Today on Superstars, the WWE Tag Team Champions are in action when Michael McGillicutty and David Otunga take on Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov. Will the NXT alumni get the victory or will the more experienced duo prevail? Then, on Impact Wrestling, Mickie James faces Winter in a street fight. Also, Scott Steiner faces off with Bully Ray in a Bound For Glory Series match. And on top of all that, Eric Bischoff will cal out the icon Sting! Read on for my thoughts on the shows as they happen.
Hey look, it's some of my favorite people on Twitter! AJ and Kaitlyn are pretty entertaining on there. Natalya talks about her cat a lot... yyyyeeeeaaahhhh.
Yeah I don't really see Kaitlyn as Natalya's doppelganger.
I get the feeling Matt really does like Kaitlyn. This was mentioned during NXT Season 3 as well. I mean, you know, not that I blame him.
Kaitlyn seems like she's improved in the ring from when we last saw her regularly. She's not amazing by any stretch, but she seems to be more fluid.
I would have liked to have seen more from AJ here, but seeing her at all is fine by me. She has potential in spades.
They namedropped the Chickbusters! Awesome.
I almost thought we were getting a rematch from that 6-man tag at first.
Skipping through this part...
Melina and Gail are both pretty solid competitors I think.
These two have played up this feud online, which I always think is a nice touch. Heck, adding pretty much any kind of build-up to your match/angle gets props from me.
Nice match. There's still not much background to the feud, though. We need some interviews or something on this show to get things like this over.
Raw Roulette can be hit or miss. Sometimes you get tag team TLC matches, and sometimes you get William Regal and Goldust dressed as showgirls.
R-Truth got GOT by Little Jimmy.
That ring announcer's voice annoys me for some reason.
No Tyson Kidd this week? I was looking forward to (making fun of) his choice of manager for the week.
Interesting that they didn't mention Shane McMahon's appearance when talking about McIlroy, but perhaps not surprising.
Not a bad main event. I think that finisher's called the McGillicutter?
And on to Impact Wrestling...
I guess Jeff's contract wasn't legally binding or something.
Wow, Sting's face paint is pretty crazy tonight.
Scratch that. Sting in general is pretty crazy tonight.
And I thought R-Truth's heel turn had a wacky promo.
I thought Sting was going to have to put his title shot on the line against Gunner or something for a second there.
I'm really seeing the comparisons to The Joker now.
Rather surprising that no one from Immortal tried to intervene. Maybe they're just as confused about Sting as everyone else.
I can actually get behind this idea now. Weird. They're making it a big deal for now at least.
These two guys have a good deal of credibility from their years of success in the industry. Anyone who takes them to the limit in this series should get a nice rub. The winner of this series could pretty much get a ticket to the top.
I guess Steiner's the babyface of the two in this match. In theory, "letting the fans decide who's good and evil" is a neat idea, but in practice it generally doesn't work out too well. People "switching sides" too often confuses people who don't watch the product much. If someone's watching for the first time tonight, they're going to assume Steiner's a good guy, when he's been heelish in the last few months.
It's probably not a good idea to eat a hamburger so soon before a match.
Australians actually generally don't like Foster's from what I've gathered. Also, in Canada, milk comes in bags.
It's kind of weird having videos introducing wrestlers who are only going to be around a few weeks, but it'd be pretty obvious who was going to win if you profiled all of them, so I guess it makes sense. I wonder how the eventual contract winner will fare in TNA.
In WWE, babyface Divas smile and wave to fans. In TNA, they curse out their opponents. Some characters are more likeable than others. I wonder if that makes a difference in ratings: WWE promotes itself to a younger audience, yet a good number of older fans (and a solid number of women) watch it. TNA goes for (roughly) people (males?) in their mid-teens and up, and their slice of the wrestling pie is smaller. It reminds of the feeling about animated shows and movies being able to draw in older fans as well, while some edgier things don't do as well.
The Knockouts match felt kind of convoluted. I'm not really crazy about this feud, though a good deal of that probably stems from me not being crazy about ODB and Jackie.
I have no clue who this guy is either.
What was to stop Tara from keeping the beatdown going? WWE generally saves the action for the ring for good reason.
A weedwhacker that can cut through plywood? Expect that to be used in a backyard fed soon.
