My "Going Forward" Wishlist

[Rasha]

Coming out of Hardcore Justice, there are some really specific things I'm hoping to see from Impact Wrestling. I know I won't get all of them or probably even half, but can a brother get one-third? In no specific order...


1. Kurt Angle, tweener... Mr Anderson, heel

I'd have hoped the experiment to make Anderson a true tweener was over after he joined Immortal, but this last month has made it hard to tell. I don't understand how they can think someone who is SO OBNOXIOUS would ever work in that role. Not only is Anderson not that funny, but he never comes off as a badass. He typically has to do something dirty to win a match. He's a natural heel. Stop forcing the square peg into the round hole.

Meanwhile, Angle smacking Sting with that chair gives you a chance to have a true tweener. Now I'd have no problem if Angle went full heel because he's brilliant in that role. However, that would be an issue right now with Immortal in the picture. Angle could work really well in the tweener role ras a guy who will do dirty shit at times (e.g. Steve Austin, "DTA") but is also enough of a badass that you'll cheer him on. Sure, he'll get booed on the next Impact for cheating Sting. But you're telling me he couldn't instantly bounce back to getting cheers if Immortal came after him? He can pull that off better than anyone in TNA right now.


2. Beer Money drops Tag Titles... to Pope and Devon?!?!

They're the best in the world right now, but that dominance is killing the tag division. There'd be a great way to get the titles off them without making them look bad and immediately elevate Roode and Storm into bigger feuds. Not only that, but my next champions could use the belts to help save their god-awful storyline. Ready for some brilliant armchair booking?

On one of the next two Impacts, Bischoff announces that he's booked Beer Money versus Devon and Pope in a combined BFG Series AND Tag Team Title match. Why would he do this? Because Immortal interferes to cost Beer Money the gold. Who would be easier for Immortal to take the belts from; the best tag team in the world or an experienced and dysfunctional partnership in Devon and Pope? Strategy!

Look at all the things this would accomplish. One... it escalates the Fortune/Immortal feud and gives Roode and Storm immediate reason to come after their heads. Two... it adds a new wrinkle to the pitiful Devon/Pope story that could tolerable. Three... you have an immediate new program as two Immortal guys (probably Gunner and Steiner) could now go after the new champs for their gold.


3. Aries beats Kendrick VERY soon

Short and simple request here; please don't drag out an Aries/Kendrick program to the next PPV. Kendrick is not a PPV-calibur champion. Have Aries get that title soon so that either he and Shelley or maybe Kazarian can have a real PPV-worthy match at No Surrender. The longer Kendrick has the belt the more stupid promos he'll cut.


4. Do SOMETHING with AJ Styles

AJ proved again last night just how dynamic he is. From the moment he got tagged in to the end of the match he was just on fire. Find him a solid storyline and make him a bigger part of the show. I know he just headlined a PPV one month ago, but it feels a lot longer now after a month of NOTHING.


5. Make Joe's promo matter

After his DQ loss to Pope on the last Impact, Joe cut an intense backstage promo and promised blood. I loved the promise and I want to see him deliver. It's hard to tell exactly how he'll focus his rage, but if he's pissed off at "the establishment" then doesn't he have to come after Bischoff and Hogan? I guess another way to do it would be for him to go after people who he's decided are "Network" favorites; the guys with the best looks and textbook marketability.

Whatever the direction, make the promo count! This is one of the most unique guys in the business, and he WILL draw if used the right way.


6. Sting & The Hardy Boys... United

This one if kind of off-the-wall, but hear me out. Imagine Sting getting ganged up on by Immortal. Lights go out... Matt Hardy is in the ring! He suddenly attacks Immortal members to help Sting break loose. They clear the ring, except Sting has Ray and hits him with a Scorpion Death Drop! Lights go out again... and they come back to show Jeff Hardy standing on the top rope! Swanton bomb on Ray!

