Hogan's Choosing of the Contenders

[Kitten Cutter]

I don't know...maybe I'm just old...

Last week on Impact Jeff Hardy beat Ken Anderson, Bully Ray beat Rob Van Dam, Kurt Angle beat Samoa Joe and A.J. Styles won a wild-card battle royale. I was fully expecting some kind of fatal-four way to face Roode, but instead we literally get what looks like an unscripted debate between the four men plus GM Hulk Hogan. Hogan spends 10 minutes talking back and forth and making everyone argue until he eliminates Bully Ray, then another vignette eliminating Hardy. He then drags out Styles and Angle just so he can come out and choose A.J. on the spot, wasting Angle's entrance. Maybe Hogan did it (kayfabe) so that Roode could not prepare for one guy plus exhaust the guy who won, but still...do we need these discussions over just seeing a match or two?

This happened with the tag team titles as well last month, when Hogan brought in the Motor City Machine Guns, ODB and Eric Young, Kaz and Daniels, and Hardy and Anderson, and there he did basically the same thing to find the contenders for Samoa Joe and Magnus, even though a match-up between the four teams might have actually been interesting.

Maybe I'm old and like watching matches over these discussions, but I'll put it to the forum: thoughts on this new system where Hogan chooses contenders by discussion over the course of the show instead of making matches and rewarding the winner?

 

[ヒュー　G.　レックション]

I can see what you're saying definitely, especially when it's marketed as "Open Fight Night" so you'd think there would actually be more "fighting" on this show. But personally I absolutely love these segments, I like their unscripted nature and the way the wrestlers chime in and make their cases.

I suppose I would rather have just one of these segments, as opposed to Hogan bringing them back in another two times to finally settle on a guy.

 

[OneTooManyPunts]

The very first segment, with Hogan, Styles, Angle, Hardy and Bully Ray was actually pretty compelling, if a bit of a low key start for Impact.

Where this segment actually succeeded was that it actually made Hogan look good as the Impact GM for once. He was coherent, and seemed completely invested in the product and talent in the room. It also was a great success in that it helped remind the viewers what each of the four contenders has accomplished, and really allowed them to play off each other, and their histories with one and other quite well.

This is the best backstage segment TNA has produced since introducing the concept well over a year ago, because it really fed into, and helped further along the greater storyline of the night.

Now, I did feel as though the segment did make Angle and Hardy look a bit too passive, and made both seem a tad disconnected. On the other hand, it really did a good job of selling Bully Ray, and did a good job of giving his character some fuel to continue his heel run, and perhaps begin to try to impressive and prove Hogan wrong.

All in all, I'd say the segment was a success.

 

[It's Damn Real!]

I actually loved it. I thought it was an awesome backstage segment that you really don't get to see in most of pro-wrestling these days. 99% of this "shoot" stuff gets shot down before it ever gets aired, or at best we get casual references to "mark" stuff, but this was a huge look into a really back-stage driven POV.

Would a four-way match to determine the contender have been best? Probably, but the segment itself was very compelling television IMO.

 

[PhoenixBuster]

Wasn't the point of it all for them to get the belt off Roode though? From a logistical stand point, why would Hogan eliminate everyone but AJ when he could put them all in the match to try and screw Roode? I thought that THAT was silly and a little hole in logic.

As far as discussion determining that contender, I can understand the concept in this situation but it shouldn't be a regular thing.

 

[Indeed]

The best way of getting the belt off of Roode would've been to put him in a five-way elimination match for the title...Roode get's eliminated by the four first and then they battle for the title...but obviously TNA wants to keep the belt on Roode, so they did this instead which was actually very good TV. The opening promo was great, Sting coming back was well-timed and he got a HUGE pop, overall it was the best Impact I've seen in a long time. Maybe TNA is back to their practice of constantly improving instead of falling leaps and bounds.

 

[dakikko049]

It seems I'm the only one who thinks all this with Hogan was incredibly boring. Honestly I could barely watch it. Hogan must have repeated everything he said like 20 times. I don't mind the GM having to choose a guy to face Bobby but the segments took way to long for me. The way the backstage bits were shot, it felt like they were trying to make us feel like this was all real and I just got bored really quickly.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I both liked it and disliked it. I liked it because it was something different, a different opening than your standard in-ring opening promo segment. Every so often, I like the idea of them sort of "breaking the fourth wall" a little. It was a compelling start generally. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the first hour as the rest of the hour bored the snot out of me.

