411 Fact or Fiction 11.19.09: TNA Turning Point, Hogan’s DVD, the SmackDown Announce Team and More!

Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to 411 Wrestling Edition of Fact or Fiction! I’m Jeremy Thomas, hosting as always, and Sunday delivered one of TNA’s most praised Pay-Per-Views in recent memory with Turning Point for our columnists to talk about, as well as several other news-worthy topics. This week in the panel we have the author of the Wrestling News Experience, Stephen Randle, doing battle with one and only Andy Critchell! We’ve got a lot of cover, so let’s get to it!

Questions were sent out Monday.

Participants were told to expect WWE & TNA-related questions.

1. TNA delivered in every aspect that it needed to with Turning Point, making it the company’s best pay-per-view of the year.

Stephen Randle: FICTION. Two awesome matches does not “deliver on every aspect”. Face it, until the final hour of Styles-Daniels-Joe and Wolfe-Angle, Turning Point was headed towards being a fairly mediocre show. In fact, the undercard had some fairly puzzling decisions, most notably putting the Midcard Mafia over two guys who were involved in main event angles a month ago and generally considered a big part of the future of TNA. I think just because there were no obviously crappy matches, people are over-rating the show based on the last two matches and the already low standards for TNA PPVs. It was a generally OK show, with two MOTYCs, but the rest of the card was totally forgettable.

Andy Critchell: FICTION. I think that Turning Point was probably TNA’s best PPV of the year but I don’t think it delivered in EVERY way. Sure we had a great main event and a great match with Angle but nothing else on the show really stood out. The X-Division match was serviceable as was the Knockouts match. The tag match seemed to be missing “it” plus you had a match with Rhyno who is an absolute abortion in the ring. Lashley/Steiner was a TV main event at best. So basically you had two great matches, only one horrible match, and the rest was in between. I would not call that delivering in EVERY way.

Score: 1 for 1

2. Reuniting Matt Striker and Todd Grisham on SmackDown has been a blessing in disguise for the WWE by putting the best announcing team in the business back together.

Stephen Randle: FACT. I think the Striker-Grisham team is one of those “perfect storm” things that happens when two announcers play off each other as if they’ve been doing it for years. Grisham is like a superior version of Michael Cole, in that we know he’s pretty much saying what Vince yells in his headset, but he doesn’t have the stigma that Cole does, i.e. having spent nearly a decade being pretty much the most obviously inept commentator in WWE. Striker is the real gem, obviously, as he brings two things really required for excellent colour commentary: in-ring experience and an encyclopaedic knowledge of pro wrestling history, as well as apparently knowing every pop culture reference in existence. And when these two men are together in the booth, they actually seem comfortable when they banter, as opposed to King and Cole, whose level of conversation seems to hover around “That’s an excellent point” and “Right you are”, with nothing else to add.

Andy Critchell: FACT. I think that both Striker and Grisham are very good and can work with just about anyone. In fact, I really enjoyed Striker and Josh Matthews together. That being said, it seems to me that as great as Striker and Grisham are separately, they are at their best when together. They really distinguished themselves on ECW and from their work on SD it seems like they have not missed a step. They play off each other so well; Striker as the slightly arrogant and cocky know it all and Grisham as the self-effacing straight man ready to be the butt of a joke.

Score: 2 for 2

3. Bringing Raven back into the company will do nothing to help TNA.

Stephen Randle: FACT. If Raven were still able to provide anything big for TNA, he probably would have done it the last two or three times he was with the promotion. I’m not saying Abyss/Foley vs Raven/Stevie won’t be mildly entertaining, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before many times when all four men were younger (and when three of them were MUCH younger and lighter and less injured). Raven is possibly one of the most intelligent minds in wrestling, but TNA is already a company that had some of the best creative minds under contract and it didn’t particularly affect them in any big way, so even if Raven somehow takes over writing the shows, I can’t imagine he’ll be more than a midcard feud with Abyss and Foley for a few months.

Andy Critchell: FACT. What has Raven done in the past 10 years that makes you think he can help any wrestling company, anywhere, do anything? He was always a better character than a wrestler, was always overrated (and believed his own hype,) and does not one thing better than anyone else. He won’t bring in viewer one or dollar one to TNA.

Score: 3 for 3

4. The WWE should be spending more time looking into improving their product and less time worrying about what its employees are Tweeting.

