By this point, it should be pretty obvious that I’m becoming a major TNA fan. I’m not entirely sure why I’m becoming a major fan, but I think I’ll save that discussion for another column (maybe next week!). In case you didn’t know, I also write a weekly column entitled “Major Impact” which reviews TNA’s Thursday Night Impact! on Spike TV. Feel free to flip over there and let me know what you think!
Given that I spend so much of my professional wrestling-related energy on TNA these days, I think I’ve got some right to comment on their efforts outside of the ring. To that end, TNA conducted one of the worst backstage interviews that I have ever seen in my entire life the other day. I’ve embedded the YouTube video below, though let me apologize because you need to fast forward to the 3:30 minute mark in order to see what I’m talking about. Go ahead, take a look.
So you have Jeremy Borash and Kaz doing a backstage schtick where they’re supposed to bounce off of each other. Then they introduce a new women’s wrestler named Talia Madison (which, by the way, Borash botched). Talia comes out and is 110% behind her stupid attitude problem where apparently she’s very important in her mind and has a lot going on. So much so that she feels the need to constantly talk over Kaz and make motions while he’s speaking about her…
Then you have Kaz who is really trying to push his character while this is a segment that should be designed to get Talia over! Good grief! Someone f’ing direct this stuff and set it up beforehand! Ugh…
Right around the 5:30 minute mark this thing gets really hard to watch.
Somewhere around 6:45 into the interview, Kaz asks Talia about her finishing manuever (called ReTALIAtion). Then, after she says that it is hard to describe, he completely cuts her down and ruins her heat (at the 6:57 mark).
Mercifully, the interview ends shortly thereafter. This was just painful. Someone tell Kaz that if he’s going to be doing this backstage stuff with Borash, then – in the event that they are introducing new talent – he needs to take a back seat and let the new talent get over! What he did to Talia (who needs about another 6 months of working the microphone every night in front of a live crowd) was uncalled for and ruined this girl’s moment, if she even had any.
Here’s hoping that someone, somewhere backstage at TNA, sees how awful this interview was and either trains these guys better or hires a more hands-on director. This thing had “bush league” written all over it and really brings out the fact that Borash is essentially green as an interviewer and that the TNA writers and internal leaders do not have 100% editorial control of their public product. If I was Jarrett or Carter and I saw this, I’d be making phone calls right now.