I also liked how it made Hogan look fairly compotent at Impact Wrestling GM. I said fairly compotent, but I'll get into that in a bit. It sounded like a bunch of guys talking, no outlandish bravado. Well, there was a little on Bully Ray's part, but it was toned down. Hogan seemed and sounded like an executive. He wasn't the centerpiece of everything as he often is.

What I disliked about it was that the idea of whittling it down to one guy if Hogan wanted to get the title off Roode. As others have said, it seems that the best way of getting the strap away from Roode would be to put him in a match against all 5 of those guys. Maybe they could've used that as the main event for the show next week, which will be the first show in the new timeslot now that it'll be live each week. They did a good job of building up the angle throughout the night and hyping the title and all, but they could've done that just as well throughout the show while heavily hyping a huge, star filled TNA WHC main event for next week's "history making" broadcast.

I didn't have any major complaints really. As I said, it's nice to see the standard formula for the opening segment of any wrestling show changed a little bit.

 

[Coco]

Like most backstage segments, TNA knocked this out of the park. It had the look and feel of many nail-biting reality show elimination segments, just like Gut Check does. Tense, modern, and a deviation from your standard show-opening promo. TNA continues to deviate from the wrestling norm and set themselves apart in exciting ways. Could they have wrestled? Yes. But am I opposed to TNA continuing to tell its story in their fantastic backstage segments? No.

 

[Big Nick Dudley]

Like most backstage segments, TNA knocked this out of the park. It had the look and feel of many nail-biting reality show elimination segments, just like Gut Check does. Tense, modern, and a deviation from your standard show-opening promo. TNA continues to deviate from the wrestling norm and set themselves apart in exciting ways. Could they have wrestled? Yes. But am I opposed to TNA continuing to tell its story in their fantastic backstage segments? No.

I must admit to loving the opening promo as well. The feel, that is. I thought it was possible I was alone in how awesome it felt, good to find out I was wrong about that. The way it was shot, the open/unscripted dialogue - it all worked. However....

Hogan's bothering me. He seems desperate to be seen, desperate to be part of what's happening. At this moment, he doesn't fit. He seems to reaching. I'm not sure I'd feel much different if I were in his shoes, but for some reason, it feels wrong.

 

[buddyriffic]

The very first segment, with Hogan, Styles, Angle, Hardy and Bully Ray was actually pretty compelling, if a bit of a low key start for Impact.

Where this segment actually succeeded was that it actually made Hogan look good as the Impact GM for once. He was coherent, and seemed completely invested in the product and talent in the room. It also was a great success in that it helped remind the viewers what each of the four contenders has accomplished, and really allowed them to play off each other, and their histories with one and other quite well.

This is the best backstage segment TNA has produced since introducing the concept well over a year ago, because it really fed into, and helped further along the greater storyline of the night.

Now, I did feel as though the segment did make Angle and Hardy look a bit too passive, and made both seem a tad disconnected. On the other hand, it really did a good job of selling Bully Ray, and did a good job of giving his character some fuel to continue his heel run, and perhaps begin to try to impressive and prove Hogan wrong.

All in all, I'd say the segment was a success.

I'd have to agree with everything you just said in the first two sentences I put in bold. I have been a huge critic of the way TNA films its backstage segments. I feel they finally conveyed the message coherently in a logical enough manner with these segments.

If you noticed though, Hogan only seemed to ask direct questions to Bully and AJ in the very first segment. Angle was referenced more indirectly by him, and Jeff not at all. IMO in these segments Angle came off seeming desperate almost, and I was actually amused by Jeff Hardy's passiveness. Sitting there with his eyes closed with eyeballs painted on his eyelids....just made for amusing TV in my opinion.

 

[HBsam31]

The whole thing was a bit drawn out in my opinion, but I give them credit for trying something different. Overall I think it works, and the backstage segment at the beginning with Hogan and all the contenders was very interesting to watch. If maybe they would just trim a few minutes off the whole process I would be totally into it.