The Couch Pirates

WWE Superstars
Superstars was another strong entertaining show this week. Tyson Kid of the Hart Dynasty had a very good match with John Morrison that really amped the crowd up. There was a terrible “ask a Diva” segment but almost all segments including divas go that way. Yoshi Tatsu had a surprisingly quick match and finally fell to William Regal. And the main event was a better than expected Orton vs Primo contest. It was pretty long for what really amounted to a squash match. Primo was allowed to get some moves in but mainly the whole match just brought to question why they ever split the Colons up. They were one of the few face tag teams they have and it just doesn’t male sense.

TNA Impact
This was by far the best the Impact I have seen in a long time. There was one weak segment where Don West interviewed Victoria, but those “candid” interviews always seem to be pretty dull. Angle and Foley were both great on the mic. Bobby Lashley was better than during his tenure in the WWE, but still rather sophomoric compared to the two legends he was verbally sparring with. The match action was good and most of the run-in, an eternal TNA weakness, was restricted to outside the ring or outside the parameters of the match. Hernandez re-debuted with some new snazzy Super-Mex digs and got to defeat Joe and then promo a title run. Unlikely. But we can all hope. The Knockouts match prominently featured Velvet Sky so all was good there. Matt Morgan and AJ Styles started an interesting series that I think would pay off best if it is part of Morgan’s transition to a top face. My favorite part of the show though, was the Eric Young led uber-faction, World Elite. Team Canada was awesome and I really like that Young is getting the chance to shine on the mic. I am not sold on the faction name, but MEM sounded lame too. It is finally working out since they seem to actually have a plan now. I think once Sting left it really became a cohesive stable. It’s not that Sting couldn’t be a part, it is the Sting they were portraying never fit in and hurt the stable from the beginning. The main event even had a crazy-ass “TNA” stipulation, but they way it played out was entertaining, however predictable. Before the match, MEM jumps Foley and Lashley backstage. Beer Money jumps Booker and Steiner, and the lights go out. Angle and Nash stand in the ring waiting for Foley and Lashley to come out and just as a the ref is about to raise their hands here comes Foley. They fight for a while and Angle had Foley in the Ankle Lock. The lights go out, Sting points to Angle from the stands, the lights go out, Lashley is in the ring. Now, Lashley looked terrible. He looked like he had no idea how to hit his spots, but regardless he knocks out Nash and Foley pins Big Sexy to win the TNA Legends Championship.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Well kids, we have had some pretty craptastic wrestling the past couple of weeks. TNA Victory Road 2009 was incredibly boring and very poorly executed. TNA Impact has been its fairly consistent up and down. RAW has mostly been a wild inferno of flaming turds for the last several weeks. ECW has been good except for the Bella Twins and Abraham Washington, he isn’t even good in an ironic way with his current gimmick. Superstars is usually one of the more entertaining shows, often taking the best from all three WWE brands. Smackdown is usually all good with only Jeff Hardy floundering, but I think that is probably due to his desire to take some time off. Ring of Honor, I really just don’t get. Sometimes they can put on a pretty entertaining show, but they seem not to have a lot of direction right now. I have to watch the same matches over and over and they have way too many pot jokes or pot related gimmicks.

TNA Impact 07/23/09
TNA was really bad this week. The whole thing was mis-planned, mis-timed, and completely out of whack. Victoria did a promo that sounded completely like she did not know she was about to do a promo. Kevin Nash looked like he needed to be wheeled to the ring. Kurt Angle and Mick Foley were both cutting great promos and are really the glue holding this promotion together right now. It seems the rumored Jeff Jarret drama may really be affecting the company. There was one moment in the program that I almost felt offended by the show though. LAX members and friends, Hernandez and Homicide almost got in a fight in the back with no explanation offered. It was if they were saying, Homicide and Hernandez are just a couple of stupid Mexicans and they are just going to fight for no reason. It just really didn’t sit well with me.

Smackdown 07/24/09
I thought this was a pretty good lead in to Night of Champions. Nothing on here made me care about the Women’s Title, but CM Punk made a really strong heel move, which probably should have been a tip off for Night of Champions. I don’t remember anything terrible about this show, and I have been really pumped about the direction they are going with Dolph Ziggler. Despite being saddled with one of the worst names in wrestling, that Vince certainly picked for him, Ziggler has been excelling in his “Mr Perfect”-esque routine.

Night of Champions 07/26/09
I thought Night of Champions was a much better effort than their usual show this time of year. The Women’s and Diva’s Title matches were pretty much throw aways but at least they stopped trying to make Michelle McCool ugly. Maryse was absolutely terrible, even garnishing looks of disgust from her opponent, Mickie James. They are trying to put the performance off on a knee injury but Maryse just really isn’t very good. I did not have a problem with the results but I thought the finishes were poorly done in some spots. It was great that The Legacy finally started acting like a heel faction at PPV, but I still think the Orton/Cena/HHH finish was still mis-booked. Cena and HHH both had Orton in submissions, Orton tapped, the Ref didn’t know how to call it, Legacy jumps in, Orton ends up RKO-ing Cena for the win. I think this finish made Orton look weak and the Ref look stupid. I understand that they wanted to have Orton retain but still put over Cena and HHH. Legacy just should have jumped in before Orton tapped. I thought the Mysterio and Hardy wins both failed for similar reasons. These are two guys that I like a lot when they are booked correctly. Mysterio’s previous feud with Jericho showed how entertaining Mysterio matches can be when his relatively small scale moves are not considered uncounterable and uber-powerful. Hardy suffers from this same phenomenon, we are supposed to believe that his rather run of the mill finishers are supposed to be something special. I would love to see a wrestler simply not have finishers, but that is not the way Hardy and Mysterio have been presented. I simply cannot believe that the 619 or the Swanton Bomb would really do any damage to most of their opponents. I enjoy all the unorthodox pushes coming out of Smackdown and hope they keep it up. But if Jeff Hardy is going get a Main Event push, he is useless to me unless he does the extreme stuff we are used to seeing from him.

RAW 07/27/09
This was one of the technically better RAW shows than I have seen in a long time. There was good wrestling, good production besides another Lillian Garcia slip, and a good guest host in Shaq. The only problem I had with the show is the general way the WWE handles these Beat The Clock matches. They qualify 5 men for the #1 Contender but they ignore their opponents. For the matches to be logically consistent, they need to qualify all 10 men involved. After all, Evan Bourne really beat the clock the Monday night when he pinned Jack Swagger and should be the #1 Contender. I thought that Legacy is finally congealing as a real faction and that the HHH/Cody Rhodes match was a great display of classical mat wrestling for the most part. Cody attacking the same knee of HHH was reminiscent of his father’s time and I thought it was a great change from the norm today. For the most part, I really watched the Beat the Clock challenge closely and would only have changed the result slightly. Even up until the end, I was hoping that MArk henry would make it all the way to the end and face Orton at Survivor Series.

ECW 07/28/09
I thought ECW put in a really strong performance tonight. I like the mix of veterans on the show to help mentor and train all the young talent they bring up. I think this is the best mix they have yet and the formula is showing results on other shows where Evan Bourne, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, and CM Punk are all doing great in the spotlight. I think I am falling in love with the General Manager Tiffany, she is so f-ing cute. Anyway, no Abraham Washington Show, big plus. Unfortunately, I think they spoiled yet another black-on-black feud featuring Shelton Benjamin, so that will keep him away from yet another title run. All the new guys, Sheamus, Tyler Reks, and Yoshi Tatsu are doing good so far. But watch for the Champ, Captain Charisma. He is awesome.