Sting works TNA live event, Interviews with Angle/Sammartino, WWE's work with troops profiled, Memphis legend in critical condition, WWE live event note, Gut Check Challenge winner, Fathers' Day tweets, WWE star calling it quits?, and Questions on a Taker book, Double J, how news sites work, wrestling in TX, and PG music

The main event of TNA's "Basebrawl" event this weekend saw 54-year-old Sting and 44-year-old Kurt Angle beat 41-year-old Bully Ray and 40-year-old Devon in under 10 minutes. While that's a big match from a name value perspective and they deserve main event status, it's concerning that TNA is focusing on stars from other promotions' pasts over the likes of AJ Styles, James Storm, Abyss, Samoa Joe, etc.. WWE has Big Show, Kane, Mark Henry, etc., but the main events generally feature the stars of today and tomorrow. For what it's worth, Angle still has "it" and some say that Bully Ray is in the best shape of his career.

Kurt Angle talked ahead of that event. Sadly, the story focused more on Olympic wrestling than the TNA live event. Angle should have been wearing a TNA shirt! Is that too hard to ask? He could promote one of his own shirts, and maybe people who saw the interview would want to buy it. He'd be putting money in his own pocket. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Bruno Sammartino talked about the WWE Hall of Fame and more. Nice little story.

Everything else from yesterday is after the break.





Big Show and Kofi Kingston talked about visiting troops. As tired as I am of Show as a performer, I recognize his value from a PR perspective. He does a lot of interviews and visits and such.


Memphis legend Jackie Fargo has been hospitalized in critical condition. PWInsider.com has a great write-up on his career.

Brad Maddox vs. Hornswoggle happened on one of this weekend's WWE live events, after an open challenge from Maddox. It remains to be seen if Maddox will end up wrestling on TV.

"Bad Bones" John Klinger won the TNA Gut Check Challenge, meaning that he'll get a chance to win a TNA contract on a future episode of Impact. It wasn't even close. Cagematch.net has him at 29 with 8 years of experience and over 500 matches to his name. Hard to compete with that.

The Rock, Cody Rhodes, Vince McMahon, and John Cena all made Fathers' Day tweets. Vince, Sr. had a pretty different business philosophy from the current Vince: he refused to compete with the other territories and try to go national.

Mark Henry is teasing retirement on Twitter. I really hope this is a work. Henry's awesome.

For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. Please!? I can see it happening down the line. Maybe not immediately after retiring, but once he has a few years of post-WWE life.

2. Jarrett's definitely been marginalized after they've come in. I don't know if there's a relation between those things or not, but it's bizarre that the "HHH" (heck, the Vince McMahon in some ways) of the company has basically been forgotten about as far as the Impact Wrestling brand is concerned. He's still a big part of things behind-the-scenes, expanding TNA's international ventures, but as far as what fans see in America, he's disappeared.

3. All of that sounds pretty funny, but I think they do phone tag and emails and such.

4. Yeah; if it was so easy to run anywhere they wanted, they'd have done so. There's a lot of work to be done and a lot of money to be spent to go on the road like that.

5. The people who picked the music very well might not have known about the lyrics. "Kids these days and their angry music". I don't see this being a big change in the PG rating idea. What the heck are they going to play to hype a wrestling show that's kid-friendly?

More wrestling tomorrow.