Ok, I"ll be the first level headed person to post that isn't a TNA mark. The TNA show was pretty awful. And I say this by giving it every opportunity to be good. I put it on at 8 and told myself that by 9, I'd decide what to do, and by like 8:30, I knew I wouldnt' be watching TNA except during commercial breaks. Let's break it down:
The opening segment is a steel asylum match which you couldn't see because the damn thing was red, the spots looked too planned to come off as a smooth wrestling match, then there was a DQ after like 5 minutes for whatever reason. It seemed Jeff Hardy missed his cue because it took forever for them to leave this segment. Homicide was climbing forever and finally they have their little confrontation which I think was a disgrace. Blinde marks WAKE UP! This is Jeff Hardy, former WWE champion and he's attacking lower midcarders? Jeff is a main eventer but on this show, he's opening segment material. His return to TNA could have been HUGE if done right, but it's clear that he is not seen as main event talent for that show. Not in its current form at least. I think it's a damn shame for Jeff and I hope he realizes his mistake soon and peaces from there to get some real spotlight and real money in New York.
After the first of 600 commercial breaks, Jeff and Shannon shake hands........what did Shannon do? More on that later, though I was excited to see Shannon on TV since I just interviewed him (interview coming soon on the homepage I hope!)
After that was the first of 16 shots before commercial break of Hogan's limo. It went interview, limo, commercial for quite a while, with the only interruption being the Knockouts title match which was ok, but since this was the first hour of a show that was hoping to attract new viewers, shouldn't the announcers have hyped up the rivalry, or shouldnt' a video package be done to show how the rivalry has been going? New viewers had to be confused out of their minds from this show. I was and I've seen the show! At the end, ODB wins and Tara attacks her......is Tara a heel now? Hard to tell since the crowd didnt' react much and her facial expressions didn't show much to let us know. Clearly selling a character wasn't of utmost importance, just swerves and weird finishes that make little sense.
I skipped the Nash promo because it wasn't very good and he seemed flustered. Not typical for Nash, but he said that Hogan wasn't alone.......duh! The press conference included Bischoff so anyone with a brain knew he was coming! This wasn't exactly a suspense builder!
Next Ric Flair shows up, which could be the biggest thing they've done, even bigger than Hogan, but it's still unclear what his role is which will be a theme to the night. It's unclear what anything is moving forward and that will become more clear as time goes on.
A few more eh segments, one with Mick Foley (who's supposed to be a heel against Hogan? maybe not...), Bobby Lashley and his wife who announced he might be leaving, which is a weird announcement on a show where so many new people are arriving, and the Beautiful People playing faces by "giving the people what they want to see". Those poker segments were a poor attempt and trying to sexy and say "we're not PG even though we basically are" and on top of that, we'll bring in Val Venis to have a nothing role as well. Where was Angelina who could have at least given the segment substance? I thought she was coming back? Her return would have been bigger than most on the show.
Sixteen commercials later and we finally have Hogan's entrance right before 9 o'clock. My guess is they wanted him on at 9 so that they could challenge Hart head to head, but they had absolutely no programming for the first hour so they milked it as much as possible with commercials and stupid segments showing a fat version of Scott Hall and Sean Waltman walking in and sitting down. 10-15 minutes of quality programming right there.......I had to switch over at that point, it was unbearable. I would try and catch segments on commercial breaks from RAW, but at this point I was so turned off by the lack of organization and lack of focus on TNA's "young roster". Hogan might have said in his speech that it's about giving the young guys a chance but they were barely a presence on the show. You had more of Bubba the Love Sponge and the Nasty Boys than young talent. The most you saw young talent was them layed out in the ring.
I did see parts of the Angle/Styles match and it was fantastic, and the Knockout tag title match was pretty good too but an opportunity was missed to reveal AJ's attacker on the biggest show of the year. That might have been good TV. It also would have been good TV to end the show with that match or at least somethign in the ring. Ending on a backstage segment? That's just terrible for the fans in attendance.
Basically, the show was 3 hours of nothing making sense which was a nice homage to Bischoff's old show, Nitro when it started going downhill. The bookign was sloppy at best, returns were made for the sake of returns with no value to the show as a whole, storylines are so confusing it's crazy. No one knows who is a heel and who is a face, especially not the fans who dont' know what to cheer, and the new cast was the majority of the show with the "fresh young faces that built TNA" being non existent for the most part. If this is what they plan to put on moving forward, count me out. It came off as trying WAY too hard to simply be shocking and really what it was was bad TV. I'd go back to Thursdays and try and gameplan before attempting anything like that again. My buddy and I could do nothing but laugh at the whole thing. It was clear that it was second rate from the opening bell. When you can't even see a match because the cage color and structure was poorly picked and designed, you're doomed from the start. TNA has a LONG way to go.
vs wwe #2
other than that great show I marked out when I saw 
Jeff Hardy 