Brock Lesnar took on Alberto Del Rio at a live event this weekend. Rusev ran in for the DQ, so Brock destroyed them both. I'd love to see either of those matches one-on-one.
Tommy Dreamer teamed Kane and the Dudleys to beat the Wyatts at a live event, too.
Michael Bennett and Maria Kanellis have left Ring of Honor after the most recent TV tapings. They are likely also done with NJPW. It is believed they are headed to TNA. I'm curious how they'll do there. It will be good to have some fresh blood on Impact.
There were rumors of Matt Taven also being done with ROH. He is signed to the company for another three or four months, so he won't be joining those two in TNA or elsewhere at this time. It will be interesting to see if he joins his tag team partners elsewhere or if he tries to make it in a different role in ROH. He could end up teaming with Adam Cole, or ROH could just drop the Kingdom gimmick entirely.
Everything else from yesterday is after the break.
Pop will air a special called "This is Impact" on New Year's Day at 1 a.m. EST, a look at TNA, its wrestlers, its history, and the World Title Series. That's pretty cool. They have a chance to make something of a reboot or new beginning starting Jan. 5.
There are also plans for a special highlighting the X-Division. I personally wonder if that's even a thing worth highlighting in 2016. Unless it's going to get a serious revamp with characters who are more than "flippy guy who really wants to win matches and titles," I think they should just drop it as a separate division and have those people challenge for either the tag team titles or the KOTM Title.
TNA has set Lockdown and some other big gimmick matches for its UK tour at the end of January. Hopefully they're not just random stipulation bouts, but done as part of important feuds. They can set a lot of interesting things up in 2016, or they can just throw together a lot of gimmick matches and hope it keeps people's interests.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. Considering there are talented performers who barely get screen time now, I'm not a fan of the idea. I also think legends are used best when used in a way that accentuates the current roster, especially if those legends don't have much left on their bump cards.
2. God I love that video. The '80s were a fun time. I think infamous might be a little strong of a word, but it's definitely memorable for how bad it was.
3. Whoa whoa whoa... who said anything about it doing better than the main roster? When NBCU offers millions of dollars to air NXT weekly, it tapes on the road every week, and it gets monthly PPVs, THEN we'll talk about it being in the same league as the main roster. Right now, it's doing incredibly well, but the scale isn't the same. As best as anyone can tell, Vince is content with letting NXT being HHH's thing. He knows he's not going to be around forever, so (at least in this area), he's letting HHH build for the future.
4. You know, that's not an awful idea if the talents were OK with it. It definitely takes different skills to wrestle than it does to script a show, and WWE already has former wrestlers as producers and all that, but it might be worth pursuing. I do think the ideas from the full-time writers will probably get precedent over the people just contributing for a little while, though, and ultimately everything is Vince's call. Plus, the injured wrestlers should probably not travel any more than they have to.
5. It definitely got to the point where the chants overwhelmed the stories the performers were trying to tell. It was hard to focus on the people I paid to see and what the commentators were saying about the match because I had to listen to terrible soccer chants and Beatles renditions. There's getting involved in the match, and then there's taking over the show.
More wrestling tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment