October 10, 20002
Hello again. Once again here I am with another commentary on the world of Sports Entertainment.
As I'm writing this update it's Wednesday night, and earlier I saw an installment of NWA's Total NonStop Action. I figured I should give a review of which since my last commentary focused on WWE, and we all know there's alot more to the sport than just WWE. Not much, but there's some.
NWA-TNA was quite good tonight. The former Mr. Perfect, Curt Hennig made his NWA-TNA debut tonight in the opening bout of the show, which had more big names in it than the rest of the show. This opening bout was previously stated to be the main event of the show. A six-man tag grudge match featuring Syxx-Pac, B.G. James and a mystery partner against Ron "The Truth" Killings, Brian Lawler and Jeff Jarrett. Hennig turned out to be the mystery partner, and he got the win with the Hennig-Plex over Brian Lawler.
Other matches featured on the card showed the X-Division's best in a ladder match, a world tag title match featuring Combat Zone Wrestling stars the Spanish Announce Team (SAT) against tag champs Chris Harris and James Storm. Also Sonny Siaki and "Big" Ron Harris against a relatively unknown tag team of two guys who aren't related but share the last name of Michaels.
Here's some general commentary on the show: Sonny Siaki looks really good and should be pushed in the X-Division since that's what people watch NWA-TNA for. He has an excellent look and is a great performer, although it's more than obvious that he's trying to be the Rock. But he can get away with it, because he has a load of talent.
It looks like Ron Harris is still gonna be looking for a tag partner, but he hasn't too far to look... as I really feel that they're gonna put him and his twin brother "Heavy D" Don Harris back together and probably have them beat the very talented "America's Most Wanted" team of "Wildcat" Chris Harris (no relation to Ron & Don) and his partner "Cowboy" James Storm. Storm and Harris are an excellent team. This was the first time I have ever seen them perform, but I can tell talent, and these two have a ton of it. Their match with Joel and Jose Maximo (the SAT) was excellent. Hopefully the young duo can carry the extremely boring Harris Brothers in a match.
If you don't recall, the Harris brothers were known in WWF as "Jacob and Eli Blu", in WCW and various Indies they were called "The Bruise Brothers", and in their last stint in WCW they were referred to in a very lame angle as "Creative Control". These two guys are huge, Ron is around 280 and Don is around 300, both are regulars on NWA-TNA, where Don Harris holds the kayfabe role of "Head of Security".
Back to the X-Division. I guess in response to Monday's RAW where Kane found himself alone against 3 tag teams in TLC action for the Tag Belts held on RAW by Kane and Hurricane. The X-Division Title was decided in a ladder match which featured 7 wrestlers. Originally planned to be a ladder match between A.J. Styles and "X" Champion Jerry Lynn. Jerry was injured during a segment prior to his defense. Bob Armstrong (father of B.G. James and NWA-TNA ref Scott Armstrong), who is the on-screen commissioner type character said anyone could participate in the match.
The resulting match started off as a 6-way ladder match featuring Ace Steele (who won an X-Division #1 contender's match earlier in the show), Jose and Joel Maximo, A.J. Styles, Kid Kash (best known as one half of ECW team "Hot Commodity") and Tony Mamaluke (former member of ECW's duo, the "Full-Blooded Italians"). It was an unbeleiveable match. High spots and sick bumps galore, including one of the Maximos doing an one-man version of the SAT's finisher "the Spanish Fly" on Kid Kash off a ladder. As the match and the show were coming to a close, it looked like A.J. would once again be "X" Champion when Syxx-Pac ran in and took Syles out, and climbed the ladder, taking X-Division gold for his own. Some may call this a shitty ending, but if you ask me it was pretty good, since Bob Armstrong did say that anyone could participate in the match, and Syxx did participate, just didn't enter the match till a minute before it ended.
All in all, the NWA-TNA show tonight was great. Most of them have been. It's a great antidote to what's going on in WWE. It's also nice because they generally have a kickass show with limited stars... which in turn leads us into SmackDown tomorrow night, which has a ton of stars and as of late has also had a lot of kickass matches (recall the match between Edge and Eddy Gurrero a couple weeks back.)
Those who know me already know there are two things I like in a match... action and more action. Matches can be technichal, they can be funny (recall the "random crap on a pole" match between Jeff Jarrett and Booker T on a Nitro towards the end of the show, which found Booker winning by hitting Jarrett over the head with a framed picture of the Disco Inferno.)
I think I said enough for now. Hope you enjoyed this and thanks again for reading.