State of TNA + Impact + PPV + Other Guff!

Spike TV had told TNA that they won't be renewing their contract. Their deal runs until the end of October apparently but no one knows when Spike will stop showing TNA, could be sooner than that. For TNA's sake, they need to make sure that Spike show them until the end of the contract. At least they have 3 months to find a new channel.

It was reported the other week that Spike explicitly told TNA not to keep employing Vince Russo. But they brought him back anyway as a consultant and he fucked up by sending an email to wrestling reporter Mike Johnson instead of TNA announcer Mike Tenay. Everyone found out and Spike were pissed off with them.

These Impact shows in NYC were supposed to be the ones to impress Spike to get the new deal. They've looked good aesthetically but the content has been poor as usual. Tommy Dreamer reminiscing about 1997 ECW, putting him in the main event with Bully Ray. Give me a TNA show not another ECW rehash. They had Ezekiel Jackson & Gene Snitsky debut on the last show.

Jackson and Snitsky aren't going to be around for long. They're basically a joke, they're Dixie's version of ECW, she's using guys from the WWE ECW. The New York shows have been pretty good if you ask me.

TNA Wrestling Signs American War Hero Chris Melendez to Multi-Year Agreement

TNA Wrestling is happy to announce the signing of a true American hero! Chris Melendez is a former Army Sergeant, who served his country in Afghanistan and was awarded a Purple Heart. Because of injuries suffered in combat, the brave soldier returned home a SINGLE leg amputee. Melendez, a member of the Wounded Warrior Project, had another dream to realize when he returned home. He dreamed of becoming a pro wrestler.

---Because when all else fails, sign a one-legged soldier to a multi-year deal!!

Don't get me wrong, its great that he served his country and it sucks he lost his leg but seriously TNA?

Apparently he's been training in Team 3D's academy, but I think Zack Gowen taught us one-legged wrestlers will only ever be a gimmick or a fad that will last a couple months tops.

TNA Wrestling Signs American War Hero Chris Melendez to Multi-Year Agreement
http://wrestleshare.com/?dm=7KN9

TNA Wrestling is happy to announce the signing of a true American hero! Chris Melendez is a former Army Sergeant, who served his country in Afghanistan and was awarded a Purple Heart. Because of injuries suffered in combat, the brave soldier returned home a SINGLE leg amputee. Melendez, a member of the Wounded Warrior Project, had another dream to realize when he returned home. He dreamed of becoming a pro wrestler.

---Because when all else fails, sign a one-legged soldier to a multi-year deal!!

Don't get me wrong, its great that he served his country and it sucks he lost his leg but seriously TNA?

Apparently he's been training in Team 3D's academy, but I think Zack Gowen taught us one-legged wrestlers will only ever be a gimmick or a fad that will last a couple months tops.

As soon as I saw this I thought of zach gowen. 

I've not watched tna in god knows how many years, but this won't help. There will be a racist angle for the dim Americans to get behind and chant USA at, someone will steal his metal leg, and then he'll go away again after 4 or 5 months.

I'm sure it'll give them a bit of a ratings boost, or at least a slight attendance boost - mainly from army guys I'd imagine. Then the novelty will wear off and they're back to where they were. Still not going to help their long term goal of staying around. The only real difference between this and Gowen (who was gone once the novelty ran out) is that he can be classed as an American hero. Still nothing but a novelty though.

I don't see this doing anything good. It's a nice gesture for the company to make, but why should we care about this guy any more than we cared about Jesse Neal or Gunner? At least those guys can work proper matches. It's harsh but true, you can't wrestle with one leg. Gowen did an ok job, but you always have to suffix every compliment with "...for a guy with one leg."

Or maybe I'm wrong and he'll be awesome. Great! But he's still going to be a one-dimensional pro-American army fanatic. Zero interest.

So now Smackdown is moving to Thursdays, Impact is going to Wednesday.

The show this week was fairly decent. Six man x-division scramble to start off. Manik & Tigre Uno look like they have some chemistry together. They could run a little program between the pair with Manik reverting back to his original character Puma, then doing some kind of animal themed rivalry with a mask v mask match at the end. Low-Ki has the body of a little boy and the all in one suit looks shit on him.

