The John Report Wrestling Blog

Welcome back Money-acs to the TNA Impact Review. It is now September, football is in the air and it’s time for some pennant race baseball. The only thing that’s missing is a quality wrestling show, something this week has lacked thus far. Let’s see if TNA can turn that around.

Today’s episode of TNA Impact is titled “10.10.10”, whatever the hell that means.

The show kicks off with Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff making their way down to the ring. They are with some smoking hot woman named Miss Tesmacher (sp?). I’ve heard of her but never seen her until now, she’s leave your wife and kids hot, wow. Hogan wants to call out each of the semi-finalists in the TNA Championship Tournament. Mike Tenay reminds us that later tonight Kurt Angle and Jeff Hardy will team up to take of The Pope and Mr. Anderson. The teammates will be squaring off against each other in semi-final matches this Sunday at No Surrender. Once they’re all in the ring Hogan tells them whoever wins the TNA Championship needs to raise the bar because they can’t have what happened to RVD happen again. Bischoff gets a chance to speak and says the tag team match for tonight is “controversial” but it’s done to see which of the four are worthy of being champion. Through all of this, Abyss makes his way ringside with Janice in hand. Abyss gets in the ring and says the “they” he refers to is neither EV 2.0 nor Fortune. He says they are ready for their revelation and have even picked a date 10/10/10, guess that’s where tonight’s title comes from. Abyss says on 10/10/10 they are going to take over TNA and turn it upside down and they will get rid of Ditsy, oops, I mean Dixie Carter, Hogan and Bischoff. He points to The Pope and Hardy and says “and you.” Tenay says they have to take a commercial and Hardy punches Abyss as we go to commercial. What the hell is this whole “they” thing? It’s probably another one of TNA’s feeble attempts to create buzz.

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Note from John: When NXT season 3 starts next week we won’t have Dr. Money reviewing it. He’s moved on and will be writing about TNA Impact weekly. What we will do is have three people tryout. They all submit reviews after the first show, I will post them all in one post and then you can vote on what you like best. One vote per person. Most votes wins. One of the three guys wrote a preview of NXT3, so I figured I should post it as an introductory for those of you (like me) that don’t know much about the women on this show. Also if you are looking for Andrew Johnson today he wasn’t able to write this week. Should be back next week. Take it away, The Freelance Texan.

NXT Season 3 Preview by The Freelance Texan

I am the Freelance Texan and I’m not ashamed to admit that I am an NXT viewer. As much as the internet complains about how awful the show is and how it doesn’t feature wrestling and doesn’t make any damn sense, I have to defend NXT somewhat. Yes, all those arguments are valid, but there is a certain charm to the show. The chaos of the format leads to an unpredictability that is somewhat refreshing in the staleness that can be the WWE. Obviously the matches are scripted, but how much do the rookies know about what is going to happen? Are they warned about the challenges? Do they have any idea what promos they’re going to have to do? Half the fun of the show is seeing these poor guys jump through the WWE’s hoops and finding out whether or not they sink or swim. Sometimes you get Botchamania moments like Gabriel’s “Flowers Promo” or anything Eli Cottonwood did. Other times you get Wade Barrett turning a promo on wind into an impressive declaration that he’s headed for the main event, and you believe him!

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Marc “Fozzie Bear” Berman: Welcome to The Longest Running Episodic Commentfest Ever! It’s Record Breaking! This week’s Commentfest was done by Matt “Cat Boy” Davis, as I have had a lot of running around to do the last couple of days. That being said, take it away Matt:

NOW HIT IT MICHAEL BUFFER: “FOR THE THOUSANDS IN ATTENDANCE AND THE MILLIONS WATCHING AROUND THE WORLD LEEEEETTTTTTTS GET READY TO COMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

With Skip’s broken ankle, expect SERIOUS VOICES~!

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This is the 6th TJR podcast recorded on Tuesday August 31st. The topics this week include a discussion on Raw, a rundown on all the guys from NXT season 2 and a discussion of the WWE’s plan to eliminate some of the title belts so that they have four total (WWE , IC, Tag, Womens). Of course we also answered questions like usual. The other thing is we recorded this while the NXT season 2 finale was going on so there are a lot of reactions to what we saw on there. For example, our reaction when the Bellas were announced as trainers we both flipped out a bit. We went 61 minutes in runtime this time.

Quote of the show comes on at about the 29:30 as we encourage Kaval to do things during his NXT celebration. We make a great commentary team. Or terrible. Up to you to decide.

To listen to it click on the player below, save the MP3 file or listen on iTunes.

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Welcome to the final edition of the Vintage WWE NXT Review, I am of course Doctor Money. Tonight is the Season 2 NXT Finale. I just got home from the Yankee game and coincidently, I went to a Yankee game the night of the Season 1 Finale. Odd, no?  Anyway, it’s down to Kaval, Alex Riley and Michael McGillicutty. Who is going to be WWE’s next breakout star? Read on to find out.

