By Shane McKinley, PWTorch Specialist

Wow. Typically I do not write the absurd report in this fashion, but due to my eight pages of notes I am going to give a blow-by-blow account on my descent into madness due to watching this show. My story must be heard so that somewhere, somehow, TNA writers will know the crimes against humanity they have caused.

The Savior Known As Hernandez

A.J. Styles: Olympic Gold Medalist? My head hurts already. Cannot really explain why the ref would be preoccupied with Jackie while both men are outside. But then again, why would TNA have the ref be distracted during the main event, where a low blow occurs in a no disqualification match? Yes, it does pay to be roode. I wonder if it pays to watch Impact. Match itself was not much, but I have the glimmer of hope that perhaps Hernandez will be the next hot star we will tune into. You know, just like Tomko, Kaz, and Joe. Only the wrestling gods know if there is an actual plan in place. The reality is that TNA will change direction in whatever the ratings dictate it to be. If they put a jar of mayonnaise in the ring and it got 8.4 in the ratings, it would be nonstop mayo mania, wrestling be damned.

The Sound Idea of Making Kurt Angle's Gold Medal Seem As Important As A Baseball Trading Card

Like how TNA fans are cheesy with their reaction shots. You are right, A.J. Styles. This soap opera is about to unfold, and it is not going to be pretty. Does anybody in TNA have any idea of the importance of a gold medal? Athletes all agree that winning a gold medal is certainly more important than winning the Super Bowl, World Series, or the X Division belt. Could not quite explain to you in the storyline sense why Angle put it up in the first place, or why Styles put it up again this time around. A ladder match for a gold medal. At least it did not fully degrade the importance of the medal. My stomach was churning at this point, but the night was far from over.

The Tag Team Heel Turn From Lameville

Thanks to TNA, now fans know that the pyro guy is named Keith. Maybe you could build a feud on that. You know. Eric Young vs. Keith the pyro guy in a pyro match for the pyro championship. Oh what fun. In hyping wrestling videogames, I never understood why the announcers (both TNA and WWE) stress how accurate the characters are in the game. You know what would impress me? Depth. Replayability. Excitement. I guess Motorcity Machine Guns are now heel because the announcers say so. BG James is wearing last month's PPV t-shirt. At least with Eric Young in the match there cannot quite possibly be a dim witted skit involving the Brotherhood of Super Idiots. No way that can happen! Anyways, MCMG commit their heel act and the announcers hype it up like it was the biggest, evilest, heelish thing anybody has ever done. You are right. It was so evil that I had to change channels because I could not handle the evilness of it all. I'm begging, please no MCMG vs. Eric Young & B.G. James. Because that would be super evil.

The Mediocrity Of This Is Marvelous

What is Karen's Angle? Blah blah blah boring blah blah blah somebody comes in and Karen acts suprised even though a logical person with a brain in their head would get security since the incident with Tomko. Or the plain fact that run ins occur on every Karen's Angle. At least she has a job. My hero Sonjay Dutt comes in to lay down some sweet words on SoCal Val. Then the heel Jay Lethal comes in and wrecks everything. There is one word for this: ugh. I just sat there and wondered if this was the best they could come up with. And to top it off, they went into hyperdrive on this horrendous Dutt-Lethal feud with Val getting a concussion and facial bruising. How clear can I make this? This crap is horrible. I do not care about any of this. I just want to see these guys in a regular old match not involving wedding suits. But no, I am treated to poorly performed/executed/written bits every single week. How weak is this feud? How predictable is this storyline? Roughcut was coming up and I was pleased for this ray of hope. The mood worsened when Consequences Creed had to talk about Kurt Angle and Booker T, oddly enough two TNA stars. I am sure that Creed just looked at Angle and Booker when studying to become a wrestler.

Matt Morgan And The Hype Machine In Overdrive

Maybe I am just not impressed with Matt Morgan. Maybe Bubba Ray is speaking the truth, when all we see is Matt Morgan beating jobbers. Before the match fans could predict that Abyss would have show up. Behold he showed up! Team 3D did not expect Abyss? We all know TNA wrestlers do not watch Impact, but is it possible that they do not remember what happened as well? Whoa! Didn't we see the same thing happen last week? You know how it went. Morgan does his Tarzan bit and beats a jobber. Team 3D runs in. Abyss runs in. What a warm good feeling it is when there is no real plan in place and we are just filling time until the PPV. Come on, do the same thing again next week! Yeah!

