Bully Ray Has Regained the TNA World Heavyweight Championship

[pepentorresHHH]

Since nobody did it I guess it falls to me...

On the latest episode of TNA Impact, Hardcored Justice, Bully Ray defeated Chris Sabin to Regain the TNA World Title after Tito Ortiz Turned Heel....

Thoughts,......?

Personally i thought it was a bad situation since it started..... Sabin winning the belt should have had a bigger meaning, and a longer build.... Also the booking during the match itself was ridiculous, getting your ass kicked with virtually no offense until the last 30 is no way to build a credible champion, now hardcored justice has passed and Sabin lost the belt making his title reign irrelevant, and to top it off Tito Ortiz, a fighter who wont be involved in any significant in ring program, has turned heel....

The floor is yours.....what does this mean to you TNA fans, what about Bully Ray and his new reign as champion? Who will dethrone him now? And what about Sabin? At least he still has Velvet right?

 

[Harthan]

This was pretty much exactly the right way to do it. I'm only on off and on watcher of TNA, though I keep up with results and the buzz and all that sort of thing. Sabin got crazy hot and everyone wanted to see him moved up the card. With it being about the right time for Option C, him taking down Bully Ray for the title was a fantastic move and a great moment. But guys like Sabin are challengers, not champions. They get hot, they're always popular, but to be a good champion, you really need to have the kind of personality and character that can bounce off of a bunch of different kinds of other characters. Sabin really didn't have that. Having him get the title shot and win the title was wonderful, and the right booking move was to get it off him quickly. Bully Ray is still one of wrestling's best heels and the better champion right now.

This was how the WWE largely handled Jeff Hardy, and for WWE Jeff Hardy, it worked brilliantly. TNA Jeff Hardy is presented in such a different manner than WWE Jeff Hardy, of course, but you get the idea. Put title on, take title off. It's solid booking for guys who everyone wants to see challenge but ultimately no one really wants to see hold the title.

Well done on TNA's part all around. I like the way they did all of this.

I imagine Ray will hold onto the belt and drop it to the winner of the BFG series (Joe, Magnus, or Styles seem like likely calls now).

 

[L'autre frere rougeau]

While i do agree with the fact that sabin was rushed to the main event picture and even faster with the title, i think that his run had tons of unexploited potential. The charm of being a challenger as he is is that even as the champ, sabin would always be in a situation where he would face an uphill battle especially against bigger guys like bully ray.

Now as far as what's next for sabin, i'd like to see him staying on the trail of ray without necessarly getting the title rematch. That way tna can still continue his momentum and build him as a stronger player in the main event scene. Give him some solid wins against established name(guys like roode,aries, anderson, daniels,...) and let him be a torn in bully ray side and lets say after 5-6 months of making life a living hell for him and the aces amd 8s, make bully makes the mistake of wanting to get rid of sabin once and for all and then let sabin gets the title back.

That way you'll have the "feel good"moment that tna was looking for by giving him the title that just dind't happened because of the lack of buildup with sabin. There was a lot of positives in his short reign. To me, i'm now convince that he can hang with the top guys, but so his daniels. Now it's time for sabin to get to the next step and maybe i'm too much positive, but he turned me into a believer.

 

[The Eighties]

I think most expected this would happen and that Bully and Aces & Eights wont be fully finished off until Bound For Glory. I've not seen the show yet so I can't comment on the match but the Ortiz thing sounds weird, mainly because I didn't think he was a face to begin with, he was just a guy there to promote his Bellator fight.

I hope they go with either AJ or Joe to face Bully at BFG, I have a personal lean towards Joe but the story is AJ's.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Even after Sabin won the title, I think it's fair to say that most people believed that Ray would win the title back once he had his rematch. That's the feeling that I had anyhow and TNA's booking of Sabin over the course of his run with the title only reinforced it. On last week's episode, TNA guaranteed that Ray would win the title back, thereby telegraphing the end of the match a full week before it happened, by adding the stipulation that Bully Ray would never get another title match if he failed to defeat Sabin.

