Monday Night Wars…Or Not

**NOTE** First off lemme apologize for leaving abruptly Monday Night. Cox Communications have been pretty shitty here lately. For whatever reason the Internet is on the fritz and the Cable looks like it’s dying on life support. Some sort of shit is up and Cox hasn’t been useful at all. With that said, I’m currently uploading this from a public library. If you don’t think that’s troublesome enough, the show that I recorded on Tuesday with Mister Payne seems to be in troubled waters as well. With all that said, after the show on Monday Night, I jotted down my thoughts on what took place on January 4th. Enjoy and hopefully Cox will hopefully get this shit straight.

Alright, so there’s been huge hype over the new Monday Night Wars. Me personally cringe whenever I hear that because for starters there’s no real war here. Look at both sides, on one you have Vince McMahon who’s current agenda is to push a Superhero like guy in our faces that most of us don’t care for, DX, an old classic stable (now reduced to a tag team) that was known for sticking it to man and playing by there own rules to now having a midget running around not being able to speak proper english, and a monster heel who’s currently champ for all the wrong reasons. Not only that they have that whole PG rating garbage so that it not only protects their product, but Linda McMahon’s campaign platform as well. Cause y’know, when I want to vote for a candidate I don’t want to form an opinion off of what they’re running for. Oh no, I have to form an opinion off blood being shown on television in a place that’s mostly always had negative press about wrestling. Let’s not vote, whether or not she’ll be a good congresswoman or not. No, let’s base everything off of what her husband does with his company.

Anywho, on the other side you have TNA a company that’s a ginormous clusterfuck that mismanages talent, has old wrestlers that don’t need to be in the limelight much less on the roster, and the cherry on top of it all…the Hogan/Bischoff team to *air quotey fingers* “turn things upside down!” where Hogan went on record promising that he’ll get stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin and that he and Macho Man Randy Savage are apparently cool now. To where he gives us his word that there will be change and that TNA will give us something to watch on Monday Nights. This would be interesting if Hogan wasn’t such a lying scumbag piece of shit in the past and present.

So heading into this, the Monday Night Wars is looking more like two mentally retarded children getting ready to duke it out with nobody stepping in to stop it because you just can’t avert your eyes. No matter who wins, we still lose. We either get to say “Yay, the PG company wins” or “Yay, the clusterfuck wins” And to hype it up WWE was bringing in Bret Hart, someone who hasn’t set foot inside a WWE ring in years ever since the screwjob, as a failsafe to TNA’s 3-hour program that was nothing but “HEY, HULK HOGAN’S HERE! HE’S STILL RELEVANT RIGHT!?”. Not only that, you also had speculation of a game I like to call “WHICH FORMER WWE TALENT WANTS TO BURY THEIR CAREER?” with names like RVD and Paul Heyman being thrown about like superballs as people who’ll show up. Fortunately, both came forward and debunked said rumors before they got too out of control.

With a lot of hype surrounding TNA, let’s get to what happened on the actual show. Would they be able to take advantage of having the first hour to try to get people to stick around before RAW comes on the air!? No. Not even close. The first match was some sort of Steel Cage Asylum match where people I had no clue who they were, all got inside and were barely visible from this giant red contraption. From what I was told, the only way to win was to climb through the exit on the roof of the structure and you win. However at the end of the match one of mexican guys took out a blackjack and starting clocking people with it. This somehow resulted in a No Contest in the matchup. A NO CONTEST, IN A STEEL CAGE LIKE MATCH *Cornette Face*. WCW 2000 called, they said they want their shitty booking back. I can see it now, “Messed up TNA finishes” on the next Botchamania. But wait, Jeff Hardy, who hasn’t fucked his life enough, decides to appear on TNA TV and clocks the shit out of said mexican wrestler. Next, we have some divas match with ODB and some…body for some title. I didn’t really care as you can see on this match. All I know is that afterwards, they were hyping up some sort of motorcade that was heading to the Impact Arena. Visions of classic Nitro at the top of the show with limos arriving or on their way to the arena. This was not a memory to be fond of because most of the time it was the NWO and with Scott Hall and Sean Waltman both signing contracts recently…well you see where I’m going with this. Eventually we have a video snippet of Mick Foley being denied access to the building for…whatever reason. Wouldn’t shock me if they actually let him go from the company. Then we have some sperm dumpster meeting up with two other sperm dumpsters at a table playing cards. Eventually it’s revealed that they’ll be playing strip poker throughout the show. Hi, WWECW called, they said they want their sketch back. Also want to point out that they were containers of 5-hour energy surrounded around the table. PRODUCT PLACEMENT. Then we have Bobby Lashley and Kristal coming out to where Kristal says that this will be the last time you’ll see them, yada yada yada, TNA blows, blah blah blah. I’m not sure how legit this is but if Hogan’s marriage is any indication of how he’s gonna run TNA, I’d get out of dodge and high tail it back to UFC too. Then we get a shot backstage where Ric Flair comes out of the limo, proving that you really can style and profile in a dump. Scott Hall and Sean Waltman are seen outside trying to get in, Hall was denied access because he couldn’t blow under a .4 to get and Sean Waltman couldn’t get in because he left his career in Chyna. They rough up security and end up managing to get inside. Later on Hogan finally shows up, the moment of him really needing money and appearing on enemy soil finally sets in. After taking awhile to gimping himself down the aisle and towards the ring to the NWO 2000 music, he states the shakeup, why he’s there, yada yada yada oh look it’s 8:59PM and as both Waltman/Hall hop the barricade, the sound of my remote goes *CLICK* during Hogan’s address, right to RAW because TNA failed to have any sort of content whatsoever to keep fans tuned in. Apparently AJ Styles and Kurt Angle was the main event but you wouldn’t have known that from all the Hogan hype in the first hour. With a couple of flip backs to TNA during RAW, there wasn’t a lot that caught my eye other than Val Venis perv’ing it up with the ladies in the strip poker bit.