Bravo, TNA, For Being a Special Kind of Mind-Numbing Awful

At 0:47 when Impact came back and showed the live audience, I was flabbergasted when I saw the same video sequence I saw months ago. Sure enough there is the kid wearing Sting facepaint in the front row. There is the poster promoting a PPV that is not "No Surrender". What the hell? I started to watch Impact about a year ago and this is how they run things? Is it so much to ask that you show the audience that was actually there at the time of the taping? If that does not work, then maybe just get rid of all of the intro audience camera shots that show the audience going crazy for nothing? Just a cheap way to make your show seem like a big deal. You sure are a big deal, Impact. Using previous audience shots makes me think that this show must be really good! Terrible idea with the Joe's "temper" angle. Joe's temper could be believable to cost him a championship if he was the challenger, but he is the champion. So why would I buy the PPV if you keep flaunting the notion that a copout finish might happen? Given how you usually handle logic I would not be surprised if Joe lost the championship in this fashion. Did like Kevin Nash talking about Harley Race ("Who broke you in, kid"). The young do not respect the pecking order? Sting could go with that.

There Is No Salvation For You Here

By this point I have started to weep a little. This show has been so bad so far I wonder if there any hope to save it. Ah. Here is Lauren interviewing the Beautiful People. Here we go. Okay that hair joke was lame. Is this going anywhere? Nevermind, this will soon be over. Wait. Lauren is getting a makeover. I wonder how the 49ers are doing. They are marking up Lauren. This is unwatchable and horrendous. Look there is Mr. Ass and he is hitting Lauren in the head with a make-up box. Barf. This is not even wrestling acceptable. But surely later in the show some form of recognition of this bit will be acknowledged. Yes, indeed, Rhino. There has been a lot of drama going on here, and none of it has to deal with wrestling. Perhaps you will be the savior. That dream died quickly as I watched Rhino's cheesy "GORE! GORE! GORE!" and Borash doing his bug eyes. I felt I should turn in my wrestling fan membership card at this point of the show and go watch preseason football. This show is not just bad, but I am beginning to think it is unholy in its badness. St. Paul will send me to hell for watching this show.

Why Lauren No Sold The Makeover

Secret message sighting again at 0:57 (when Booker gets in the ring). Whoissuicide.com. Can the announcers call the match during the first bit (before commercial break)? I have the announcers tying to hype 5 other things when I just want to focus on the match. Like a runaway train the announcers will read from a script while I try to figure out if they are not just robots in disguise. I applaud that Booker won cleanly. Winning without any interference is a rare occurrence nowadays in the Impact Zone. Loved the fact that neither Lauren nor Gail Kim mentioned the makeover incident. Perhaps it was so horrible that they did not choose to mention it. Or maybe it never happened at all. My head really hurts. Maybe it is my fault. Am I not supposed to watch the first hour of Impact?

De-hyping A X Division Title Match Is A Science

Let me get this straight: TNA Management, in all of their infinite wisdom, gives Creed another title shot because of interference. By golly, the same cannot happen twice! At least with Mark Henry vs. Matt Hardy Atlas was the manager of Henry and had a reason for being at ringside. Why are we hyping other matches while a championship match is taking place? Liked the action in this one, even though what should be TNA's calling card (fast-paced action) is usually mired in weak storylines/characters/logic/announcing. Oh, look. There's Sheik Abdul Bashir (or Davari). Don West says on air that Bashir does not care what is going in the ring right now. If Bashir does not care what is going on the ring, then why should I care? And if it does not matter what the announcers say, then why do they read from a written script? Once again, it is my fault. I did not get the memo that you are supposed to listen to Impact on mute. Lots of random camera shots to Bashir. You know, I prefer my TNA predictable interferences and run ins to be drawn out. The pain should be lengthen, not shortened. I love that feeling when I know the match is going to end terribly. I just love it too when the finish is so poorly executed as well. Do like the idea of a International Triple Threat match between these three guys. It is just too bad that TNA is horrible at getting their storylines to the PPV match. TNA assumes that fans will buy their match because of potential, not on the good will the company builds with the fans.

Oh Look, Here Is The Justice League Of Bad Skits

Boy, if every TNA wrestler has alter egos like Eric Young, the company could save a bundle! The Brotherhood of Idiots complain about Rock & Rave Infection's loud music. Even though they are in a small packed arena. With loud entrance music. Loud pyro. And even louder Don West. Rock & Rave Infection complies and wishes them luck in their future endeavors. Actually they do the wrestling route and hit Shark Boy and Curryman in the back with cheap plastic guitars. Wow how awesome. Those things are cheaply made and do not look like they can hurt anybody. But Shark Boy-Curryman sure sold it like they got hit with sledgehammers. The prospect looms of the tag team wrestling match from hell: Sharky-Curry vs. Rock & Rave Infection. If that does happen, somebody has got to be held accountable.