Don't usually watch the women's matches but gave it a go this week. Velvet Sky doesn't look like she's ever improved in the ring. She stood in the corner with her arms outstretched holding onto the ropes and just let Gail Kim hit her. And when Kim backed off she just stood there. Then when she was on the offensive she threw one of the softest looking clotheslines I have ever seen. The crowd got restless and started chanting "bless the divas." Velvet & Angelina both has terrible taste in tattoos. Sky has gone for some mess of an upper arm sleeve and Love has got one on her neck to navigate away from her butterface.

Mr Anderson & Gunner had a match that was unbearably boring to watch. The crowd kept themselves occupied with their own chants making the match look like it had a different audio track to the video. As they were trying to exude what was supposed to be aggression, they crowd were doing a random Ole chant. Then when Sam Shaw interfered they kicked off "a thank you Dexter" chant and finished off on a "creepy bastard" chant. Personality & wrestling ability Mr Anderson is the shits.

Six man tag featuring Roode, Young & Aries vs. Black Evolution was a fun TV match. Aries was working the match like he's two guys, being everywhere at once getting as much TV time as possible. MVP looked like his knee injury was bothering him because his ring time was limited.

Caught the tail end of some weird vignette with James Storm in his barn with a topless Sanada tied up. It looks like he's trying to brainwash Sanada (who has very little spoken English) and become the next Bray Wyatt.

Hardy's vs. The Dudleys was the main event. Decent for the nostalgic feel it had, no-one did anything wrong but its old hat. Tenay kept saying they're renewing their rivalry from 12 years ago. Well I might as well watch that when they were in their prime.

Luckily all Impacts have been taped for the future because Davey Richards has just broken his leg and will be out for a couple of months. I also heard the girl from the circus group (who's had very little training) fractured her arm after being in a match with Velvet Sky. Sounds like a recipe for disaster from the get-go.

PWInsider.com is reporting:

We’ve heard from multiple TNA talents that Bully Ray held a meeting with the roster working tonight’s live event in Hagerstown, MD and informed them he wanted to personally tell them goodbye as he didn’t expect to be back for the company.

In asking around, Ray’s contract is expiring and tonight’s live event is the last show he is contracted to appear on. Based on what Ray told the locker room, obviously the two sides have not come to terms on a new deal.

What is amazing about this is that Ray (along with his partner Devon) is scheduled to be inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame at Bound for Glory this October. TNA also has one match left in a series of bouts Ray was heavily involved in at the last set of Impact Wrestling tapings, which means that if he departs, they will be left scrambling to end that series without him.

Ray had been the central point of the company over the last several years, first with a heel run as the central figure behind Aces & Eights, which brought him his first TNA championship. After losing the title, Ray was transformed into a babyface pursuing Dixie Carter in order to put her through a table, which became the biggest moment of TNA’s entire summer. That angle was something that Ray brought to and pitched to TNA management.

Ray has been with TNA since 2005 following runs in the original ECW & WWE. During the TNA run he morphed from one half of Team 3D to a legitimate top singles star. Beyond wrestling, he was also working as an agent backstage.

I don't even know what to say anymore.

That's some awful planning. Why would you put a guy in a series like this that will finish after his contract expires? Surely they'd have started negotiations a while ago, so they'd have known that he should really be put into a different program where if he does leave it won't matter - unless of course he gave them the impression that he'd be signing a new contract. Or have they really left it this late to start negotiations, which is even worse on TNA. You'd hope that they'd been talking about it for months and that they thought he'd sign a new deal. They can't surely be that incompetent.

Well, apparently most of tnas top talent are just running out their contracts now. I forsee many many wrestlers departing in the near future....

That's some awful planning. Why would you put a guy in a series like this that will finish after his contract expires?

They've taped all the TV's they have left on their Spike contract so its not like they've got anything to go for. The angle being mentioned is supposed to be a Hardy's vs. American Wolves vs. Dudleys - 3 way. But Davey Richards has broken his leg anyway so the angle is dead in the water. Not only was Bully Ray one of their biggest names inside the ring, he was also an agent and worked in creative with storylines. They're taping extra episodes of Impact next month post the Spike deal, how they are going to air is anyone's guess, if the company goes tits up it won't matter anyway.

