Thanks for stopping by today and taking a look at Headlines & Scrutiny, the report with the most in-depth news, reviews, and analysis of Ring of Honor and Total Nonstop Action available on the web today. For any reason, you can email me at trevor@thebalrogslair.com.
As usual, I encourage you to check out the TBL TNA and ROH blog (enough acronyms for you?), which updates throughout the week with current news and views on both products. The blog is available at http://www.thebalrogslair.com/tnaroh/, where you can also add your own comments and add to the discussion.
UPCOMING ROH SHOWS:
*8/7 in Essington (Philadephia), PA
*8/28 in Braintree (Boston), MA
*9/11 in Elizabeth, NJ
*10/2 in Philadephia, PA
*10/15 in Dayton, OH
*10/16 in Chicago Ridge, IL
*12/18 in Elizabeth, NJ
The 8/7 show, which is this upcoming Saturday, will feature Bryan Danielson vs. Austin Aries 2/3 falls; World title: Samoa Joe vs. Trent Acid; Tag title: C.M. Punk and Colt Cabana vs. Ricky Reyes and Rocky Romero; Homicide and Low Ki vs. The Briscoes; Nigel McGuiness vs. John Walters for the #1 contendership to the Pure title; Dan Maff and B.J. Whitmer vs. the Carnage Crew; Izzy from Special K vs. Roderick Strong; and Too Cold Scorpio vs. Ace Steel vs. Alex Shelley vs. Jay Lethal.
Last Wednesday TNA on PPV (7/21):
A. Dallas (Kid Kash’s “cousin” and bodyguard) defeated Silas Young
B. Sonny Siaki defeated John McChesney
C. 3Live Kru defeated Nick Berk, Big Bully Douglas, and unknown
1. America’s Most Wanted (Chris Harris and James Storm) defeated Team Canada (bobby Roode and Petey Williams) in 9:15. Team Canada has failed to disappoint in the ring and this was another successful match, along with America’s Most Wanted, who also have a very good reputation together. D’Amore constantly interfered. The finish was Roode attempting a powerbomb on Harris, but Storm interfering, doing a superkick, and Harris pinning Roode. D’Amore assaulted AMW for the win, whipping them with a belt. Harris did the same to D’Amore and Johnny Devine and Eric Young ran in. More whipping until Triple X ran in. This sets up a strap match of sorts next week.
2. Abyss and Alex Shelley beat D-Ray 3000 and Shark Boy in 5:23, giving Goldylocks control of their contracts. Abyss won after hitting a black hole slam on D-Ray 3000, which of course led to more jealousy of the relationship between Goldy and her baby bear Alex Shelley. (Embarassingly enough, at the ROH shows last weekend, there were a lot of baby bear chants at Shelley.) Desire attacked Goldylocks, which lead to Abyss/Siaki next week (see the preview for next week below).
3. Mike Posey, the referee, went over David Young (0-88) in 5:06. Young said he would quit if he lost in a promo last week. The match was what was to be expected. Posey did a dropkick on Young as Glenn Gilberti came out and pinned him with a roll-up. Young attacked Gilberti. Swinger ran in and that was it for Young.
4. The Naturals (Chase Stevens and Andy Douglas) retained their NWA Tag Team titles against Triple X (Christopher Daniels and Prime Time) in 12:21. The match did not meet expectations and the team of Stevens and Douglas did not look as impressive as they have in past weeks. For all it’s worth, Triple X hasn’t been nearly as good in this incarnation as they were with Low Ki before. Team Canada interfered, attacking Triple X and Harris and Storm. The odd thing is, next week they are building to a rematch of Team Canada vs. America’s Most Wanted, but Prime Time challenged AMW here while nothing happened with Team Canada or the Naturals.
Monty Brown did another of his promos, this time about Jeff Hardy and his road for the title. Ron Killings, who has been on the outskirts of this feud for weeks now, attacked Brown and they brawled before being split apart.
5. Jeff Hardy beat Monty Brown in 9:23. This match was for the #1 contendership. Nothing to it as far as the wrestling. After Hardy won, Dusty Rhodes came out since he’s friends with Hardy for some reason, and said that Hardy was the next world champion since, like Sabu, he also doesn’t speak for himself. Vince Russo came out and argued with Rhodes about something and Rhodes was mad. Russo and Rhodes later got into an argument, and I’m stretching here, but apparently Rhodes promising Hardy a title shot to sign with TNA wasn’t exactly what Russo had in mind. However, this match was a sanctioned match on the PPV card for the #1 contendership, so regardless of what Rhodes promised, Hardy would figuratively still get the shot because he won a match deemed by TNA to be for the #1 contendership.