Crawling To The Finish Line

Liked the Joe video package for the PPV. That was a wild match between Gail Kim and Kong. Could have done without all of the shots to Katie Kim, or whatever her name was. Not much more could be done to make Kong the monster. I give credit to the bit where Angle tries to grab his medal before the match starts. However this is getting sad what they are doing to Angle. You have had your head busted open. Been in a last man standing match. And now you're in a ridiculous and pointless involving your gold medal, making Styles a gold medal winner. Congrats, Angle, we have booked you in another ladder match! I do not want Angle to get hurt. Despite the storyline, the matchup is what you expected from these two. I guess the lights guy is Martin. Perhaps Keith the pyro guy and Martin the lights guy could form a tag team in TNA. I want to see how long TNA can drag on this "mystery guitar" business. Obviously this angle got old a week ago, but it will be so wonderful for the next 6 months that fans are treated to the lights going out during main events. Because who cares about what happens in the ring, because the lights will go out at the end of the hour! Ratings! Somebody might show up! Maybe not! I better watch next week! Wow! Well, this wonderful Impact is over! Time to check myself to the hospital!

Impact's Final Verdict: It's So Absurd That It Makes Me Want To Cry: These shows are graded much like school papers. There's A (Not Absurd), B (A Little Absurd), C (In The Middle of Absurdity), D (Very Absurd), F (It's So Absurd It Makes Me Want to Cry), and NUKE (A Huge Pile of Stinking Absurdity). This show was heading down to the NUKE category, but there were some good bits. Some. Instead of turning off the TV, I kept watching because I wondered if there was going to be a good bit on this show. Watching this show was like watching a really bad football playing. You wondered if they could make a first down. Impact did make some first downs here, although picking up good points in this chaos is hard. The highlights of the show were parts of Booker vs. Rhino, Creed vs. Williams, Nash interview, Knockouts, and Main event. Parts of these segments were average or good at best (most of them were flawed in some aspect). Everything else wallowed in the garbage. Watching this show was like getting a tooth taken out. It was painful, stupid, poorly written, poorly executed, boring, lazy, and illogical. Mostly unwatchable filler till the next PPV. If fans are not supposed to pay attention to the lame bits, then why are they put out there in the first place? Wrestling fans are supposed to get behind Lethal-Dutt? Motor City Machine Guns heel turn? Justice League of Nimwits? Rock & Rave Infection? World Champion Joe? That wonderful makeover bit? Am I not supposed to watch your show? Because why should I buy the PPV if this is the best you can come up with? Chant how great you are when you are mediocre as hell? Oh man, my head really hurts.

SMACKDOWN
August 22, 2008

Well, The Good Parts About Smackdown

I do like that wrestlers had to fight to get into Smackdown's championship scramble match. Professional qualifying match visual. Dig the Brian Kendrick dance moves, and I would not mind seeing Big Show vs. Kendrick in some fashion. Work went into the Truth video packages (meaning the writing was not just a bunch of empty cliches). Would be awesome if Shelton Benjamin did a promo that was directly ripped off from Goldfinger, who claimed to love gold. There was nice analysis by Tazz. I like to learn something while watching wrestling, instead of having 5 feuds crammed down my throat during a single match. Kenny Dysterkia getting a big push? I would not mind it. Undertaker does his Dirty Harry bit. There was a brutally tough match between Benjamin and Finlay. Ok match between MVP and Festus. Some bad acting by Vickie Guerro. Matches were handled nicely. Are battle royals really ever good? Will I be able to see a WWE Iron Man match in my lifetime? Those things seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird lately. Even Triple H caught onto the fact that he was hyping himself ridiculously. A pretty good show. However, there is obviously one giant stinker.

Yes, There will be a Smackdown Championship Scramble at The PPV

I remember when they put two elimination chamber matches at WWE's No Way Out PPV and people were unsure. It worked because people trusted the concept. The Scramble is an unproven concept. The Raw championship scramble is somewhat accepted because all of the participants have been former world champions. As it stands right now, neither MVP, Benjamin, Hardy, or Kendrick (assuming that Big Show does not replace him) have held the title. I cannot begin to explain to you the folly of this. Let us say that Jeff Hardy wins the title for 5 minutes. Is that how it is going to go down in the stats books? Fans will be talking about how Hardy did win the title, but held it for only five minutes? Let us give WWE the benefit of the doubt and hope that they do not go down this route. It should not be like the 13 hardcore battle royal at Wrestlemania 16, where the hardcore title changed hands quickly because the belt meant near to zip. In this situation the championship belt should change hands at least as possible.