If they get out of 2014, I think it would take a near miracle at this point. This is a recent house show card which drew terribly. 5 matches & they even false advertised a Dudleys vs. American Wolves main event which backfired. Reminds you of the WCW house show in Manchester where the main event was the Marmalukes vs. The Harris Twins.

Sanada beat DJ Z
Madison Rayne beat Angelina Love
James Storm beat Gunner
Bobby Roode beat Magnus
Abyss (Replacing injured Davey Richards) and Eddie Edwards beat Devon and Mr Anderson (Replacing Bully Ray false advertised)

A little bit of good news for TNA. Spike have agreed on a 3 month extension to Impact so it can run until the end of the year. There were some rumours that Spike would let TNA stay on the air so they would have a fighting chance to get on another network.

And yet we still haven't heard anything about Bound For Glory.

And yet we still haven't heard anything about Bound For Glory.

I can't see it being much more than bunch of Wrestle 1 vs. TNA matches. Wrestle 1 are doing a tournament to crown their first champion which ends 3 days before BFG, so its likely the winner will be on the card. It being in Japan has helped TNA on not having to find a location & not having to do any marketing for the show. There hasn't been any details on how to view it live or even if its going to be possible. They did a joint PPV back in March which was taped as a One Night Only - Global Impact special for the US market. We'll get it whatever happens on Challenge I'd expect.

I got thinking the other day, what would Challenge air if TNA went. I suppose they'd just show TNA repeats, it's all they do with everything else anyway. But it would be pretty cool if they could show ROH, NJPW or some Mexican lucha feds instead!!!

It would be awesome if they were to pick up ROH. New Japan would be even better, but until they get English commentators I don't see that happening.

That's true, though they could get their own commentators like Eurosport did with TNA back in the day.  They were pretty terrible admittedly!!

I wonder what's the deal rights-wise with ROH, NJPW etc. etc. in the UK.

The 3 way tag ladder match between Team 3D, Hardys & American Wolves this week was one of the best TNA matches of the year. It turned in to a TLC match to tie the scores.

Last 2 minutes on here

Carries on from here

SPOILER WARNING...

All the title changes were down to getting the belts off anyone who doesn't have a long term contract. It was said the tapings were all filmed out of order so it is possible some of the title changes may happen before BFG. The Wrestle 1 booker Jimmy Suzuki has now started announcing BFG matches on his Twitter account. Tajiri, Muta vs. Storm, Sanada has been confirmed. As well as Kaz Hayashi vs. Low Ki vs. Samoa Joe for the X Division title. The filmed TV tapings will last until the end of November and then they are going to air Best Of shows until the new year. Dixie has promised that they will restart on January 7th on a new TV station.

But when Bound For Glory airs, we'll know if there are any title matches still to air from those tapings. And we'll know the result of said taping. Meaning if that title is on the line at Bound for Glory the match is essentially meaningless because the result is already known.

The title changes dont bother me - just taping title matches that are meant for AFTER Bound For Glory amonth before the event is airing.

NXT tape all their shows but they wouldn't tape shows with title changes to be aired after an upcoming live Takeover event.

But when Bound For Glory airs, we'll know if there are any title matches still to air from those tapings. And we'll know the result of said taping. Meaning if that title is on the line at Bound for Glory the match is essentially meaningless because the result is already known.

That's right and that's why Wrestle 1 were annoyed with the situation, so a lot of the champions won't be on the show at all now. From what I remember Lashley, Roode, American Wolves, Terrell and Kim won't be on the show. Sanada was being advertised in Japan to go into BFG with the X Division belt. And was then going to beat Muta at the show. But the Japanese fans read the results or saw Impact and Samoa Joe had the belt. They then called the Wrestle 1 office and blamed them for false advertising, so Wrestle 1 scrapped the majority of the title holders from the show to stop it happening again.

The block taping of TV and the stripped down BFG are all down to TNA's lack of money. They're going to have to crawl towards the end of the year and hope they get a TV deal that is somewhere near what Spike gave them. It would probably be easier to cut their losses now but I don't think Dixie knows when she is beat.

Suzuki complained that sites were advertising Lashley for BFG. Turns out the sites in question got that news from ImpactWrestling.com.