Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water

Impact. What a show.

For months it barely scraped above average, with the occasional swing either way into complete rubbish or almost acceptable. Russo was back, and despite all the denials, we all knew he was back. We had a PPV where every match had a stipulation, we had Bully with his list, and worst of all we had Willow.

Then things changed. Russo was allegedly punted after sending an email to the wrong person, Dixie went through a table, and Willow was replaced by plain old Jeff. Things were looking up, despite the fact that TNA had obviously hired some people on very short term deals.

The shows taped in New York have generally been of a better standard than pretty much everything TNA has done for about a year, and the optimist in me was thinking maybe the company had turned a corner.

Then last weeks show was watched, and honestly, a lot of the good work done in the last month was thrown out the window. Maybe I was just in a grumpy mood when I watched it, but I thought some of it was absolutely horrendous.

Lets start at the beginning, Kurt Angle in among the fans… Nothing says we are small time like having your biggest star in among the crowd, doing an opening to camera, well nothing except that crowd hardly reacting to your presence. Now I get why this was done, MVP was appearing in the ring, and as a heel, MVP and his posse would realistically have had to attack Angle.

Normally, this would have been dealt with via the tron, but that was obviously not possible here. So what should have happened is MVP arrived late, saw what Angle had said, then cut a promo backstage. Because what you are making here is a TV show, and that TV audience is who you need to impress.

It is great for the 400 people there to see that storyline develop in front of their eyes, but you have to make the show look good for the million people who watch at home. If you can do both, brilliant. If you can only do one, then go with the TV audience, that is where the money is.

Then we had the Great Sanada… or Sanada. What made him great was some face paint apparently, and once the commentary team told me he was done up to look like the Great Muta, I almost got it. But I don’t remember Muta looking like that.

Then to have Aries do a job for a crap gimmick was just wrong, he was in a world title match about two weeks ago. We watched as he pushed the world champion to the limit, we heard the commentary team tell us how close he came to winning the belt. Then he lost to an ex X champ and some green mist.

Now the green mist, I always had a problem with that. The ref did not see it, but Sanada(in this case) has green all around his mouth. Aries has green all over his face. So what does the ref think happened? Given that Sanada looks like Muta(?) and Muta had a green mist gimmick, how much of a leap was needed?

Now I am going to skip forward here, because the most controversial view should come last. I will skip right to the end, to the tag team rubbish.

A few weeks ago I suggested that tag team wrestling was in decline, TNA have decided to fix that by bringing back two legitimate tag teams in the Hardy boys and the Dudley Boys. Because that is how you build for the future apparently…

Now in reality, I have no real problem with 75% of those two teams, I will leave it to you to work out which one I don’t like. Suffice to say if I was buying paint, it would be gloss. I don’t really like the current champs either, they look like little boys, and have terrible facial reactions.

But that is by the by. The tag titles are now on the line, as the three teams compete in a series of matches, the first to win two matches win the titles.

Or, to put that another way, we are going to have four matches, each team will win one each, then we get a decider, that the Wolves will win. So three meaningless matches then. Great…

Nothing will attract an audience more than knowing that in the next three weeks, we will have meaningless matches, but on the fourth week….

So now we move on to the worst part of the show. And it pains me to say this, and I am going to look like a callous bastard here. But…

The Sergeant with one leg. I have no problem with him, no problem with his having a leg missing. No problem with how that happened, his previous career, his chosen new line of work or anything about him. I want to make this absolutely clear. I have no problem at all with Chris Melendez.

I do have a problem however, with how he was introduced.

We come back from an ad break to find 3D, Ken Anderson and Kurt Angle, who then spent a fair bit of time telling us about how great this one legged wrestler could be. He had two dreams, to be in the army and to be a wrestler, so 3D will train him for nothing. I have no problem with 3D training the guy.

But there really is no need to ram down our throats how charitable you are. Train the guy, then see if he is worth a contract. If so, introduce him the way you introduce any new wrestler. And treat him exactly the same as you would any other wrestler. Making a big deal out of a disability is not helpful, it lowers expectations, whether rightly or wrongly.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore once did a sketch about a one legged man applying for the role of Tarzan. It was pointed out that no matter how great an actor, having one leg would make any performance unbelievable. Closer to the subject, I seem to remember a quote from Vince about signing ‘the wrong one legged wrestler.’

I guess what I am saying here is that while Melendez might be the best wrestler ever seen, his disability makes him different, and TNA have already pointed this out to the world. He will be treated differently, he already has been. Now when you tell the world you are treating this guy differently because of his disability, what you are saying is ‘please be nice to this guy, he only has one leg.’

Now, being the callous bastard I am, I will say this.

I am not that bothered about this guy, his disability, or the fact he was in the US Army. I don’t want to see the inevitable training of the guy, the struggle to cope, the Jesse Neal story retold basically, but with a one legged wrestler.

I want to watch the best wrestling possible, all the time. I don’t care if the guy has one,two or three legs. I don’t care where he comes from, what colour he is, what his name is or whether he is in fact a she. All I care about is what they do in the ring. That is the only way anyone should judge a wrestler, on their ‘in ring’ ability.

By pointing out a disability we would have probably noticed anyway, TNA are discriminating positively for Melendez, or negatively towards every other wrestler on the roster. To do that while declaring on national TV how great you are for doing it is even worse.

So, to sum up, all of the above made Impact last week officially the worst wrestling show TNA have produced in quite some time., and I didn’t even mention Taz and Tenay burying their own TV show.

TNA looked like it had turned a corner, hopefully last week was a blip and they will return to some good wrestling. Hopefully TNA stop doing stupid stuff like Sanada, like the tag marathon and like that smugfest that was the introduction of a one legged wrestler.

Now, before I go, my usual recommendations. MFX remains on hiatus, but still I would recommend going back over earlier episodes and listening again. They really are worth it. SLTD radio continues to broadcast, and anyone wondering where my grumpy came from can listen to George on there, and probably work out it is a geographical trait.

The number of writers here on SLTD has taken a bit of a hit for a variety of reasons as circumstances dictate that some must take a break. Rest assured however that any article written by anyone but me will be top quality stuff, and well worth a read.

I hope the Melendez stuff does not go down too badly, I really mean nothing bad about him, more what the company has done with him, and honestly would love for him to have a successful career as not a one legged wrestler, but just as a wrestler. Anyone who wishes to comment on what I have said, feel free to do so. I am more than happy to attempt to explain my view further  if requested. Just add a comment.