The show kicks off with Ashley Valence-Money introducing the WWE Pros. If you want to know where she’s been the past couple of weeks I’ve been asking her to call out sick because I didn’t want Zack Ryder to steal her from me, but then I realized I’m from Jersey and he’s not so automatically that makes me cooler. Woo, woo, woo, you know it. The Pros whose Rookies have been eliminated sit at the top of the ramp and the rest come to the ring with their Rookies. The Rookies that were eliminated are sitting in the front row. Matt “The Walking Tampon” Striker says there will be a double elimination tonight. No shit genius. There’s only supposed to be one winner so any way you slice it two guys are going to be eliminated. Then as if it’s some bombshell, Striker says the three remaining Rookies will face each other in a triple threat match. Um, I knew that already, it’s the same way you booked the Season 1 Finale. Although, I should be shocked WWE actually showed consistency in booking this show. Striker says the match is next and The Miz gets in Kaval’s face and Kaval shoves him and then Kofi Kingston clotheslines Miz out of the ring.

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The Raw Deal was live tonight at thejohnreport.net. In promoting the event WWE says this: “A feat so monumental it’s never been done before.” The 900th episode. I guess you could say the same about many of them. I just don’t know what is so record breaking about 900 other than the fact that it’s an even number.

Live from Boston, Massachusetts this is the Raw Deal…

They showed a lot of clips of Raw’s history over the last 17 years. Hey, the HHH return in 2002 is in there. So is Jericho’s debut. The “record breaking” thing confuses me. It is the longest running weekly episodic show. Of course shows like Meet The Press and 60 Minutes have been on longer, but they are not episodic. Raw is. So I don’t hate the claim, but the whole “record breaking” is weird. At least it should be a good crowd in Boston, which is one of the best cities that WWE visits.

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The Feed

Luna Vachon and Tony Bourne pass away

I don’t know much about Tony Bourne, I never saw him wrestle, but I did read this great article highlighting his career. Its a good read so check it out. Luna Vachon was found dead Friday morning at the age of 48. I don’t think she died of steroids or anything like that, but 48 years old is still too young to die. Its only been two days so not much information has been revealed to the public, but I really want to know how this happened. Although Luna never won any titles or main-evented any show, she was a hell of a performer. In fact, rumor has it that WWE was so interested in signing her that they hired a Private Investigator to find her because she was M.I.A. Eventually, they found her waiting tables at a restaurant and immediately took her on the road. Throughout her career, she managed wrestlers like Bam Bam Bigelow (whose contract she sold to Ted DiBiase) and Goldust who she repackaged as “The Artist formerly known as Goldust”. She also contended for the Women’s title in feuds with both Alundra Blayze and Sable. The latter eventually resulted in her release because of some backstage attitude. Although Luna wasn’t a top draw or anything like that, I think she is an important part of women’s wrestling in the WWE. I think it isn’t farfetched to say she should be a prime candidate for an induction in the 2011 Hall of Fame.

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Rating with WWE Superstars 08/26/10
By Nicholas A. LeVack

Happy Friday, everyone! Gosh, isn’t it great to wake up Friday morning and know that you have only one more day of work before the weekend? Then, once you get home from a grueling day of sneaking glimpses at goat porn between work on stat sheets for your overbearing manager with high cholesterol, you can sit down and unwind with your favorite weekly TJR article, Rating with Superstars, a column guaranteed by its writer, Nicholas A. LeVack (yours truly), to be posted on Friday without fail.

This infallible timing is maintained through my own rigorous dedication to your readership, for without you, I’d be only another meandering Internet creeper (such as yourselves), lethargically moving from goat porn website to goat porn website, entirely unmindful of time, relationships, and responsibilities.

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Welcome to the Smackdown recap. Before I get started, I just wanted to say how saddened I was on Friday to learn of the death of former WWE performer Luna Vachon, who passed away ate age 48. As I wrote on my Twitter all day Friday, Luna was very good as a heel valet as well as a damn good wrestler too although in the WWF in the 90s there wasn’t much women’s wrestling to speak of. She was legit scary, though. Her look was unique, she could take bumps and she knew how to throw a punch very well. The three women of the WWF that I grew up with are Elizabeth, Sherri and Luna. Now they’re all gone. I’m sure that somewhere Sherri and Luna are scaring the hell out of somebody while Liz is there looking from afar. It’s a sad business sometimes. That’s for sure. RIP Luna Vachon.

Taped from Fresno, CA let’s talk some Smackdown…

Kane d. Rey Mysterio (*1/2)
They worked hard for about 10 minutes here. It was a no DQ match with Rey selling the arm based off losing the match to Alberto Del Rio last week. In case you’re wondering that means Rey has to sell an arm injury from a week ago while Cena never has to sell anything even when he got beat up 8 on 1 when The Nexus first attacked him. He looked fine the week after. Basically it means Rey’s a weak little man while Cena’s a super man. But you already knew that. The no DQ meant they could use a chair for the finish, so Rey got a shot in on Kane’s back, but Kane was able to fight back and counter the springboard plancha into a chokeslam onto the chair for the win.

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Welcome back to the TNA Impact Review, I am the baddest man on The John Report, Doctor Money. If you don’t think I’m the baddest man on TJR, you’ll have to admit that I’m at least badder than Andrew Johnson. He’s going to get pissed at me for this, but I’m about to reveal his true identity right here. Now that we got that out of the way, earlier this evening Tommy Dreamer tweeted that there were two great wrestling matches on Impact tonight. I hope for his sake he’s right or else he’s getting an angry tweet from me later. Let’s get this started.

So apparently each Impact has a title, this one is called “Hogan’s Cavalry”. I think that’s kind of dumb, but whatever.

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