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COVER STORY: Scott Hall no-shows Outsider reunion at PPV: Samoa Joe goes overboard on promo reacting to situation (#1001)
Dec 6, 2007 - 12:01:39 PM |
Scott Hall let down TNA, his fans, and most of all his friend and partner, Kevin Nash. It may turn out to have been his final opportunity to reunite the Outsiders in a meaningful setting. Rather than give fans a special final memory, he wrote perhaps a more fitting, but no less disappointing, final chapter. He no-showed a PPV main event.
Sunday at the TNA Turning Point PPV, Hall, Nash, and Samoa Joe were scheduled to team together in a six-man main event against Kurt Angle, A.J. Styles, and Tomko. Hall's final contact with anyone in TNA was Sunday morning. There was a sense based on that final communication that he might not be committed to making it to the show. The betting line was pride, not drugs or booze, as the reason. Hall may not have felt he could live up to his previous reputation and image, something highlighted in the just-released Shawn Michaels DVD that showed him at his best physically and athletically.
Samoa Joe [artist Grant Gould (c) PWTorch]
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All afternoon, TNA management held out hope he would show up eventually. He was, after all, a few hours late to the previous TV taping; he showed up at 5 p.m. rather than 1 or 2 p.m. like most veterans are asked to do. By 7 o'clock, TNA management made the call to do the show without him, even if he showed up during the event. Hall eventually sent word he had "food poisoning" and couldn't be there. There was a greater sense backstage of being letdown rather than angry. Everybody knew the risk that came along with counting on the unpredictable, troubled Hall for a PPV main event. That concern may have even tempered the push given to the Outsider reunion on TV in the three shows leading up to the PPV.
Management was understandably concerned that the fans would feel let down. What was already a below-par show had a chance to be saved by a special reunion of one of the top acts of the Monday Night War era. The Outsiders, to a lot of today's fans, are the reason they became fans in the first place. Joe was instructed to break the news to the fans and give a "heartfelt" speech when he got to the ring. He was told to talk about how Hall disappointed everyone for no-showing, but to try to turn it into a transition point where he would speak on behalf of TNA by saying that from here on out, they were going to bank on the guys who were reliable, who were hungry, who believed in what TNA stood for.
His speech didn't go exactly as planned. In fact, it made a disappointing evening a lot worse. Joe not only expressed the noted points about Hall letting TNA down, but he then took shots at Kevin Nash. He referred to Nash as a "pensioner" living off the past and holding young guys back. After the promo went so much longer than planned and went places nobody wanted it to go, TNA president Dixie Carter actually stepped out and signalled for Joe to stop talking.
Joe looked down at her, live on PPV (Carter was off-camera and not acknowledged by the announcers), shrugged, asked if he was going too long, and dared her to fire him. He was wrapped up in the moment and got carried away. It would turn out nobody was looking at this as his "Austin 3:16" moment, though. The crowd seemed a bit put off. Nash stood behind Joe and looked angry and disappointed, but never made a move to interrupt or otherwise react.
If Joe had gained momentum at all with anyone, it came to a screeching halt when he announced that the replacement for Hall was Eric Young. That took the wind out of the sails of Joe's whole speech, since nobody sees Young as representing the hungry, underutlized young athletes who are the future of the business. On the contrary, Young is a mid-card comedy act who is loved and coddled by the creative powers of the company. He's not "Joe's type of guy," either. It just felt wrong, compounding the awkward situation Joe had ad-libbed himself into.
The match went as planned (five minutes shorter than expected due to time constraints caused by Joe's longer-than-expected speech), with some teasing of dissension between Joe and Nash before Joe stood up for Nash, saving him from an Angle anklelock.
Backstage, though, things boiled over......
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