To me, the whole title change was unnecessary. Sabin is a good wrestler, he's pretty solid on the mic overall and he's often a lot of fun to watch inside the ring. However, it was blatantly obvious that he wasn't really a significant priority because he wasn't booked to come off like a priority. TNA's done this before, as has WWE, in which someone scores an upset to become a new champion only to be booked as small potatoes over the course of a few weeks before dropping the title back to whomever they took it from, only to disappear from the title scene altogether. I don't really see a point to it. Even if Sabin managed to retain against Ray last night, it would've come off as underwhelming because of how unremarkable TNA booked Sabin to look during his run.

 

[legendkiller1979]

I have always hated stipulations that make matches completely predictable. Just as soon as it was announced that bully wouldn't receive no more title shots if he lost, it was guaranteed he would win the belt back. I personally can't stand bully. Now that he wears that hat and vest, he looks more like a truck driver than a wrestler. I can't wait for his time at the top to run it's course and he moves farther down the card.

 

[Planet_Velvet]

I think Bully being champion is a good thing. Seeing the top three champions in WWE and TNA, Bully is in a class by himself because he is convincing. Cena is too white-meat, I can;'t get behind Del Rio as a heel or a face either. With Daniel Bryan pretty much a shoo-in for the WWE title, it's best that Bully be champion considering TNA fancies itself as an alternative to WWE. Why not show that by starting at the top with your World champion?

 

[SaveUsCMPunk]

Glad he won the title back last night. I marked out inside. I enjoyed the booking of the end of the match. I wasn't expecting Ortiz to turn heel until next week so I'm interested in seeing who MEM gets as their fifth man. It'll be interesting to see who "leaves TNA" next week.

I guess Bully will get a two month reign as champion now.

 

[FitFinlay4Life]

Got to address this - why did the stipulation make the result predictable? Was it predictable when the exact same stipulation was placed on the Bully / Sting match? Bully is 42 and has been teasing a BFG match with Hulk for quite some time which means that he can't be champion at that time (as the champion has to face the BFG series winner). One and done time champion would have been very plausible.

As to Sabin's short reign; well, two things could have been achieved with his run - "Option C" is still viable (in much the same way as MITB and RR are kept viable with their winners capitalizing) and Bully has Chris's rematch to keep him occupied in the short term with so many of his credible opponents still engaged in the BFG series.

 

[pkrebel]

Bully shouldn't have lost it in the first place, happy his got it back

 

[Haight]

I'm glad Bully won the tite for the simple fact that now he can lose it to a REAL champion at BFG. I'm not really sure why TNA decided to put the title on Sabin...but I'm glad its over with now. Whoever takes the strap from Bully needs to hold it for a while. Its changing hands too frequently

 

[FitFinlay4Life]

I'm glad Bully won the tite for the simple fact that now he can lose it to a REAL champion at BFG. I'm not really sure why TNA decided to put the title on Sabin...but I'm glad its over with now. Whoever takes the strap from Bully needs to hold it for a while. Its changing hands too frequently

NO, just no! The previous 4 reigns prior to Sabin's amounted to a total of 631 days (that's an average of over five months) - hardly using the World Belt as a hot potato!

And why shouldn't Sabin be considered as a REAL champion - should we not consider AJ as worthy? What about Joe? Aries? Sabin has a far greater XDivision history (tied most wins at 6 and the longest combined reigns by a margin) than any of these guys who won the top belt.

 

[Mitch Henessey]

Wise choice, because Sabin is nowhere near ready to go into TNA's flagship pay per view as "The Guy." Not even close. And after Bully's win last night, Sabin winning for pure shock value alone was confirmed. During Sabin's short lived run as TNA WHC, he took a backseat to MEM and Aces & Eights, and he was treated like a little puppy, who followed behind MEM, and was lucky enough to get a pat on the top of his head from Sting and others.

Bully as Champion gives Aces & Eights some much needed momentum again. And Bully is the top heel in the company, so it makes sense for him to go into BFG with the strap, so a savior can rise up to the challenge, defeat him for the title, and hopefully put an end to Aces & Eights for good.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

Wise choice, because Sabin is nowhere near ready to go into TNA's flagship pay per view as "The Guy." Not even close. And after Bully's win last night, Sabin winning for pure shock value alone was confirmed. During Sabin's short lived run as TNA WHC, he took a backseat to MEM and Aces & Eights, and he was treated like a little puppy, who followed behind MEM, and was lucky enough to get a pat on the top of his head from Sting and others.

Bully as Champion gives Aces & Eights some much needed momentum again. And Bully is the top heel in the company, so it makes sense for him to go into BFG with the strap, so a savior can rise up to the challenge, defeat him for the title, and hopefully put an end to Aces & Eights for good.

Was arguing this same thing last night after IMPACT. I like Sabin, but he's just not there. Not yet. Truth be told, I'm not sure he'll ever really be there, but when you're talking about your biggest show of the year, logic dictates that you stack the card as best as possible so as to maximize tickets, merchandising sales and buys. As I told JGKY last night, when compared to some of the potential match-ups with Bully Ray (Styles, Hardy even Roode), there really is no comparable for Sabin v. whoever the winner of the BFG series is. Even Sabin/Roode just doesn't cut it.

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

Whoever put the title on Sabin in the first place should be fired and blacklisted from professional wrestling. Sabin has no charisma and he's best known as being the lesser of the Motor City Machine Guns.

I don't what the hell is going on in TNA, but, man, they are really grasping at straws here. Furthermore, whoever authorized Rampage to talk also needs to be fired and blacklisted from professional wrestling.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

I had no issue with them putting the title on Sabin. It was a feel good moment for a guy who's busted his ass for the company. I just understood that it was going to come and go fairly quickly, as he's just not in the position to be a long-term champion in any facet other than the tag division. Even as X Division champion, his reigns tend to be short because he just doesn't really generate that level of care others are capable of producing. Maybe it's booking, maybe it's just poor writing. I dunno. But Sabin just never really seems to take off once he's given the green light.

 

[The 1-2-3 Killam]

My question is now, can anybody take Chris Sabin seriously? TNA basically booked him as the little-engine-that-only-could-with-a-hammer-and-a-shit-load-of-distractions, and then had him drop the title less than a month later. I really liked Sabin BEFORE they had him chase Bully. During their feud he cut some of the best promos of his career, and I was anticipating their match. Except the way he won was just so terrible, it instantly made me hate him as world champion. He got his ass kicked for 20 minutes, then got off one shot from a foreign object and made the cover. At least when Bully cheated to win the damn belt the first time, he wrestled a match before hand, and held his own a good majority of the time. I get that not all wrestlers are created equal, but forget David and Goliath. This was Redneck Goliath vs. the bag of puppies Bobby Roode eats every morning to grow more evil.

I thought, maybe they could redeem a shitty title win by giving him a decent reign. You know, legitimize him a little. Did he beat anybody whilst champion? I remember him having a match against TJ Perkins.

I really hope "Plan C" stops being a thing after this year. It's a shitty gimmick. In WWE, Money in the Bank is a stand-alone concept. You win a ladder match, and get your contendership. What TNA is doing is the equivalent of Dean Ambrose throwing the US title in the trash and saying that earns him a shot at John Cena. Ambrose isn't ready for that, and it makes the US title look like shit. Likewise, Chris Sabin may not have been ready to be world champion, and it makes the X-Division title all but meaningless. It's like saying "hold this title, and one day you could be AJ Styles" instead of "Holy shit, you just won a badass belt that some of the best in history have held - hold that thing with pride and honor!"

At least Bully Ray is world champion again. I have to admit, that makes the Bound for Glory series more interesting. I couldn't have cared less if any of those guys face Chris Sabin. AJ Styles, Magnus and Samoa Joe all have to be frontrunners now, to further the Aces vs Mafia program. I wouldn't count out Ken Anderson as the spoiler. Genuinely hope Magnus takes it. I think he's a much more legitimate looking threat than Chris Sabin, and given his mic ability, Bully Ray could boost him into a bonifide world champion contender.

 

[HBsam31]

I figured this would be the pan all along as soon as Sabin won the title. I really believe the payoff of Aces and Eights will be AJ beating Bully for the title and ending the group all together. I hope that is still the plan anyway. Sabin is good, but I just never saw him running with the title long term.