6. Kazarian and Michael Shane both won the X-Division title over A.J. Styles in an Ultimate X match in 14:56. Great match. For all intents and purposes, Styles had the match won after he gave Kazarian a mid air Styles clash from the wire to the mat, when Traci tried to interfere. Shane was already out from a bump earlier. Kid Kash came in and KOed Styles with a crutch of his (symbolic retribution). Shane and Kazarian climbed and got the belt at the same time, at which point this whole deal was ruined as the decision was made that both would become champion.
thumbdown (0k image) Like last week, Jeff Jarrett, the heavyweight title, and the like took a backseat to some of the other feuds that are going on in the company. This week, the result was less successful. The crowd was just not there for the majority of the show and it hurt the wrestling. The booking wasn’t that great. The wrestling was good off and on, but this time the great main event couldn’t save it because of the cop-out finish. Somehow, these PPVs have to be worth the money more times than not. It doesn’t really matter so much how at this point, but its just necessary that they are.
This is the latest card for next Wednesday:
—Raven vs. Sabu. Sabu is the homicidal, genocidal, suicidal one, meaning that he is a murderer, deliberately kills large numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity or national origin, and kills himself intentionally. Quite the gimmick. This match has been built for quite some time, but it hasn’t always been great to watch. The main bone of contention is Raven not respecting Ed Farhat, the amazing Sheik character for years, who passed away last year, and is Sabu’s “uncle.”
—A.J. Styles vs. Kid Kash. Kash is returning to the ring after TNA management worked that he was fired, which harkens back to the early days of TNA and the late days of WCW. This match is based in Kash’ shoot comments in an interview that he hated how TNA only pushed a few people, one of those being Styles. In a poorly designed interview last week, Kash said that Styles couldn’t talk on the mic, but was pushed far ahead of people with more experience. This fits into the idea that Styles is not welcome in the X-Division, which is how Michael Shane and Kazarian have focused their efforts over the past few weeks, eliminating Styles. Kash did a run-in during Ultimate X, costing Styles the title, which he lost to both Shane and Kazarian.
—America’s Most Wanted (James Storm and Chris Harris) vs. Team Canada. The gimmick is that leather straps will be attached to the ropes, like one of those old southern matches that you’d see Dusty Rhodes in. Two weeks ago, D’Amore and company screwed AMW out of the titles in that cage match against the naturals. Last week, they fought and Team Canada used belts to whip AMW into submission, thus the gauntlet was laid down by AMW, and this match was added to the card for this Wednesday.
—The X Co-Champions Michael Shane and Kazarian vs. Jerry Lynn and Chris Sabin
—“Luck of the Irish Weapons Match”: Irish Pat Kenney vs. Big Vito. This being a rematch of that horrible WWF 1999 Hardcore-style match between these two, two weeks ago on PPV.
—Abyss vs. the returning Sonny Siaki. A few things here to note, Goldylocks is using Abyss and Shelley to win matches now that she’s rich from stealing Erik Watts’ briefcase of money. Last week she won the contracts of Shark Boy and D-Ray 3000, who all, in turn, must work for her. After she won those contracts last week, Desire attacked her, recouping a feud that should have stayed in TNA lore. Abyss feels neglected because Alex Shelley is getting all the glory, while he worked his ass off in IWA Puerto Rico to come up here and be misused like this. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, Desire has connections with Sonny Siaki, and that set up Abyss/Siaki. If Siaki loses, he cedes his contract to Goldylocks. On the other hand, if Abyss loses, Siaki gets the money. Aren’t you glad you read the background now?
And results from Impact on Fox Sports Network:
*Jeff Jarrett defeated Lex Lovett in 2:45.
*Kid Kash defeated Mikey Batts in 4:25.
*Raven defeated Rod Steele in 1:22.
*Team Canada (Bobby Roode and Petey Williams) defeated Jerelle Clark and Mark Laurnoff in 4:06. In order to get Team Canada over, they need to spend more time developing their characters. At this point, they are just a good team that happens to be extremely reliable week after week. So it’s time for TNA to put more work into their characters so that they mean more. Focus on D’Amore. Focus on their motivation. The team has become subject to the same kind of booking that hurts the X-Division, the guys have no characters, and thus can’t really get over to the degree that they could.
