After a long week in court, there’s nothing like rambling on about the latest happenings in the wild and wacky world of professional wrestling.  Help me wind down from lawyer mode to smark mode as I ask a few questions of you, the intelligent wrestling fan.

CROSS EXAMINATION

1. Didn’t you feel more secure voting for Cyber Sunday, knowing that an independent auditor is supervising the voting?

2. Isn’t it cool how TNA is emulating the success of the Spirit Squad by jobbing out the Naturals?

3. Wouldn’t it have been more accurate if the four team match at Cyber Sunday was listed as a “Winner Gets Off of Heat” Match?

4. Any truth to the rumor that comedian Borat is being brought to the WWE to help repackage Muhammad Hassan?

5. With Vince Russo writing TNA, how long before we see a Jake Roberts/Sting Spin the Wheel/Make the Deal Match?

Pull the trigger on Joe/Angle I heard some interesting discussion that TNA is jumping the gun by running Joe vs. Angle at the next PPV (Genesis) and that they should be building the match up more.  Those people couldn’t be more wrong.  The last time I checked, TNA was trying to build itself up, not a national juggernaut with the luxury of taking its sweet time in promoting matches.  Joe/Angle is unquestionably the biggest match that TNA could put on and a lot of non-TNA fans are already taking notice.  Why wouldn’t TNA want to take advantage of the buzz surrounding Angle jumping to TNA and put him in a high profile match with one of the biggest prospects in professional wrestling?  With TNA moving to prime-time soon, they need to pull out all the big guns if they really want to take a chance at becoming successful.  Joe/Angle is their chance to bring in the casual fans, the ROH fans, and the fans who haven’t watched wrestling in a long time.  Keep in mind that TNA is not a company running with a large cash surplus and investors knocking down their doors.  They need to live by the old adage, Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. 

What night is Friday Night SmackDown! on? As a fan, I really try to keep up with the major shows but I have to admit that it’s a real difficulty for me to sit down and tune in to SmackDown! It’s not that SD doesn’t have some really good matches from time to time (the Pitbulls vs. Kendrick/London series was top of the line) but the show has totally exhausted its goodwill with me after literally years of bad booking and wrestling.  Like any wrestling fan, it takes an awful lot of awful to get me to stop watching wrestling because I know it’s only a matter of time before it gets better.  Unfortunately for SD, that never happened and I’ve reached the point of no return.  I still records SD but it’s a rare night when I’ll sit down and watch the show from start to finish on a Friday night.  I think this shows what happened to the large number of fans who stopped watching wrestling after WCW went out of business and the WWE became the only game in town.  At this point, the question isn’t what happened but how do we get these viewers back?  Is there any way to get these viewers back?  Short of a complete overhaul in the WWE, I think the only the industry is going to get these viewers back (as well as develop a new base of fans) is for a new product to capture the hearts and minds of fans. 

Still crazy after all these years: The other day I was talking with my brother about Jake “The Snake” Roberts (following his appearance at TNA’s Bound for Glory).  Inevitably, the discussion soon turned to “I can’t believe Jake is still alive”.  Over the past five years, there has been a lot of talk about the number of wrestlers who have died at a young age.  Given the many stories I’ve heard about wrestlers doing drugs, using steroids, and generally treating their bodies like shit; I think the real phenomenon isn’t that there have been so many deaths but that there are still so many wrestlers still alive.  Apparently, God not only looks out for fools and drunks but for wrestlers named Jake “The Snake” Roberts.

Chris Sabin has a cup of coffee with the X Division Championship:  After the AMAZING match at Bound for Glory between Senshi and Chris Sabin, I was looking forward to some rematches between Senshi and Sabin as well as some title defenses by Sabin against some of the many stars of the X Division.  Instead, TNA has decided to put the belt on A.J. Styles and it looks as though things are headed towards yet another Styles/Daniels series.  While these two guys always put on a classic, is there any reason why Styles needs the X Division belt?  Is there any reason why Sabin (as well as some of the other X Division stars like Jay Lethal, Petey Williams, and Alex Shelley) isn’t being pushed?  The worst part about this move is that the X Division has been painted as a secondary title and Styles’ title win has got to be seen as a step down (unless TNA makes a concerted effort to push the X Division belt).  Why can’t Styles compete in the main event?  Yeah, he’s no Toastmaster on the stick but his work more than makes up for his average mic skills. 

Getting back to Sabin, why did TNA put the belt on him if they were going to take it away so soon?  If TNA wanted to get the belt off of Senshi, they should have had Styles win the belt.  I don’t buy into the argument that Sabin lacks the charisma to hold the X title (a belt long ago established as being centered around guys who are all about the action in the ring)  so short of Sabin exposing himself to the fans at the Impact Zone, why did TNA do this?  TNA seems headed down the same road as the WWE in having all the talent in the world and not having a clue how to use it.

Only 50 Shopping Days Until Xmas If you’re a wrestling fan and you like wrestling DVD’s, you couldn’t have asked for a better year to be a fan.  Between TNA, ROH, and the WWE, there are so many DVD’s to ask for.  In the near future, I’ll be running a special DVD Holiday Grab Bag but for now, consider some of the recently released or pending titles:  Brian Pillman: Loose Cannon, Hulk Hogan: The Ultimate Anthology, Born to Controversy: The Rowdy Roddy Piper Story, The Spectacular Legacy of the AWA, The Best of the X Division Volume 2, Unstoppable: The Samoa Joe Story, Best of the Bloodiest Brawls Volume 1, and just about anything from ROH.  The cool thing is that both ROH and WWE are constantly running specials and you can get some great deals if your timing is right.