Stephen Randle: FACT. Well, duh. I don’t know what else really needs to be said, because agreeing seems self-evident, but let’s give it a shot. This is the company that spent years tearing down the veil between kayfabe and reality, and now has spent years trying to put the veil back up so that they can hook the innocent kiddies who weren’t around for Attitude. I think as long as wrestlers aren’t giving away future storylines or actively badmouthing their employer, Twitter is essentially harmless fun that lets them connect with their fans on a new level. Hell, at the very least, it’s free publicity for WWE and helps wrestlers build and maintain followings that could translate into ratings, PPV buys, tickets, and merchandise. Shouldn’t WWE be all about stuff like that?
Andy Critchell: FACT. That’s not to say that WWE’s product is bad but rather their focus should always be on improvement. If you don’t focus on getting better you just get complacent and then you diminish. Now when it comes to Twitter, of course WWE should be looking into it. WWE is global brand and Twitter is one of the most popular sites on the web. Most of the time these wrestlers are tweeting using stage names that WWE uses for their promotional and advertising media so they have every right to want to be aware of what those wrestlers are saying. And let’s be honest here, most of these guys aren’t brain surgeons so the chances that they tweet something they shouldn’t is pretty high. WWE is just trying to protect the workers and themselves. That’s what any big business does.

Score: 4 for 4

SWITCH!

5. The TNA World Title Match at Turning Point is among the top two or three front-runners for Match of the Year.

Andy Critchell: FACT. I am awful at trying to name candidates for “best of the year” lists but I thought the match with AJ, Joe, and Daniels was great and the reaction to it has been generally high so I have no problem saying that at this point it should be right up near the top of anyone’s list.

Stephen Randle: FACT. It won’t be my vote for my own reasons, but I recognize that it was an incredibly wrestled match involving three supremely talented wrestlers. So yes, it will be right up there with current favourite Shawn-Taker when the end of the year awards come around. I think it’ll have a couple things working against it winning at the 411 awards, though, namely the supporters of TNA probably aren’t enough to overcome the votes for the aforementioned Mania match, and also there isn’t enough time before the voting to build up support and momentum, while Shawn-Taker has had nearly the entire year to make its case.

Score: 5 for 5

6. It’s time for someone to take the ECW Heavyweight Title off of Christian and put it on someone else.

Andy Critchell: FICTION. Why? Christian has been great as champ, having good matches with everyone. The fact that his reign hasn’t been more noteworthy is the fault of WWE, not Christian. He’s been busting his ass and the fact that more people don’t know about it is a real shame. And at this point there isn’t really someone waiting in the wings to take over for Christian. Regal might be the most legit out of anyone on the show but Christian has beat him about 7,000 times so that’s out. Change for the sake of change is worthless.

Stephen Randle: FACT. From the perspective that Christian is obviously too big for his current role on ECW, and should really be on one of the big two shows instead, but he won’t be doing that as long as he’s ECW Champion. The downside is that there is nobody on ECW who could conceivably take the belt from him, because the second somebody really gets any sort of momentum or fan support, they ship them off to Raw or Smackdown. That’s why Christian has been feuding with William Regal for four months now, after all. Frankly, I’d just give Regal the belt and move Christian somewhere, anywhere, but until Vince thinks he’s a star (and really, that line of thinking is becoming more and more insane by the week), that doesn’t seem likely.

Score: 5 for 6

7. Final Resolution is too early to take the Kurt Angle/Desmond Wolfe feud into a two out of three falls match.

Andy Critchell: FICTION. A 2 out of 3 falls match doesn’t have the type of feud ending chance that it once did but it does provide TNA with a chance to show that Wolfe is at or near Angle’s level. And shouldn’t that be the ultimate goal here? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Stephen Randle: FICTION. I don’t see why not, it’s not like they can’t have more gimmick matches afterwards. After all, it’s probably the best feud in TNA right now, why wouldn’t they run it longer than two months? Besides, you’d have to be crazy to say “Kurt Angle and Desmond Wolfe in an even longer, likely even better match than the first awesome one they put on, even having never actually wrestled each other before ever? No thanks, I don’t want any of that”.

Score: 6 for 7

8. The WWE would have been better served by not putting out a Hulk Hogan DVD set, considering recent developments.

Andy Critchell: FICTION. This is simple. By putting out the set, WWE is showing people that if they want to see Hogan in his prime, they have to go to WWE to get it but if they want to see a broken down and desperate old man flop around in a ring because he needs the money, they can go to TNA. You know that if WWE did delay the set that TNA and Hogan are above turning that into an angle or at least a talking point of some sort. Next year at about this time TNA will be putting out a “Best of Hogan” DVD anyway so there’s that I guess.

Stephen Randle: FACT. Although I don’t think they had much choice, I assume this compilation DVD was put together over a few months and it was just bad timing that Hogan signed with TNA three weeks ago, leaving WWE with a stockpile of already-finished DVDs to sell. Not that I know anything about creating and selling compilation DVDs. Anyway, obviously it’s a bad idea to be promoting a DVD centered around a guy who was just the highest profile signing of a different organization, but hell, WWE doesn’t consider TNA serious competition anyway. Not that I entirely blame them.

Final Score: 6 for 8

Another near-perfect score is foiled by the last few questions, and Stephen and Andy end up 6 for 8. Thanks to the both of them for their great answers, and a of course to you our readers for clicking on the link and reading along! That’s all we have for this week…check us out next week for more 411 Wrestling Fact or Fiction!

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