*Jeff Hardy defeated Romeo in 2:03.
*Michael Shane and Kazarian vs. Triple X (Christopher Daniels and Prime Time) ended in a DQ when A.J. Styles interfered, followed by everyone who has a feud in 5:55.
thumbdown (0k image) All squash format for this show. The promotion was as good, but the show didn’t do it for me, part of which was the wrestling. The thing about this TV show is that TNA is really just biding its time at this point until they get a better slot, perhaps on a better channel. The idea right now is merely to have pretty good squash matches that retain attention for an hour, promote the PPV well, and keep the quality of the PPVs up to the level of last week’s show. There was also a Jeff Hammond interview with Monty Brown. Hammond talked as little as possible, which was good, but he was better this week. Russo, on the show, promised to make announcements Wednesday about Shane and Kazarian being co-champions, Jeff Hardy, and the title situation. Rhodes then came in and yelled at him again.
The 7/9 Impact scored a 0.22 and 7/16 drew a 0.34, both normal numbers.
ROH News Summary: 2 Cold Scorpio will be debuting at the Philly show this upcoming weekend. Some of you may remember Scorpio from working the states many years ago, or may be familiar with him as one of the foreigners constantly with the Pro Wrestling NOAH promotion in Japan. The press release said that he currently lives in Germany. ROH will also be releasing an interview with him, and he’s been a lot of places so that could be very interesting.
As mentioned last week, the live numbers for the ROH shows were somewhat disappointing. In an interview with the Pro Wrestling Torch, ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky said he didn’t know exactly what to make of the figures (475 and 525 approx.) and that the promotion “definitely fell short on the promoting end of things and we have no one to blame but ourselves.” He explained that restarting ROH took up a lot of the effort that would normally be directed at promoting the shows. “Our website was down for a couple of weeks right before the show and our attention was focused on starting the new ROH rather than promoting these shows.”
A few notes on the upcoming Braintree, MA show on 8/28. The main event will be Samoa Joe and C.M. Punk teaming up against The Rottweilers members Homicide and Low Ki. The show also will feature “Scramble Cage Melee” featuring Jack Evans and Fast Eddie as well as Pure Champion Doug Williams defending against the winner of the McGuiness/Walters match in Philly… In a change of the rules for the Pure title, the title can now change hands on count out. Ultimate Endurance at the 9/11 show will feature the teams Generation Next and Loc and Devito from the Carnage Crew. Generation Next vs. The Second City Saints.
Also, the news on the scramble cage melee match that is scheduled for the 8/28 show, from ROH: “There will be several wrestlers in the Scramble Cage Melee and it will be every man for himself. The match will go on until there is just one man remaining. There is only way of elimination. A wrestler can eliminate someone only by diving on them from one of the platforms…. This will be the last time the Scramble Cage is used in 2004.”
TNA NEWS SUMMARY: Jeff Hardy, upon his return, has presented TNA some problems. While it hasn’t been bothersome enough to officials to scale back on his push, they are worried. In a few instances, he missed flights to the Wednesday show, opting instead to take later flights. Then two weeks ago, when staying at the Nashville area hotel that TNA wrestlers use he overslept one morning, holding up the charter bus that takes wrestlers from Nashville to Orlando on Thursday morning. To say the least, it hasn’t made him popular, especially since he is being pushed so quickly without showing much of anything.
As Ken Shamrock has told TNA that he can’t work more than one day a week due to having custody of his children, TNA hasn’t booked him in awhile. He was aligned with Jarrett for awhile on the PPVs.
A few funny stories. Big Vito is still vastly unpopular within the locker room, but now he has a new enemy: hotel staff. At the Nashville hotel that TNA wrestlers use Wednesday nights, Vito is said to constantly answer the door in the buff, and fails to put on any clothes when the cleaning staff comes. Also, Konnan, when informed that there would be no Impact match for 3Live Kru, asked how it was possible that they had nothing, but “Goldylocks has [a storyline] every week.”
Dastardly Dave has a TNA column up on the site at http://www.thebalrogslair.com/opinions/dastardly/2004/0801.shtml.
Until next week. Check out the TNA/ROH blog all week long for updates.
Matchmaker
Trevor Hunnicutt
THunnicutt@aol.com
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