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RussoRiffic February 2, 2007 I know I do this a lot but I am about to go on another TNA rant. I didn’t want to but I got so worked up and angry after watching this week’s show I had to get this off my chest. I can however promise that this will be my last TNA rant for a while because I am now officially boycotting TNA until Vince Russo is removed from the creative process. How a company with such an amazingly talented locker room can produce such an unwatchable show is beyond me. Actually it isn’t beyond me I watched Vince Russo do it in WCW. There is an old expression: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Someone needs to explain the history of WCW to Dixie Carter. I have come to the conclusion that TNA is to Wrestling, what Scary Movie is to Horror Films. It has become a comedic spoof of a wrestling show. No sane rational person would act the way people do in TNA. Chris Sabin in an effort to make fun of Jerry Lynn’s age shows up in a bathrobe, using a walker, and wearing depends. Is he six? Who would do this? It felt like a bugs bunny cartoon. Why would Jerry be mad that Sabin is making himself look like an idiot? Ron Killings stuff looked like a bad SNL skit. He said he was going Hollywood and going to be a big star so we now get to see him doing bad movie trailer spoofs. What is meant to be accomplished by this? Counting Cornette and valets there were 39 people on this Freakin show. How are we supposed to remember any of it? What purpose did Bob Backlund serve? Why is Sonjay Dutt now posing? Has Big Kev convinced him that he is on the gas? The LAX thing was beyond unbelievable. Mike Tenay is handed video footage of a horrific violent crime against innocent people he decides to: A: Report said violent crime to police and hand over the video evidence. B: Air the footage and act disgusted and mad. After having close family members viscously attacked and assaulted, Team 3D: A: Reports said violent crime to police sending the people who assaulted their family to prison. B: Become so enraged that they track LAX down immediately seeking revenge. C: Sends D-von to the weekly TV show to vow revenge next week. Are we to believe that Sting now has magical powers, since he disappeared out of the back of the ambulance leaving only his “trade marked” baseball bat behind? That tiny cage behind James Mitchell during his promo, does the prison yard match take place inside that tiny thing? What was the point, was that incase we didn’t understand the concept of jail? There were three matches on the show. All of them had outside interference and brawling after the match. We got a total of maybe 10 minutes of match time on the entire show, and they didn’t even bother to announce the result of the main event. Do finishes not matter? Doesn’t anyone care who won? I used to. To plug a PPV caliber main event then deliver a 3 minutes match with no finish is asinine. If that is a PPV caliber match I will never order a PPV. It is also insane considering the PPV caliber Main Event match that Edge and HBK delivered on RAW just over a week ago. The show is called Total Non-Stop Action yet we get almost no action and when we do get some it is over shadowed by endless run ins, outside interference, and non-finishes. I am officially at wits end and will not watch another TNA show until they replace Vince Russo. Hopefully this will happen before TNA goes out of business, because if they do Vince McMahon will just end up with another video library and we will have to see all this nonsense again on 24/7. Lance Storm |
| QUOTE (Mad Dog @ Feb 2 2007, 04:47 PM) |
| You know, I realized at some point several years ago that Lance Storm never really has anything positive to say about anything. Not defending the show he was talking about since I haven't seen it. But he's like your typical IWC smark these days in that he complains about everything. |
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| Why I Rant February 5, 2007 After my recent “RussoRiffic” TNA rant I was again bombarded with the question: Why do I pick on TNA, why don’t I rant on WWE? There are several reasons behind this so this week I figured I could look at them in depth. When I look at WWE and TNA I don’t just do so as a fan that wants to watch wrestling. I watch them with a vested interest in their success as it pertains to the wrestling industry. I want both companies to thrive and succeed for the good of the business and the boys who work in it. WWE is thriving; they make money, lots of money (grossing $380 million per year). There is little to no chance they are going to go out of business any time soon. There is more chance of WWE shutting down because Vince losses interest than due to financial concerns. TNA on the other hand is losing money, LOTS of money ($10 million per year). Without it’s financial backers TNA cannot exist. At some point in time people investing money in a business expect a return on that investment. If that point in time comes before TNA is able to turn business around and actually make money or at least break even, so it can survive without money backers, it’s game over, no more TNA. TNA supporters constant defense that WWE does Stupid Stuff too, is nothing more than a cop out!! WWE and TNA are in two completely different boats. WWE has a stable loyal audience that tunes in every week, buys enough merchandise, and orders enough PPVs for WWE to make money. As long as they don’t do enough stupid things to drive their audience away in droves they will stay in business. TNA on the other hand does not have a large enough fan base, and they do not order enough PPVs, for TNA to stay in business without financial help. So TNA needs to attract a ton of new fans in order to become a success. When your goal is to attract new fans rather than just not repel current ones you need to be far more careful and can get away with far fewer mistakes. The other reason I don’t rant on WWE like I do TNA is that their show in my opinion is far less frustrating. WWE does some stupid shit, don’t get me wrong, but at the end of the day they usually deliver the goods in some form or another. As wrestling fans we’ve been conditioned to tolerate a certain degree of crap as long as IT ISN’T ALL CRAP and once in a while you deliver what we want to see. Let’s look at SmackDown this past week, which I thought was a weak show by SD standards. SD had 4 matches, two of which had outside interference and were in my opinion crappy finishes, especially the “Little Bastard” Boogey Man finish. As disappointing as those 2 finishes were, there was at least 2 clean finishes on the show and the solid 12 minutes of action delivered by Benoit and Finlay before the finish more than balanced that out. On top of that the show ended with an extremely strong segment involving 4 top guys. We got to see a very serious and dramatic standoff between the two World Champions and the top 2 contenders. It was meaningful and set up the next PPV Main Event, and increased interested in the following PPV (WrestleMania) as well. No other people were involved it was clear cut and focused. TNA