From a storyline standpoint... after Victory Road, Immortal totally threw Jeff under the bus and he hasn't been seen since. Matt's also been missing two months. If these guys are doing okay and ready to return to work, why not make them Sting's new weapons against Immortal? It'd be like a throwback to the New Brood, only with Sting instead of Gangrel! That's the biggest upgrade since Triple H went from Chyna to Stephanie.

You could easily sell this new direction for the Hardys, too. Sting could say that they were prime examples of what Bischoff's poison can do, particularly Jeff. While Immortal had cast Jeff aside and left him to rot, Sting went out and found the guys and helped him; got him back on his feet and showed him how what Immortal did to him is what they're doing to TNA as a whole.

 

[Rayne]

I'm hoping for a good, long run with Kurt Angle as the top guy in the company, preferably as a face. Today's faces aren't clean cut dogooders anymore- every once in a while, they use a chair to take the win. Call it a tweener if you must, by "face" I use the older definition of 'the guy the crowd is supposed to cheer for'.

Why? Kurt Angle isn't just a natural lead guy now; he's probably the only guy that could serve as the face of TNA/IW and have it be credible to not only the fans that are currently watching TNA/IW, not only the fans that have stopped watching TNA/IW but could be brought back, but also people that aren't watching TNA/IW at all but are familiar with Kurt's WWF run. Sting's no slouch at all, and I do not mean this disparagingly, but he's never been the top guy for a company. He's just not that kind of figure; he's an excellent "Best Supporting Actor". AJ Styles is good within TNA/IW's own little bubble, but I still have difficulty seeing him being the guy to light the passions of the broader wrestling community aflame. The opportunity for his Barbershop moment appears to have passed. Jeff Hardy...... yeah.

So the ball finally rolls to Kurt Angle after that Way Too Long feud he had with Jeff Jarrett. If there's a guy you can send out every night to keep people's attention, Kurt's the one.
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Although I don't view AJ Styles as a credible company head, I absolutely agree with you that they need to find direction for him. He's still one of TNA/IW's better assets, and right now he's floating around, drifting from feud to feud. The BFG series is something, but not much; how many threads do you see on this board where people are talking about it? You can gauge the interest level of anything by how many people are discussing it, and the BFG series seems to be attracting less attention than the regular season of baseball. (Much like baseball, people's attention will be jerked to the BFG series as it nears its end- the preliminaries are, however, dragging on.)

As far as how popular this BFG series is with TNA/IW, I just spent ten minutes crawling through their revamped website and couldn't find one *mention* of the BFG standings, let alone the standings themselves. I know their website has been shit for a very long time, but it really drops a solid hint as to if the BFG series is supposed to be a plot-central ongoing tourney, or a way to keep several upper-tier wrestlers busy without having to write feuds for them. This is an aside to the AJ Styles thing, but I'm really surprised I couldn't find anything about how people are doing in the BFG series from their website.

But that being said, AJ Styles needs something to keep HIM busy, and not him and several other guys at the same time. Have the story be about the company's homegrown guy (yes I know he's not really 'homegrown', this is a storyline, not a biography) fighting adversity and rising through the standings, only to be narrowly screwed out of a title shot by (fill in the blank; a 3rd place finisher who feels slighted is a natural fit, the actual wrestler really doesn't matter.) AJ Styles is a character who works great chasing a title, and not so good holding it. Use that!
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I'd like to see Samoa Joe draw too, but at this point I'm pretty confident that if they knew how to use him, he'd be being used well by now. He's got a Roy Nelson body, and the people running the show right now are looking for Paul Orndorff figures. He gives great promos, then gets booked in middling matches designed not to show up the main event. He's a great performer- I'm not in the "OMG Joe sucks he's fat" crowd one bit. But in an age where organizations seem afraid to go outside of textbook for fear of dropping the ratings (and no, for the people that will reflexively argue, TNA/IW has not been exceptionally revolutionary, they were taking many more chances pre-Bischoff), I don't see anyone taking the chance on Joe as anything besides a good mid-car PPV match.

