Hogan and TNA – Same as it ever was
Comments (0) So I caught the first two hours of Hogan’s first appearance on TNA Impact for the first ever Monday night Impact. I will admit I didn’t watch all three hours, and some of Hogan’s segment was so bad I had to flip over to watch HBK and Hart meet for the first time since the screwjob. I should admit for most of my childhood I was a Hogan fan. Then I became a Foley fan, an finally an ECW fan.
In the end, the real problem with wrestling is exactly tonight’s 9PM opening of both shows. On Impact you have an ancient Hogan, a old fat Hall, a mid aged Sean Waltman still being called kid, grayhaired and unmotivated Nash and a gray haired Bischoff. On Raw you have an ancient Bret Hart and an ancient Shawn Micheals (and it should be noted both looked horribly aged) opening the show. I mean really, I thought all of these guys were old TEN YEARS AGO (except for Waltman). On youtube there’s a video of Hall barely able to walk his fatass to the ring for an indy show held on a football field.
But the reason I stopped watching Raw years ago was for two reasons, too many screwy ending and too much acting not enough fighting. So if you happened to turn into the first hour of TNA you got one of their classic X Division matches. Of course the match ends because of a no contest call after one of the guys used a weapon on everyone. But this being TNA they just continue while the fans chant “This is Bullshit” oh and Shit was censored. It ends with Matt Hardy showing up and just hanging out sort of.
Then we have a Knockouts Singles title match. It should be mentioned that the Knockouts tend to get the highest ratings on Impact when its broken up into segments. Of course this was a blink and you’d nearly miss it match length which was then followed by a far too long Kevin Nash rambling interview. And that’s it, two matches, one far too short in the first hour.
Hogan’s appearance was funny just for his speech. He’s going to change things and its going to be different now. I believe that as far as I could throw Hogan. Him and his cronies are going to run things and job out the youth just like they did in WCW. If there’s one thing I can assure you about Hogan it’s that his ego is bigger then you could imagine. I should also point out by now that TNA must think we’re idiots if we’re watching. They obviously gave away free t-shirts to the rows of fans most likely to be seen all night from the ring shots. Since apparently Impact never catches the slightest glimpse of the other side of the ring unless its an accident its obvious these Hogan fans were plants and given all the Hogan stuff.
I stopped watching Raw after Bret and Shawn were done. Its obvious Bret adlibbed on live TV to get McMahon to come out and McMahon was having none of it. Coming back from commercial they claimed that McMahon would come out “on his terms” but since when does McMahon not take airtime whenever he can? He knew Bret would probably try his best to screw him back and knew enough not to go out there.
The funny thing was, after the Shawn/Bret opening both Raw and Impact had women’s matches. But the difference was night and day. Raw had one of the Bella twins fighting a blond bimbo in the usual awful Diva match. TNA had the Knockout tag team championship with Awesome Kong and Hamada on one side, I can’t remember who they were against, but it was a great match. That TNA treats the knockouts like actual wrestlers instead of eye candy is great. It also explains why the knockouts segments are normally higher rated. The flipside to this was a running bit with a knockout stable called the beautiful people doing a strip tease all night. Why can’t we just have wrestling? To finish off the hour they had Pope Vs Desmond Wolfe in a 5 min quick win.
So at the end of watching mostly TNA Impact for two hours, and bits and pieces of WWE Raw, I’ve got to say there is no reason to watch either show. Hogan is going to change nothing. Raw is still awful. Both shows suffer from too much BS and not enough matches. Both have guys who peaked 10 years ago getting way too much time (Triple H too since I haven’t mentioned him) and its really getting tiring now.
If your going to watch wrestling, watch Chikara. Its moved into the top spot on my personal list. Its funny, fast paced matches and the story lines are incredible. Plus most of the wrestlers just tend to have this special kind of charisma that you don’t get from someone that’s been in the business forever. Outside of Chikara, I’m also a huge fan of CZW, but thats mostly for death matches. ROH is also known for having a lot of matches. Either which way you go all three of them are an improvement over either WWE or TNA.