It’s 9PM, let’s see how RAW does with their lineup. Right off the bat, we’re treated with a montage of Bret Hart, the screwjob, and last week’s hype. Then we hear Justin Roberts introducing him and finally Bret Hart graces us with his presence. Now, seeing the after effects of a stroke victim, like Dick Clark (who’s speech has been majorly affected) for example, having Bret Hart coming down, cutting a promo, and having all of his major motor skills intact…dude was in pretty great shape. After that he calls out HBK. Both Bret and HBK rundown the past one more time (because most of WWE’s younger audience probably doesn’t know who the hell Bret Hart is) and are able to make amends and shake hands about it. If Tyson/Holyfield can put the past behind them on Oprah, why not Bret and Shawn right? Truly a historic piece of history that I and several millions of fans just witnessed around the globe. Bret then calls out Vince McMahon but Vince no-shows him. So with that we continue on with the program and due to Melina’s injury with her torn ACL, we have a DIVAS tournament for the next Divas Champion. So Maryse and one of the Bella twins, who apparently took the week off from whoring all over the guest host this week to actually be in-ring competitors, went at it for awhile to where the Bellas tried the ol’ switcheroo only for Maryse to notice and not be fooled. Maryse picks up the win and is one step closer to becoming your next injury prone champion. Immediately right after that, Miz comes down says some words and claims that he wants to scout competition for his US title. So a Fatal 4-way is about to start when we’re greeted with a commercial finally. After commercial’s done, we have the Fatal 4-Way underway with MVP, Carlito, Mark Henry, and Jack Swagger. MVP actually pulls off a win for once and has a shot to hopefully become the next US champ. Later on in the program, Jerishow squares off with DX one more time to keep Jericho on the show. The only real thing worth noting here was that the last 2-3 minutes of this match had a lot of decent spots that made it very entertaining to watch. At one point, Jericho performed one of Hogan’s taunts during the match as a shot to Hogan in TNA. Josh Matthews gets a word with Vince asking why he didn’t show up when Bret called him out. Vince says he doesn’t answer to him and that he’ll be the one to call Bret out. Vince slams the door shut on his dressing room and almosts scares the shit out of Josh Matthews to where he has a nosebleed and all action must top to repair his nose. Fast forward towards the end of the show, where Vince calls out Bret and cuts one of the most tremendous promos I’ve ever seen that came off if not a full blown shoot, a damn good worked one at least. Vince and Bret shake hands to for the crowd and raise their arms in the air to finall close the door to the past. That is, until Vince turned around and kicked Bret in the stomach at the last minute to go off the air.

There you have it, this was the new 2010 Monday Night Wars for you. After watching a snippet of one show and the entirety of the other, I would give the crown to WWE. They put on for the most part, a solid show I thought. The first hour seemed pretty strong but around the Sheamus segment I felt things started to get a little stale until the end of the show. TNA on the other hand had a terribly booked match to kick off the show that even pissed off the fans to say “THIS IS BULLSHIT!”. From there on out, it felt like I was watching a normal episode of Impact. Where was this “change” that was supposed to happen? Oh I almost forgot, they had Bubba the Love Sponge of all people, going up to fans and having them berate WWE by saying “WWE sucks”, “I’m crossing the line to TNA”, “I’m your stereotypical mark outside waiting in line for the show to start”. TNA had an opportunity to draw blood early and they didn’t even remotely come close to doing so. They relied on Russo booking and played out shitty WCW shenanigans. WWE on the otherhand reinforced their show not by pulling out the big guns, but putting on a decent piece of programming. The show didn’t have the usual guest host antics like we’ve seen in prior weeks, instead they had Bret Hart make amends with those involved with the screwjob. Hopefully this’ll give people who are still dwelling on this 13 years after the fact, some closure and will not have to look back upon this incident any time soon. As solid as WWE’s product was, there were a few weak spots like the DX dumb shit backstage crap, as toned down as it was, was unnecessary. The Sheamus/Evan Bourne bit could’ve been scrapped (Evan needs to stop being buryed), and the Orton stuff could’ve at least been put off until next week at least. I also like to point out that there was no Cena tonight on which if the ratings do beat out TNA, what does that say about your franchise guy? With that all being said, TNA really needs some sort of lessons in how to keep people watching (not having Russo would be a start) otherwise, I don’t see them lasting a long time even under the helm of Hogan/Bischoff. Also, I’d like to point out that “TNA” “Jeff Hardy” “Bret Hart” and “WWE” were all Twitter Trending Topics at one time, just want to point out that neither Flair or Hogan cracked that list at all during the night. Yikes. Anyway, that’s my opinion on the shows. As I get this uploaded, I’ll be checking out the results of TNA’s show to see what I missed. Now all we do now is play the waiting game and let the ratings do the talking.

Thank you for reading my take on the new Monday Night Wars, hopefully by the time I post this World War 3 hasn’t erupted amongst the Internet Wrestling Community and again hopefully this Internet issue will be resolved quickly so that me and Mister Payne can put some sort of show together. Have a good one folks!