 

[rokuma]

Sting's no slouch at all, and I do not mean this disparagingly, but he's never been the top guy for a company. He's just not that kind of figure; he's an excellent "Best Supporting Actor".

Wait...what? Did you miss everything from like 1989 until 2001 in WCW? Sting was THE guy for WCW. He was always the guy when Flair left, when Hogan left in the late 90s, even when the NWO came about he was the guy that fought them in the storyline...Sting was WCW.

I like your thoughts and my thoughts were similar on Austin Aries. I'm just hoping they don't squash his momentum and let he and Shelley feud over the X Division title.

Angle and Anderson would be good, but what about Bound for Glory? Is Crimson really going to the win the series? I'm from KY, I just watched this guy less than a year ago in an elementary school and knew he had "it", but he's pretty green still. Is he really going to headline their biggest PPV?

I would love to see Angle vs Anderson vs Sting or even Angle/Anderson/Sting/AJ. Why not a 3 or 4 way to headline a PPV?

 

[Rayne]

Wait...what? Did you miss everything from like 1989 until 2001 in WCW? Sting was THE guy for WCW. He was always the guy when Flair left, when Hogan left in the late 90s, even when the NWO came about he was the guy that fought them in the storyline...Sting was WCW.

Actually, I was thinking of that era specifically. You say it yourself- he was the guy once Flair left; he was the guy when Hogan left. He was the guy that fought the NWO; the NWO wasn't the group fighting Sting. I never said they didn't use Sting in a high-profile role. But he was never THE guy for the company; it was Flair, or it was Hogan, and for a while it was Nash. Sting was the guy who played the role when someone else wasn't doing it; as I said, he was excellent in his supporting role for those characters.

 

[Danny84]

As far as the BFG series go i agree crimson is to green to be in the main event at BFG but not saying he is a bad wrestler as impact have a future star there but not yet but you dont have to make him get pinned and lose his streak just have someone else get pinned

i do agree that they should make it a fatal four way between angle/sting/anderson and say bobby roode could give him the push he needs and he can do a gd job in the main event

as far as the tag titles with beer money goes i would bring bk the hardys or wait till the machine gunns r bk togeather and give 1 of them a run with the titles

 

[Rasha]

He was the guy that fought the NWO; the NWO wasn't the group fighting Sting.

That's a fair and pretty indisputable point. I've always said that Ric Flair made Sting a star and Hollywood Hogan made him a legend. That's not to say Sting didn't do his part and isn't deserving of his reputation and status, but you can't argue that Sting's best days came when he was playing off of an iconic heel. He's never had the stand-alone drawing power of those two men, or Austin, Rock, etc.

 

[mike1215]

Moving forward, Sting is probably going to be occupied with Hogan until BFG. It's going to be interesting to see what they do with Angle because Hardcore Justice told me that Angle is turning heel and will be the top guy in Immortal, but the Jarretts are still in Immortal. Abyss and Anderson are on their ways out of Immortal, so the stable is in need of another head. Angle will probably hold the belt until BFG and take on the winner of the BFG series which is shaping up to be a true face (Roode, Crimson or RVD).

With that said, my wishlist goes like this:

1. PLEASE bring some credibility back to the TV title. I'm sure Eric Young can still put on these comedy bits without the belt. There are guys like Gunner, James Storm, RVD, Pope, Samoa Joe...who could put on some compelling storylines with that title.

2. Get rid of the Knockouts tag titles. The amount of air-time this storyline gets is terrible for business. The WWE allocates about 15 mins for Divas matches. TNA should definitely take a page out of their book in that regard. The KOs segment should have as much Velvet and Tessmacher as possible.

3. Reunite the Motor City Machine Guns. The tag division is losing some steam and Beer Money hasn't even split, yet. I love Shelley as an X-Div competitor, but with TNA bringing in a boat load of guys this week (look out for Zema Ion, he's definitely going to stick around for awhile) for the X-Div, he could get much more face time in arguably the best tag team of 2010.

4. Stop pushing Anderson around in different directions. Choose a path for him, I don't know what the hell it should be anymore, but choose a path for him and let him thrive in that role.

