Wrestling View: TNA, Paul Heyman, Summerslam, Ric Flair & More!
By Andrew Ryan
I very much enjoyed watching TNA Reaction this past week. The backstage interviews and recaps really help to further the storylines and give quality hype to the next week’s show. I enjoyed Impact’s ending with the start of a potentially huge angle with Fortune led by Ric Flair against the ECW guys led by Tommy Dreamer and company. Reaction not only showed how guys within these two groups felt but how some of the wrestlers not yet on either side like Kurt Angle, Mr. Anderson and Jeff Hardy view the whole ordeal. It was also unique how they used the show to progress the RVD injury angle. Despite really enjoying the angle, I am a little disappointed that it means that RVD will be stripped of his title. Van Dam has been a great champion for the company with the ability to put on great matches, having a high profile, and being crazy over with all types of wrestling fans.
RVD’s nearly 2-year TV title reign back in the day in ECW was probably my favorite single title reign of any competitor and I remember being captivated by his matches during that stretch. It was Paul Heyman’s genius idea to make the TV title as prestigious as the World title and for the time RVD had it, that was pretty much the case. Samoa Joe’s 2-year reign with the ROH World title belt did comparable things for that belt with all the great matches he had including the classic sixty minute draws with CM Punk.
That being said, Paul Heyman really needs to be brought in as head booker. I have no doubt that the product all-around would improve with Heyman’s genius ideas. While I don’t have a ton of confidence in it given Heyman’s demands which include complete control and a share of the company, I feel it would be worthwhile for everyone involved. Heyman knows how to utilize wrestlers the proper way to highlights their pros and disguise flaws. He knows how to build exciting storylines and sell matches to the fans. I would love to see what Heyman could do with TNA’s deep talent roster.
The return of Bryan Danielson at Summerslam highlighted an enjoyable main event on an otherwise lackluster PPV. The match played out how I expected with Cena making the improbable comeback as the lone survivor to defeat Nexus. The inevitable feud between the Miz and Danielson should be tremendously entertaining. I didn’t really care much for seven relative newcomers headlining the show. WWE has done a good job of building this angle over a great many number of weeks and the initial Nexus attack on Cena was well done, the angle as a whole has not been very interesting to me. I have little reason to care about any of the members of Nexus. Taking some guys the WWE was passing off as “rookies” and pushing them up to a main event on WWE’s second biggest pay per view just doesn’t work in my eyes.
I feel that the member of Nexus are going to have to build individual gimmicks or else the heat from this angle is going to fizzle out pretty fast as WWE seems to let happen to most storylines and they are going to get lost in the shuffle. Wade Barrett, as the head of the group is the only one that has been built much as a character. I feel that David Otunga, who has a lot of the right imgredients to be a star in WWE with his celebrity connection that serves as a decent gimmick and physique, will have a lot of trouble getting over with the fans. He just isn’t that interesting, cannot work very well and his basic gimmick is pulled off much better by the Miz.
I recently watched an interesting documentary about North Korea and how messed up the country is with everything being so secretive and the country’s entire 23 million population completely controlled and brainwashed by the leader, Kim Jong Il. I still find it amazing that WCW and New Japan carried out a joint show there in 1995 with Ric Flair taking on Antonio Inoki in front of the biggest crowd to ever witness a live wrestling card with over 190,000 spectators in the country’s capital, Pyongyang. I remember watching this match on a VHS of matches of Flair in Japan and being interested in the how secretive the country is with no sources of outside information being let in and all the craziness that comes along with one man in control of that big of a population. The people worship him like a god. The excerpt from Flair’s book “To Be The Man” really highlighted a lot of the shocking stuff I saw on the documentary with North Korean “minders” watching everything that the foreigners did. Muhammad Ali was also on the trip and Flair’s book has a great recap of the trip.
“Because of the ravages of Parkinson’s disease, it was difficult to understand Muhammad Ali when he spoke. But at one function, we were sitting at a big, round table with a group of North Korean luminaries when one of the guys started rambling on about the moral superiority of North Korea, and how they could take out the United States or Japan any time they wanted. Suddenly, Ali piped up, clear as a bell, “No wonder we hate these mother%&*$*#s.”
My hair practically stood up on my head. “Oh, &$#@,” I whispered, “don’t start talking now.”
Flair also talks about how big the spectacle was, how closely they were watched, how his watch cost more than what the “minder” following Flair made in five years. They also wanted Flair to make a speech saying how much America sucks. Absolutely nobody has had an epic of a career as Flair traveling to so many unique countries over his career to defend the NWA title such as having to drop the title to Jack Veneno in the Dominican Republic to avoid the fans from rioting so he could get out of their alive. Nobody lived it up as much as The Nature Boy and it is amazing what Flair is still doing in the business all those years later.