Show review, 11/30 official, buys, Xplosion
October 12, 2003

This is Headlines and Scrutiny for 10/12. Thank you for reading. While you're doing that, why not make it fun for me too, holla at trevor@thebalrogslair.com where I'd love to be holla'd at.

I was surprised with the degree to which Dusty Rhodes was put over as a tremendous contender. AJ Styles hasn't been cemented yet as a serious champion despite the fact that he has both charisma and uncanny wrestling ability. One of the things that Styles needs is serious contenders. Low Ki was a contender several months ago and they built him up throughout the show as someone who has the ability to take the title from Styles. The only problem that time was that Ki is never on the program and that build should've been spread over at least two weeks. Dusty Rhodes is incredibly popular among the TNA crowd, but as a contender with no build he's a joke to everyone. By saying that Dusty is the George Foreman of wrestling and that he values that title helps Styles and strap. If it sounds like I'm saying that Rhodes should be in the ring, I'm not because I still believe that Rhodes has no place in the ring unless it's done in a perfect manner and it helps someone else gets elevated. This was good, not perfect. Rhodes sold really well. Finish set up Jarrett's heel turn, which I think they tried to do before but never did but now they are doing it full force for 11/30 (see news). Stemming from this, Russo announced that the Styles match in two weeks is off. Not sure where that's going.

Chris Harris and James Storm went over Abyss and Kid Kash in what I thought was a positive for the show. Terry Taylor, who is feuding with Kash at this point, served as referee. This basically served so Abyss could turn heel and attack Kash and have a match with him next week. That's rushed, but we'll see if it's leading to a bigger deal soon.

Not everything on the show was great. Michael Shane over Chris Sabin was far less than what it needed to be. TNA prides itself on the X-Division, so unless they have a good reason, they need to at least be providing the type of matches they drew acclaim for. Instead of young guys with talent to work with being put over, this really buried them, the X title, and the X-Division tournament just over a month ago. Michael Shane has looked ridiculous and every time he says Shawn Michaels and cracks a joke about him being better than Michaels, the further he goes down the toilet. Sabin did the clean job here so he's even worse off. Raven wet over Sinn and Chris Daniels went over Frankie Kazarian, who's new and well, new.

Next week: Kid Kash vs. Abyss; Erik Watts vs. Kevin Northcutt; Dusty Rhodes and AMW vs. Russo, Ekmo (Jamal of WWE) and Sonny Siaki. Overall, really mediocre show with some good spots.

News: TNA has officially announced the 11/30 PPV mentioned here last week. Whether or not Hogan is a part of it, this is big. The show is at 8 p.m. et. and will be called "Bound for Glory." Still not exactly sure if DirecTV and iNDemand went along with that, but without that, I can't imagine them putting out the press release. TNA has seven weeks to build to this... Xplosion results: Vampiro over Chino Martinez, Sonny Siaki & Ekmo over Void Effect, Zero and A.M. Vishion, Shane Douglas over William "Da Bomb" Richardson, C.M. Punk & Julio Dinero over Delirious & Sebastian, manager David Prazak... www.nwatna.com was redesigned again... Several weeks ago, there was an internal line in TNA about 100,000 buys being what TNA got for the one-cent show, which would figure out to $1000 or 1% of their average weekly keep. I didn't report it because it sounded ridiculously high, and was based only on certain early markets, and because of the archaic PPV polling system used by iNDemand, yes, it really is as bad as it sounds. I would explain how they count the buys but it's really long and pathetic. The number is being more widely cited now but it is still ultra-preliminary... Trading cards are being produced... The Pro Wrestling Newsletter said that the TNA deal on the DirecTV package means that TNA has the same national clearance as MLW. That's a mistake. MLW, by being on Sunshine, also open themselves up to Fox Sports Network in many markets and a few other markets. Empire is not nearly as widely accessible on the Empire network, but being accessible to that DirecTV sports package market is important...

Next week: be here or be square.

Matchmaker: Trevor Hunnicutt
trevor@thebalrogslair.com

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