4.

 

[Big Nick Dudley]

1. Kurt Angle, tweener... Mr Anderson, heel

I'd have hoped the experiment to make Anderson a true tweener was over after he joined Immortal, but this last month has made it hard to tell. I don't understand how they can think someone who is SO OBNOXIOUS would ever work in that role. Not only is Anderson not that funny, but he never comes off as a badass. He typically has to do something dirty to win a match. He's a natural heel. Stop forcing the square peg into the round hole.

Meanwhile, Angle smacking Sting with that chair gives you a chance to have a true tweener. Now I'd have no problem if Angle went full heel because he's brilliant in that role. However, that would be an issue right now with Immortal in the picture. Angle could work really well in the tweener role ras a guy who will do dirty shit at times (e.g. Steve Austin, "DTA") but is also enough of a badass that you'll cheer him on. Sure, he'll get booed on the next Impact for cheating Sting. But you're telling me he couldn't instantly bounce back to getting cheers if Immortal came after him? He can pull that off better than anyone in TNA right now.

I agree in regards to Anderson. He's clearly a heel, and he's pretty good at it. His feud with Angle last year was a lot of fun, and I hope he goes back to that sort of character. He's not funny, he's not appealing, he's... well, he's not that good. Heel is what he should be.

If Angle has joined Immortal (no, I'm not sure he has), I'm guessing that's to set up a big Immortal vs. Fortune blow-off at BFG - Angle (Immortal) vs. A.J. (Fortune) for the strap. It seems like whoever thought Ken Anderson would work as the leader of Immortal has now changed his/her mind. If I didn't hate Immortal so much, I'd say Angle is the perfect man for the job. But, I do hate Immortal, so I'd rather Kurt work as a face heading into BFG.

4. Do SOMETHING with AJ Styles

AJ proved again last night just how dynamic he is. From the moment he got tagged in to the end of the match he was just on fire. Find him a solid storyline and make him a bigger part of the show. I know he just headlined a PPV one month ago, but it feels a lot longer now after a month of NOTHING.

They're struggling to give guys television time. And the ones who get most of the time are odd choices, in my opinion. I think AJ's the best guy (under 40) in that company, so it would only make sense for him to be given something important to do. I'm really hoping he faces Angle for the title at BGF, and no, I don't care that its been done a million times.

5. Make Joe's promo matter

After his DQ loss to Pope on the last Impact, Joe cut an intense backstage promo and promised blood. I loved the promise and I want to see him deliver. It's hard to tell exactly how he'll focus his rage, but if he's pissed off at "the establishment" then doesn't he have to come after Bischoff and Hogan? I guess another way to do it would be for him to go after people who he's decided are "Network" favorites; the guys with the best looks and textbook marketability.

Whatever the direction, make the promo count! This is one of the most unique guys in the business, and he WILL draw if used the right way.

While I don't think Joe will ever draw serious money, for anyone, I do agree his promos need to mean something. If he's going to be the complete bad ass, it has to happen every week. He can't disappear for weeks at a time, come back, and squash someone. Be consistent, or drop these storylines you obviously have no faith it.

6. Sting & The Hardy Boys... United

This one if kind of off-the-wall, but hear me out. Imagine Sting getting ganged up on by Immortal. Lights go out... Matt Hardy is in the ring! He suddenly attacks Immortal members to help Sting break loose. They clear the ring, except Sting has Ray and hits him with a Scorpion Death Drop! Lights go out again... and they come back to show Jeff Hardy standing on the top rope! Swanton bomb on Ray!

From a storyline standpoint... after Victory Road, Immortal totally threw Jeff under the bus and he hasn't been seen since. Matt's also been missing two months. If these guys are doing okay and ready to return to work, why not make them Sting's new weapons against Immortal? It'd be like a throwback to the New Brood, only with Sting instead of Gangrel! That's the biggest upgrade since Triple H went from Chyna to Stephanie.