on the other hand had 3 matches ALL of which had outside interference and post match brawling. None of the matches went more than 4 minutes and totaled less than 10 minutes combined. There was tons of goofy stupid crap but not one solid meaningful focused segment to anchor the show. They offered us a “PPV caliber Main Event” which had my hopes up, yet turned out to be another short, pointless match that didn’t even have a finish. Had they let AJ and Joe deliver a great main event, like they both can, all the other stuff would have been forgiven. Those who like the goofy stuff would have gotten their fill and those of use who foolishly expect some wrestling on a wrestling show would have been happy as well. If TNA would give me one great solid match once in a while (and they sure as hell have the roster to do it) I’d watch the show and put up with all the stupid shit. Just because others do stupid shit doesn’t excuse it on your show, especially when the other guys on occasion deliver matches like Edge and Shawn Michaels did 2 weeks ago. In closing to those of you who emailed me stating that ECW is worse than TNA, which again is not a valid defense. I won’t dispute that. I don’t find it as mind numbingly frustrating, but I don’t enjoy it and gave up on it months before I gave up on TNA. If TNA revamps it’s creative team, or ECW starts featuring more Tommy Dreamer and less Matt Stryker, I’ll likely give both of them a try again. That’s my two cents, Lance Storm |
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| How I'd Book Impact February 9, 2007 I figured with all of my complaining about how TNA is booked I could at least offer my two cents on what I would do if I were in charge. I’m not going to get into who I would push or not push and why, or even offer any specific angles I’m going to talk more about show structure and general direction than anything else, because that is one of the biggest problems I have with the current show. We hear all the time the complaint that TNA needs to be 2-hours. I won’t dispute that the show could benefit greatly from an additional hour but they don’t have it so there is no point complaining about it they need to make the best use of the hour they have. In a 1-hour TV program you have approximately 44-minutes of content and 16 minutes of commercial time. This week’s TNA show had approximately 6 ½ minutes of actual match time air on the show, which means that fans actually saw more than twice as many commercials minutes as they did wrestling minutes on a wrestling program. This to me is crazy and I would NEVER have less match time that commercial time on the program. I would aim for closer to 20 minutes of match time as a show minimum. There are those out there that will say you can’t build enough angles, or tell enough stories with so much of the show dedicated to matches but I disagree. I think the problem is they are currently trying to tell too many stories in one show, and over looking the fact that some stories can be told in the ring. I would break the show into 4 10 to 12 minute segments. If commercial breaks require it, some segments would span commercial breaks, 3 of those segments will almost always feature matches. One of those segments each week would be devoted to the X-Division, and I would focus less on “Story Lines” with the X-Division and give it more of a pure wrestling feel. You can book some angles along the way but predominantly it would be about competitive high-end action. I would also keep these finishes as clean as possible. I think most of the appeal to the X-Division is the action so by simplifying the angles here will allow for more story based stuff elsewhere. There are a lot of “spot junkies” out there, this will give them there fill, and by giving the X Guys 8-10 minutes of actual bell to bell ring time they will be able to get their personalities over more during matches. The other main Segment each week would focus on the Heavy Weight Title. As far as I’m concerned if your Championship program isn’t the focus of your show you have the title on the wrong guy. You make the NWA Title important by featuring that program. This segment may not always be a match but it needs to be strong and important. You also almost NEVER beat your champion, he needs to be strong, you cant’ be Mr. Nice guy and try to protect all of his challengers. If you have a match for this segment give it serious time 12-15 minutes and trim minutes from the least important segment which won’t need to be a match segment anyway. The 3rd segment would alternate each week, featuring your #2 and #3 angles, either the Tag Title picture or a featured non-title program. This should also feature a 6-10 minute match. I would avoid trying to get 2 or more angles over with one match, each segment would be more strictly focused on the one specific angle. I find when you book a match between 2 guys with unrelated angles just to have their respective angles run together to avoid a finish, both issues get watered down. You want to focus and paint vivid pictures for the audience to follow. The 4th Segment would vary depending on the rest of the show. If the NWA Title segment featured a match, their extra minutes would come out of this segment and the minutes left could be evenly spread out on the show and would consist of the needed interviews, video packages, PPV plugs, angle re-cap, and DVD release information type stuff. The interviews and recaps would remind fans of the angles and talent not featured on this show. If there wasn’t a match involved in the title segment, this segment could highlight a shorter strong win type match for someone needing a clean win on TV or involve a minor underneath angle, and still get the other recap and video stuff covered. With this structure, there will be weeks where guys aren’t on the show, but I think that will make when they are on the show mean more. This format will only be able to feature 4 strong angled matches for PPV purposes but I think if your top 4 angles aren’t selling the show a weak 5th and 6th angle won’t do it either. You still announce and plug the other matches and when possible slide them into that variable 4th segment. With the show set up this way we get 3 matches per show with an average length of 8-10 minutes, which would give fans 25 to 30 minutes of wrestling, and still allow 8 to 13 minutes for promos, angle recaps, etc. Before you math majors out there tell me that that only totals 38 minutes, I’m allowing for ring entrances etc, which take time as well. If there is a need once in a while for 2 strong talking, non-wrestling segments we are still left with 2 10-minute matches and more wrestling minutes than commercial minutes. With this you still need to book all of the angles, but you’ve got a structure and format that is easy to follow and gives 3 current programs time to focus each week. Fans need to care about and remember what they see; if you do too much it just all blends together and becomes forgotten. I think it far better to feature and get over 10 guys than cram 35 people on to one show and have most of those get forgotten in the shuffle. Lance Storm. |