Tuesday, November 29, 2011

My love/hate relationship with professional wrestling

As my DVR and girlfriend will tell you, I watch a ton of pro wrestling. Whether it's Monday Night Raw, TNA Impact, Ring of Honor, Friday Night Smackdown or the AWF's Saturday Night Slam (it's a local indy show that's on after ROH here.)  Each show brings something different, but as of late I begin to wonder why I watch at all. So without further ado, here's my love/hate of each show I watch

Note:I'm skipping Saturday Night Slam because:
1. It's only a half hour show
2.Unless you live in MN, you've probably never seen/heard of it, and if you do live here, you probably wouldn't watch it since it's filmed out of high school gyms, I actually enjoy it and am slowly learning who the talent is, I say slowly because I'm usually half asleep by the time I get around to watching it.
3. I'm friends with one of the wrestlers (Udo) so I have a vested interest that I might get to see my friend on television, doesn't happen often, but when it does, I mark out hardcore. 


TNA Impact: 
Things I like about TNA:
1.James Storm's hats. -Cowboy hats are cool, especially neon colored ones. I like bright colors, plus without them Charles Cress (one of my personal heroes and an amazing writer to boot http://www.themidnightsnack.net/ and http://pwtorch.com/  he writes another sports column as well but I forget what it is at the time of this blog)  would have to make fun of the other 999 things wrong with TNA

2. Austin Aries: A Double is awesome sauce. I only wish I could pull off that cool of a mustache. Plus he is amazing to watch wrestle in the ring along with the rest of the X Division, I can't wait for Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley to come back. MCMG we need you!

3.Winter: She's super hot. That's about it. Not a great reason but I'm grasping at straws here.

Things I hate:
1. Storylines that make no sense: Gail Kim was upset at the treatment she received in WWE, being treated as a sex object and having to participate in degrading matches, but finds it to be perfectly okay in TNA? Wrestling Matters? Not in this company, bring on Thanksgiving Thong Thunder and turkey suits for the win! 

2. The random face/heel turns with no explanation: Examples: Ken Anderson, Samoa Joe, and Eric Young. Especially Eric, he goes from the bad ass leader of World Elite to  being Little Mac  from Mike Tyson's Punch Out sans pink sweatsuit, watch the Thanksgiving episode of him training with Rudy Charles, it'll click I promise.

3. The announce team:
Do Taz and Mike Tenay just go out and get trashed before they start doing commentary now? Taz usually goes off track during the Knockouts matches, mainly because he's too busy making comments about how girl X is a hot tomatah or letting the pigeons loose, other times I think he's on the phone with Joey Numbers during commentary, honestly the only thing worse is the decline of Mike Tenay. What the hell happened to the professor? Did the Skipper eat him? All he does is bitches about how he hates whoever is the heel this week, but agrees with them the following week? (example:Karen Jarrett) This show has more twists than a M.Night Shyamalan movie, it has more turns than a game of Monopoly with Grandma, where'd you get the pink 50's Grandma? (Dane Cook reference FTW). I can't really blame them though, I can't follow what's going on either.  


Monday Night Raw:
Things I enjoy:
1.CM Punk - Punk is entertaining, he's gonna be an awesome commentator if he doesn't get the brain damage that Booker T seems to have inherited while on commentary, I'm guessing one too many spinaroonis did him in. 

2. John Cena slowly moving into a more heelish persona. It's going to happen, there's only so much someone get booed before they just say screw it and run with it. Word Life. 

3.Awesome Truth: Well, I did like this for a small period of time. Then the week before and Survivor Series happened and they were made to look like chumps. Really? The Miz is getting jobbed out to the Rock? Really? I blame Little Jimmy and Pretty Ricky( anyone remember that R-Truth bit where he was searching for Pretty Ricky? I do.) 

Things I hate:
1. Lack of Jim Ross: Raw NEEDS Jim Ross. Ideally I'd want Ross and William Regal as an announce team. It'll probably never happen but I can dream can't I? The 3 man broadcasts just irritate me to no end, they seem to spend more time arguing about who got more retweets on twitter than they do the actual show.

2.The constant talk about Twitter: Okay, we get it, follow you on twitter, you didn't brag about people being on Myspace, why the hell do I care what so and so tweets? If I cared, I'd follow them. I watch to see pro wrestling and get my male soap opera on, not to hear about what Daniel Bryan tweeted about lunch. 

3.Too many title changes/ non title matches:
I'm too lazy to actually look this up, but I'm sure the WWE title has been on more guys than a hooker on prom night. (cue crickets) I can't take a champion seriously if he loses the belt after 2 weeks, or in the case of our non title matches, loses to the challenger, if your gonna go that route, at least make the matches mean something, like if the challenger wins, they get a match at the next PPV. (similar to ROH's Proving Grounds idea). Make me care about who holds the belt, Cody Rhodes makes me care, why can't the rest of you? 


Friday Night Smackdown:
Things I like:
1.Cody Rhodes. I don't even need to explain this, he's just awesome, much like his dad, a personal favorite of mine growing up. Golddust vs. Cody Rhodes for WM28! #rhodesorriot

2.The show actually has a decent amount of wrestling! Raw feels like a giant promo sometimes, the last Raw I actually enjoyed was the one after CM Punk came back after Money in the Bank, that and the muppets one. But come on, muppets, not quite a mop, not quite a puppet, to be completely honest I have no idea where I'm going with this...

Things I dislike:
1.Honestly I'm really enjoying Smackdown as of late but the Aksana bits are just a waste of my time. Considering none of the other Divas get any freakin' time as it is, why are they wasting time on Teddy "I got this suit at Pimps R' Us! Holla Holla playa!" Long' and Ivan Drago's hot sister? 

2. Raw Rewinds: I usually end up watching Smackdown on my DVR so I fast forward through these but why do I care what happened on Raw while watching Smackdown, I watched Raw, I know what happened, I don't need to be reminded of the crappy 20 minute Rock promo I had to sit through on Monday night. I get it, Boots to Asses, you love twitter and have a sick obsession with breakfast cereal. Moving on...

Ring of Honor:
1.Decent amount of wrestling - Again, a wrestling show with wrestling? Novel concept put to good work.

2. They actually follow up on storylines! I'll be the first to admit, I've only recently started watching ROH (I'd seen a few matches on youtube before it got moved to Sinclair broadcasting) but coming in from knowing next to nothing about a lot of the people, I actually know who's face and who is heel and why people dislike each other. The other thing I liked was during the first episode they explained the code of honor, people who have never seen the show wouldn't know what it was, again, novel concept, explaining things to new fans so we can catch up. I love it. 

3. The broadcast team actually talks about the match! No fighting between Kevin Kelly and Nigel McGuiness (I miss Desmond Wolfe) they just call the match and talk a little bit about previous encounters between the participants. I loved listening to the commentary during the Kyle O Reilly/ Davey Richards match, I learned more about their backstory and that drew me further into the match (not that the match itself wasn't freakin' amazing!) 

Things I dislike:
1.The only real knock I have against ROH is the over-advertising of their website. I get it, I can buy DVDs and check out iPPVs there. You told me 5 minutes ago. 

2. The show is only an hour long. I guess this could be viewed as a good thing as it means they get right to the point, but I wouldn't be opposed to a 2 hour show.


So that's about it for now, depending on if anyone actually reads these I may start writing more. Maybe I should just stick to drawing. ^_^