wrestling / Columns
411 Fact or Fiction 10.30.08: Batista as World Champion, The Main Event Mafia, The Big Show vs. The Undertaker and More!
1. You liked the official formation of “The Main Event Mafia” this past week on Impact.
Jarrod Westerfeld: FICTION. This was seen months ago and the sudden appearance of Nash, Booker (with Sharmell), Angle and Sting in the same room with Jeremy the untrained backstage chimpanzee was kind of weak, especially when you left out the biggest catalyst of this union in Team 3D. Had this been done at Bound for Glory I might have gotten behind the official formation of the team, but the way it was done on Impact just kind of left me thinking, “oh, they finally have these guys together?” Oh, and I hate that the main champion of the company isn’t the leader of this faction for some odd reason. Then you add that Booker had to create a title to create his own importance, which could be looked upon by new fans who aren’t TNA fans, and may not want to come back and watch again, as far too confusing considering it isn’t an official title of TNA and it has its own special rules that aren’t being explained to these new fans.
Mike Campbell: FACT. It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating. The great thing about this whole angle is that it’s not a clearly defined babyface/heel thing. The MEM has perfectly plausible reasons for doing what they did, and they were given the chance to explain themselves, and their reasons made perfectly good sense. TNA is really onto something good here, it’s a compelling angle that more or less gives the fans the choice to whom to side with, something rare in wrestling today. I just hope they don’t screw this up.
Score: 0 for 1
2. Putting the title on Batista at Cyber Sunday was the right call.
Jarrod Westerfeld : FICTON. Batista has been in or around the title scene of the WWE for the past 3 years, give or take a few months. Somehow I would expect most fans to be bored of him being in the title scene, and not just the “hardcore” fans who voice out about him and Cena being stale main event attractions. I think something fresh and new needs to be done, and Batista being the champion now is a statement of a return to the same old for this company which isn’t going to hold onto the fans interests for too long because it’s a return to the old formulaic storytelling that the WWE used to indulge in back in the mid 90’s when things were stagnating. Batista isn’t a good sign for the future of the WWE, especially when you consider that most hardcore fans are going to look at this title victory as a statement that whining and bitching will always get your way when you have a huge image that can sell well over those who have talent and are willing to sacrifice to put the company over. It’s just the same old, same old here and it’s a bit of a shame.
Mike Campbell : FICTION. Once again, Jericho has the rug yanked out from underneath him. I can understand why they did it to a point. Batista is looking more and more like a choker with all his failed World Title challenges, and Cena will be back soon, and that’s the big program. But what does he do until then? Batista/JBL is beyond played out. Nobody wants to see Batista/Rey and I don’t think Batista/Kane will be setting the world on fire. Batista/Orton would at least be fresh, but they can’t go there right away because of the Orton/CM Punk issue. Jericho/Rey may not be a PPV worthy headline, but it’s at least fresh, and Jericho/Orton still have simmering heat, which WWE could have gone to after Jericho/Rey and Punk/Orton. There’s no reason they couldn’t have put the title onto Batista after that and started to build up to the inevitable Batista/Cena match.
Score: 1 for 2
3. The X-Division title match only getting 2-minutes on last week’s live Impact was a horrible call by TNA creative.
Jarrod Westerfeld : FACT. That decision was utterly pathetic and completely counterproductive for this company. When the core of your fans is big on the X-Division, and you decide for your first televised event in live HD quality to only give your fans roughly 3 minutes of action? What in the unholiest of fucks are you even thinking? What’s worse is that you go through the trouble of having one of your bigger stars of the X-Division, Jay Lethal, go over on the pay-per-view in a strong, stipulation match that was both exciting and well performed to earn the number one contendership to challenge the X-Division champion, Sheik Abdul Bashir, and you have him lose in 3 minutes how does that help the X-Division? Especially when you take into account the booking around Bashir has been that he only wins through dirty heel tactics and has been punked out by one of your newer referees and still has a seemingly unfinished feud with this referee? Who did this match help out? Come on TNA, if you can’t get anything else right could you at least keep the core audience you do still have happy with well thought out decisions around this ONE division? Please
Mike Campbell : FACT. This is what I mean about TNA screwing up good things. The X-Division has always been what’s set them apart from the other feds. On such a big night and important show for TNA, they should have gone all out to display it, but they regulated it to an afterthought. And the sad thing is that it’s not like TNA doesn’t know how to do it, their first prime time impact special featured a balls to the wall X-Division match, they kicked off their Spike TV impact with Roderick Strong vs. AJ Styles to showcase the X-Division. Whoever thought that this was a good idea dropped the ball, big time.
