leg room to grow too, but it's wasted now.

nWo Black & White Hogan? Okay, so Hogan's a face... But he's dressed like a heel, coming out to his heel music? I understand that the storyline is that Hogan's friends thinks he's reforming the nWo and yadda yadda and it's a decent story, but Hogan needed to appear in the red & yellow. He needed to be Hulk Hogan. Trotting out Hollywood Hogan conjures up memories of WCW, not the good kind either. Red and yellow Hogan confronted by Nash, Hall & Syxx would have been neat, but once it was nWo Hogan and the nWo in the ring, it came off as an nWo reunion instead of the arrival of Hulk Hogan. Again, this should have been done on Hogan's SECOND show, not his first.

Too much going on. Vince Russo loves to book TV so that every 60 seconds something new is happening. That's fine in premise and truth be told, I read a lot of reports of how people were watching TNA and then would flip over to see what was on WWE and they'd see a headlock, so they flipped back to TNA... But the fact remains you can cram too much stuff into a show. That happened last night.

FOLEY! For months the buildup has been great with a Hogan/Foley showdown. That should have been the segment that the nWo did. Instead of the nWo coming out, Foley should have crashed the party. Foley and Hogan should have cut a dueling promo. Instead Foley didn't get into the building until the end of the show and unfortunately, the ending while creating some drama for next week, failed the use the weeks of momentum that Foley had built up.

The Downright Confusing: Too Much of a Good(?) Thing?
Who was in the other limo? Bischoff? If so, why didn't they mention it? If so, why bother? We all knew Bischoff was coming. Secondly, is Bischoff an authority figure now? If so, give him a direct title. Too much Bischoff on the show, running the show, with no defined role for Easy E.

Hogan's limo arrives and then he says he's been in the back all day. It's a minor thing, but after seeing 765 shots of Hogan's limo, we need to make sure he doesn't say he got there by horseback in his damn promo.

Orlando Jordan? Val Venis? This does nothing to create intrigue in the product. I'll give them a break on Val Venis, since I saw a lot of people genuinely interested in seeing Val again, but Orlando Jordan?! He offers nothing, he brings nothing, he's pointless.

Hogan shoots on Jarrett? Guess what, that's a bad idea. Although a lot of smarks hate on Jarrett, Jeff Jarrett created TNA. Doesn't matter if Hogan, Austin, Rock or whomever come to TNA, real hardcore tried and true TNA fans will always have a deep seeded respect for Jeff Jarrett for building a true alternative to the WWE. Having Hogan spit on that, is a heel move and that's why the fans turned on Hogan. You could have had the same thing happen, but had Hogan say his speech a bit more respectfully and gotten the same idea over without confusing the fanbase.

Live on Spike TV. I used to hate a live RAW on Spike and now I remember why. Despite Spike TV claiming it's an edgy station, they blur stuff out, make random cut aways when they think there might be nudity or an ass crack (which I don't get since half the other programs are about boobs jiggling) and they censor cussing thus chopping up promos. USA is much edgier than Spike TV and TNA has to be careful because this is the same sort of stuff that TNT used to do that neutered Nitro when it needed to be edgy.

Nash's promo... Man that was long, pointless and confusing. Not unlike the nWo segment in the ring. The nWo segment was slightly better, since there was hints that this will be worked out in time, but they weren't clear enough. Nash's promo was just random rambling.

BUBBA THE LOVE SPONGE. No. Just no. Never get this guy on my TV again. All this guy had to do was hold a microphone, but instead he undersells and overacts everything. Please, no more of this. I realize that Hogan and Bubba are practically gay lovers, but TNA does not need Bubba the Love Sponge. I'd be happier with a 6 month stint of Brutus Beefcake as X-Division Champion  then have to see Bubba the Douchesponge on my TV ever again. Please TNA. Don't bring him back. JB is good and entertaining enogh for the job.

Backstage attacks. Why bother to show them if there's no pay off or any real hype about what's going on? Random shit happening, intrigue does not make.

Oh and I appreciate the nod to the masked man continuity, but having him run out randomly in a match on this night of all nights, shows that whoever is booking has no concept of when or where to do these things.

The Wrap Up:
In closing, last night was a historic iMPACT. It wasn't the best iMPACT. Heck it wasn't the best show from TNA in the last few months. It was however, quite interesting. There was a lot of throw everything at the wall going on, but people were genuinely interested. There was more talk about TNA last night than anything else in wrestling. Oh and the WWE put on an absolutely atrocious show. Raw was an embarrassment. A neutered Bret Hart looking like he was 65 years old, being castrated by McMahon and forced to make nice with HBK provided WWE with little more than a whimper to counterpunch TNA's wild night of chaos. TNA won the war in the hearts and minds of the wrestling community, if not the ratings.

However, TNA has to be careful. Their show last night was not what they needed it to be. It was nowhere near as good as it could have been. While they smoked Raw in terms or surprises, wrestling, and intrigue, they failed to deliver a show that would completely decimate the entire WWE brand. TNA has made a decent first step and the WWE gave them a huge opportunity by failing to capitalize either by ignorance or incompetence. However it won't always be like this. TNA has to fasten it's seatbelts and find it's focus on the next iMPACT. If they can balance their focus and the fast paced excitment, they have a chance to overcome the monster

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