You could easily sell this new direction for the Hardys, too. Sting could say that they were prime examples of what Bischoff's poison can do, particularly Jeff. While Immortal had cast Jeff aside and left him to rot, Sting went out and found the guys and helped him; got him back on his feet and showed him how what Immortal did to him is what they're doing to TNA as a whole.

The whole "Sting helps the Hardy's become better people" thing doesn't sound awful, but it doesn't appeal to me, personally. Jeff basically ruined an entire PPV and told the entire audience to go fuck themselves. I don't think he deserves to come back as a babyface. Of course the Impact Zone would cheer for him, they cheer anyone. However, going forward, I think it's a better idea to let sleeping dogs lie - in other words, leave the Hardy's right where they are.

 

[He's Phenomenal]

There's a lot of points I would agree on in the OP.

1. I think I prefer Kurt Angle as a face but that's probably just because that's what he's been doing recently. He was great as the leader of the MEM and basically plays a heel just as well. So yea, let him do what he wants IMO. It's certainly about time Anderson was given a direction. And Anderson is another one, like Angle, who can do any role well - he just needs a role to play.

2. I'm split on this one. Beer Money are no doubts THE BEST tag team around. And that's the point, they are the best tag team so I'm undecided on them 'breaking away' from Beer Money and into James Storm and Bobby Roode. But it looks like that could be happening and both guys could do well in singles roles. Pope and Devon would make interesting Tag Champs but I would hope the Hardys could get back for BFG and take the Tag Titles.

3. Austin Aries is class, but Brian Kendrick hasn't been doing a bad job IMO. He's made that division relevant again after his battles with Abyss. He says some crazy shit that I don't understand but that's just part of his character, he's smarter than your average bloke. Austin Aries should win the X-Division Title soon though IMO. The X-Division is all face and he's a great heel.

4. AJ Styles is exactly what he says on the tin "Phenomenal". And that works against him IMO. Sounds silly, I know, but TNA know as soon as they need AJ for something big, he's ready (and the fans will buy it). And I think that's probably why he hasn't really had any on going feuds lately. As long as AJ is featured on a regular basis, he's still the Phenomenal AJ Styles. It would be nice to see AJ doing something 'meaninful' but I can also see why he's just 'used'. As it allows TNA to build stories for those who need them.

5. I don't agree with Joe being a draw, but the promo he cut should mean something. And it was the first time I've seen any real life, intensity or emotion out of Samoa Joe in well...a long time. If he can show more of that then the promo will mean something. But if he just goes back to going through the motions, then it won't come to much.

6. I like this, but I can imagine the bitching if TNA ran an angle like that. You'd have a tag team that competed for WWE during their careers and also someone who competed for WCW. It wouldn't be right to do that because of...well I can't think of anyone who has only competed in TNA (James Storm maybe)? But yea, this would be a very intriguing story and something I'd want to see.

MY TNA Wishlist going forward:

1. Bully Ray wins the World Title

2. Bully Ray holds the World Title until Matt Morgan returns

3. Rob Van Dam wins the TV Title (not likely)

 

[Nate DaMac]

I like a lot of what you have going here. Anderson sucks at being a face unless they have someone writing his material, AJ needs a bigger role, and Joe, while I do despise him, is certainly deserving of a better place than he is at right now. That point caught my eye more than others because it's probably the most glaring issue they seem to have. He's one of the most unique guys they have right now but they keep squandering him on dumb shit or stuff that never pans out.

The one thing I don't care for is the Hardy stuff. I don't want to see Jeff again until he goes through rehab. I don't want to watch a guy get rewarded while being a massive fuck up. Matt Hardy can eat a big fat bowl of penis as far as I'm concerned, and Sting is so far over the hiil it's not even funny. The idea of him teaming up with a couple of guys like this is intriguing and if the Hardys were even a fraction of what they used to be I'd be down. But alas, they both suck ass at this point and they have no business being on my television.

EDIT: I lied, I'm also not big on scrapping Kendrick from the X-Division Title scene. I like him way more than Aries.