I also felt that WWE so far has done a lazy and poor job of actually explaining the match that is new to fans. All fans have gotten is Mike Adalme and Vickie Guerro talk about the match, but personally all I know is that there will be 5 men in the ring. I am confused if all 5 men start at the time, if it is no disqualification (I guess so), what happens if two people make a cover at the same time (co-champions?). I have never understood why wrestling organizations do not show a visual that has the written rules down. Have clips from your new videogame explaining the match. Do something. WWE is asking fans to give up a lot, and for me this scramble concept is not worth the risk.

If the Patriots were playing the Giants under the rule that the next team to score a touchdown would be the Super Bowl Champions, everyone would cry foul. Add on top to this that there is another football game going on at the same time (Raiders vs. Steelers) with the same rules and the football world would be in an uproar. Talking about how there is no skill involved; it is just blind chaos and luck. So if the football world would not accept such an idea, then why in the blue hell is WWE assuming that wrestling fans will accept the idea? As I said, fans can somewhat accept the Raw Scramble, but the Smackdown Scramble is harder to digest. Nobody wants MVP, Hardy, or Benjamin to be world champions for five minutes. That would make their careers a joke and it would degrade the importance of the belt. What is stopping JBL, after scoring a pinfall, calling his security force and handcuffing the rest of the combatants while time ticks away? What is stopping JBL at the start of the match to exit the ring and hop in his limo while the rest of the guys beat each other, and then coming in with five minutes left to go to pick the bones? What is stopping Triple H from putting the other refs out of commission before the match, clubbing the current ref when the match starts, and wait it out? Because if there is no ref then there can be no pinfall. Even Triple H admitted that it will be all chaos and luck. Why should I cheer or boo for somebody who wins this match? There is no sense of skill involved, and that is why I do not like this match.

A better stipulation for this match in my opinion is to get rid of the stupid idea that if somebody pins somebody else, the current champion will lose the title. I suggest a point system. A point is rewarded for a pinfall. Two points for a submission. A point is deducted for committing a disqualification. A visual can be placed on the screen showing the wrestler's tally. This method would make the match seem worthy and high of importance. As it stands right now, the scramble is childish.

When I think about the scramble, all I can think about is that it will be heavily planned out beforehand. In any timed matches, you cannot just have your wrestlers just wing it. I may be wrong about the scramble and it may turn out to be a great match. Some might argue that it is a quick way to get wrestlers into the title picture without really putting them through a storyline or such. But WWE is taking a gamble on it. I doubt that WWE is going to change course or change the stipulations of the match. The consequences of the match are that the championship match will lose importance and that some wrestlers might be seen as a joke rather than important if they only hold the title for a small limited amount of time. WWE usually does a pretty good job of planning these matches, but the scrambles are looking to be those "tightrope" type of matches, where everybody has to bring the A game (writers, wrestlers, refs, announcers). The scramble could end up in shambles. If these matches stink, then there is a good chance we will not see them again. In my opinion, the risks for these types of matches exceed the rewards.

SMACKDOWN'S FINAL VERDICT: In The Middle Of Absurdity: WWE has so far done a bad job with introducing the Scramble concept to audiences. Tonight saw some nice work done by Benjamin and Finlay. A load of other solid stuff. Weak but needed opening. I guess Undertaker will fight Vickie in a Casket match at the PPV, or something.

LEAVING YOU WITH MY ABSURD THOUGHT: When something is mediocre, people should say so. I mention the bit about the mayo jar in the middle of the ring, because I do wonder how far wrestling companies will go to get ratings. Unlike any other sport, fans have to keep hammering away at wrestling companies to do better (and applaud them when they do) because wrestling fans have been subjected to the worst feuds/bits this side to mankind. Do you feel that internet writers are too hard on wrestling companies? Should we relax and not really pay attention to small Dutt-Lethal bits or question the logic of the Smackdown Scramble? Or should we stay on our toes and let people know about what we really feel is going on? Feel free to send me an email about how you watch wrestling (are you viligiant looking for every mistake and analyzing every action or do you semi pay attention and let lame things slide?) What's your concept of a wrestling fan? What should they concern themselves about relating to watching wrestling?

"The Absurdity of it All" will appear every Wednesday and Saturday. Email is mckinley.torch@gmail.com.

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