This segment. Wow. I forgot Bully Ray was in Immortal there for a second.
If only the person scoring the pin gets the points, there's almost certainly going to be heat between tag team partners.
Speak of the devils. Wouldn't surprise me if Beer Money splits soon.
Roode's got some fire for sure.
How they book Styles vs. Gunner will be interesting. Are the wins over title contenders flukes or will he continue getting surprise wins? Also, what happened to Murphy and Rob Terry? I guess Hogan and Bischoff don't book them since they're not in Immortal anymore, and the Network doesn't care enough to see them.
Nice match. I don't know what caused TNA to improve recently (maybe it's all the blue playing tricks on me?) but I hope it stays in this direction.
Not a bad interview with Abyss. I didn't even care about the camera.
That'll be an interesting PPV. The buyrate will be REALLY interesting. This could very well turn out like One Night Stand and see a new focus on the X-Division.
Man, I remember when Styles and Joe were tearing it up in the X-Division. Made me excited for the future of TNA. Let's just say I pictured them higher up on the totem pole than they are now.
For people who didn't see Joe's run in TNA pre-Kurt Angle, it could very well be my favorite TNA storyline ever, and one of my favorites period. It was simple: Joe arrives. He kicks someone's ass. In his next match, he faces someone a little higher (or in a similar spot) on the card. He takes everything they can throw at them, and puts them out, too. It keeps going. Eventually he makes it to the top of the X-Division. Wins the title. Doesn't lose through any of this (unless it's by DQ or a triple threat/tag where he doesn't get pinned). Doesn't look weak OR out of his element. Eventually moves up to the low end of the heavyweight ranks. Takes everything his opponent can give him, and beats him, too. The whole thing went for over a year before he faced the World Champion, who he beat in a non-title match. Then Kurt Angle came in, they faced off in Angle's first PPV match, and Angle made him tap out. It took a while for Joe to regain all that momentum, and when he finally won the TNA Title, he was being mentored by Kevin Nash and wearing a suit instead of being the guy who carried around a towel around his neck (which eventually was bloodied after a beatdown to Daniels) as a trophy.
Long story short, the guy used to be a total badass, but somewhere along the lines TNA dropped the ball and a number of "re-starts" to the character (Nation of Violence) that tried to tap into that just didn't click.
Why isn't Daniels using his own music instead of Fortune's?
Daniels doesn't seem as "on" as he was when I started watching TNA with his Fallen Angel character.
I wonder if Styles, Joe, and Daniels can pull the rabbit out of the hat one last time.
Two goofy looking guys in blue with weird names vs. someone with some flair and personality. I think I know who I'm going for, and this is my first time seeing any of them.
So-so X-Division match. I'm still not crazy about car crash matches. And trying to get over 3 newcomers in one match is pretty much impossible.
RVD and Lynn are right about being X-Division before the X-Division. I wish they got a longer segment instead of just "Hey look, one of RVD's greatest opponents ever just showed up behind him".
Has a street fight ever actually taken place in a street?
Hardcore brawls get kind of repetitive sometimes.
This is like, the 4th women's match today? That feels like a record (outside of that one New Year's Eve special TNA did).
If it's a street fight, presumably it doesn't matter if the referee sees interference?
Angelina's not as umm "out of it" as she has been in the past. I guess since she doesn't need the pills anymore, she's getting enough sleep to counter those circles under her eyes.
Sting vs. Abyss was an NWA Title feud some years ago (before TNA had its own title), which could be somewhat surprising given that Abyss kind of floats around between serious threat and midcarder.
So, umm, is Abyss going to be X-Division Champion for the PPV? That wouldn't really fit the theme.
Jeremy Borash is always good for ring intros.
Abyss is looking pretty credible here against a former multiple-time World Champion.
Brian Hebner's blue shoes are hysterical.
I've got The Art of War; it doesn't look anything as cool as that one.
I thought he was going to pull out the thumbtacks or glass like he used to.
That's almost certainly the first time I've seen a glove wrapped in barbed wire used in a match.
Not a bad end to Impact Wrestling at all. The show genuinely seems better recently.
That's all for Thursday's shows. I'll be back tomorrow for Smackdown. A news post will be up at some point after midnight. Thanks for reading!
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