Score: 2 for 3
—SWITCH~!—
4. Thus far, the matches between the Big Show and The Undertaker have exceeded your expectations.
Mike Campbell : FACT. The great thing about having low expectations is that it can pay off. I got heat for saying it last time I did this column, but it’s true: ‘Taker is old, broken down, and past his prime, and thus, it’s not always reasonable to expect him to bring it like he used to. It’s the same idea with Big Show, he’s big, but he’s out of shape, and he’s not nearly as fast as he used to be. But, to their credit, they’ve been able to work around their limitations as workers with the matches they’ve had. I’m a fan of MMA, but not so much in wrestling. But the quasi-MMA type of psychology in their matches, has really made for some fun viewing.
Jarrod Westerfeld : FACT. If only for the fact that I may not have had any expectations about these matches beyond the prospect that they could turn out to be just as bad as their previous bouts back earlier this decade. I guess my only true expectation that was held over this feud was the fact that I didn’t believe the fans would truly care enough as was evidenced back at Unforgiven, so that’s one expectation that has been shot dead as this storyline continues to strive forward and actually pick up some quality steam around it. These matches certainly have been fun, so it hasn’t been as disastrous as I recall it earlier when Show and Taker were brawling for lord knows what – I certainly couldn’t recall the story behind their brawls then without having to look it up, but then again I think having to watch Impact with Lansdell on Thursday night is enough torture for one week.
Score: 3 for 4
5. Awesome Kong winning back the Knockouts Title was the wrong move to make.
Mike Campbell : FICTION. Like I said above about Batista with the title, Wylde was just about to run out of things to do. She’d beaten Kong several times to legitimize herself as champion, and had wrapped up her feud with The Beautiful People. What was left for her to do as champion? Kong is one of the very few people who TNA haven’t marred by bad booking, she didn’t lose a nano-gram of credibility for losing to Wylde. If anything, it actually helped her, because it added an extra dimension to her, now instead of just being tough because she’s tough, she’s also angry and wants her title back.
Jarrod Westerfeld : FICTION. It wasn’t the wrong move to make, it was just the wrong time to have done it considering Bound for Glory happened before this title change and you opted, then on pay-per-view, to allow your weak champion retain the title for almost no reason other than to have this match here on free television. The title needed to be a on a heel considering the structure of the Knockouts division was so heavily face focused that it makes sense that a heel champion be dominating the landscape to build up the next face of the division to challenge and dethrone Kong and then dominate the field as it molds itself around her. If they really focused on pushing Saeed as an active worker that could threaten to steal Kong’s thunder by being the one to dethrone Taylor Wilde, then we’d probably still have a face champion running the gauntlet of this division that features more contenders to the face title than the current field that holds more face options for a heel champion. As it stands, the belt never should have left Kong in the first place as TNA took the practical road of building up Wilde to be the star that could do it, but as it stands it’ll probably be a while before we see ODB take the title off of Kong, which is the only other real option they have for a champion.
Score: 4 for 5
6. You support the move by Vince McMahon to call the WWE performers “entertainers.”
Mike Campbell : FICTION. Call me crazy, or call me old-fashioned, but I like the term ‘wrestler’ myself. It is World WRESTLING Entertainment after all. I can see why he’s going in that direction, with the lawsuit going on, as well as the fact that WWE has been branching out into legitimate forms of entertainment as far as films go. But at the end of the day, they’re still wrestlers, and I think that’s what they should be called.
Jarrod Westerfeld : FACT. I hate the idea of the industry being pushed down the road of being noted as sports entertainment considering my view has always been that sports, in general, is a form of entertainment. But considering what Vince has done to this [pseudo] sport, and what he’s done to corner the market, he’s more than free to try and wash away the stigma that his company has anything to do with wrestling when their main focus has always been the segments and the acting of their performers outside of the displays of athleticism. I remember when the move was made to start calling the wrestlers “Superstars” and it never truly stuck as fans still referenced other wrestling promotion’s wrestlers as “superstars”, so this idea to still try and sell their guys as unique and above the rest of the industry that is still beneath them by leagues is something I would support if only for the fact that it should be beat into some fans heads, particularly the hardcore, that the WWE doesn’t nor hasn’t been about wrestling for the past 3 to 4 decades and if this can wean these fans to stop thinking this company needs to deliver better in-ring wrestling when that isn’t, nor hasn’t been, their goal. You want wrestling? Go watch TNA, ROH, PWG or any other number of alternatives to what the ‘E’ presents and enjoy the wrestling there because the WWE is about entertainment value, not about the great in-ring athleticism and exciting amount of spots.
Score: 4 for 6
