JBL's been calling Miz the Red Rooster for months now, and I loved the first hour of Smackdown. The second hour was mostly boring outside of the commentary and Helms' awesome suit. I'm excited about the TNA game FINALLY being shown, but I doubt I'll sit through the whole awards show to watch it.
Lance Storm did a Figure 4 Daily show today and lambasted Impact for not featuring enough wrestling on it. He also stated that Christian is frustrated because they put PPV-level matches on free TV, and that they won't increase their PPV buys until they create compelling TV. Bryan gets on TNA's case for wasting time on VKM skits when it won't build to VKM-DX matches, and that time could be used for something that'll actually be on the show. Bryan then says that if they're using Impact as a promotional vehicle for the PPV, with the idea that the PPV will have more action, how is just having 3 minute matches supposed to sell people on the shows? Lance said that doing the All-star match was a waste since it should have felt like a big deal, and instead they just delivered a five minute angle without any substance or body.
Bryan cites UFC as a recent success with a one hour show, since they made great use of it, and were able to get far more people to buy their PPVs based on these shows than TNA has been. Lance Storm was also angered by the Serotonin videos, since they were already on TV, and beaten up, and why should anyone care about them? Bryan brought up a reader stating "why was BG in the theater when the movie wasn't even playing?", and Bryan said that wasn't even on his list of things wrong with the show.
Lance says that Pillman was an inspiration to him since Pillman was in WCW doing what he (Lance) wanted to do. He praised the DVD's biography portion, and mentioned that it was obvious they just used Animal (and guys like him who weren't the best choices to interview) simply so they could throw them some extra royalty money. So if you're wondering why Lombardi shows up on all of them, there ya go.
Lombardi is the man in charge of assembling the roster of guys to interview, and he then tells a funny (and somewhat sad) story of Brawler going up to him while he was assembling the list for the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD and Lance asking him "So, am I on the list?" and Lombardi shooting back "No, were you there?". Lance had to go through a bunch of hoops to even get on the documentary, and he never saw a dime from it. He brought up that Jericho was on the DVD despite only having a handful of matches there, while he was there for two and a half years and was even assistant booker, and was basically excluded from it. He said this kind of thing was fairly common, and cites Dave Lagana fixing up the cage match set, which was originally handled by a guy who was just randomly putting cage matches on it without being a fan, so he went through with him and chose historic bouts that actually meant something to wrestling history. Lance then says "You look through the history of steel cages matches and you see Bret Hart vs. Isaac Yankem and go "why?" as an example of one of the clueless guy's picks for the set. Lance says that it's fairly sad that the DVDs tend to be assembled by guys who really shouldn't be doing that.
They spent some time blasting the Bischoff book, and Lance says that Bret and Jericho's books will be out next year. He calls Helms the best worker in WWE today since his work is always enjoyable to Lance. Bryan picked Regal as the best worker in the company. Bryan asks him if he could go onto a spaceship, what match would he bring with him, and Lance says that he thought he would ask who he would put on it, and he would've sent Russo, and only if it was a one-way trip. He said that he'd pick his match with Edge at Summerslam '01, since it was the biggest one-on-one match of his career.
Paul Heyman returns as a vampire!
ING LUCHA! NOT EVEN LUCHA GUYS DO THAT SHIT!". On the EY-Traci bikini contest - "WHERE'S MY CREDIT CARD?! I'VE GOTTA BUY THIS PPV!". "They made a flag match for the PPV, and since it's Russo, there are now POLES INVOLVED!". On the Sting save of Abyss - "Don West said this is just a glimpse of what you'll see at the Pay-Per-View. Again, why would I want to see more? This wasn't any good. It was short, and it was bullshit. Why would I want to pay to see more shit?". The audio Impact reviews are worth the $7 a month subscription fee.
