A Pandora's Box

Coffee Table Thoughts 12: A Pandora’s Box?

No idea what I am going to talk about in this column. I haven’t catched a lot of wrestling lately and therefore am a bit scarce of the topics. Hence, I will be just moving from here to there without any structural base.

Open Fight Night

The first episode of TNA Impact Wrestling’s Open Fight Night came and went. According to Scott Steiner, this is a waste of an idea and a lot of the time was wasted on the Indy wrestler who wasn’t going to amount anything in this business.

I don’t think it is going to be a game changing concept or anything like that but it does have a chance of providing a must see television programming once every month and not only that but it can reignite an entire company through continuous correct steps, which do not include attitude/NWO era-ish booking psychology!

Here are my thoughts on three particular matters related to the Pandora’s Box that is Open Fight Night:

Indy Wrestler

In the first episode of the Open Fight Night, out of all the various match ups that occurred, three were the most important. First of those was definitely the topic I just mentioned above, the Indy Wrestler.

The Indy Wrestler named Alex Silva was given an opportunity to earn a TNA Contract. This is an opportunity that most of the wrestlers wait their (wrestling) lifetime for. His chance was in the form of a match against former TNA Television Champion Robbie E. The match was good, not too long but he got an opportunity to showcase his abilities which he very well did.

I was first of the impression that his success or failure in the ring is going to determine whether or not he would get a TNA Contract. That, however, was not the case. It was instead going to be decided by three judges which were shown in the next episode. Kayfabe-wise it makes sense not to decide his future on the basis of win/loss because he is a rookie and rookies are expected to lose.

Many a people disliked the whole presentation in the ring on the next episode of the Impact Wrestling and claimed it was just a poor imitation of American Idol and other such reality shows. I, myself didn’t enjoy his promo the next night and the whole set up did seem phony a bit. But I will tell you what I liked. I liked how Hulk Hogan put over Ric Flair big time and entrusted him with the responsibility of selecting future stars for the company. Al Snow is a composed character and I liked his involvement throughout the Open Fight Night episode and also on the next episode. He makes a good judge. Ric Flair played his part pretty well and if there are to be three judges, one asshole is indeed required and he did a very good job of being one. And the third judge, Bruce Pitchard gives a different edge to the whole concept of Gut-Check because he is an off television, business side of contributor to the industry unlike the other two judges. It’s like a Director is selecting an actor.

As I said earlier, I was not that impressed with this guy but I won’t say I didn’t like him. Dude has obviously got a lot of potential and I would like to see how he (and his career) progresses over the years. And no, that does not include a World Championship reign in next two years.

One thing that I hoped they would do and they did not was to reject the participant. It’s a very simple logic, really. If anyone and everyone who enters the Gut Check to showcase his talents get selected by the judges, it devalues the whole concept. You need to have some losers in there. And by losers, I don’t mean jobbers. I mean those talents that do show some promise and yet somehow fail to make a nice impression on the judges and lose out. If you make this a little tougher, its importance will be felt. And I hope they do go that route more often because otherwise it will move the audience away from this show.

Television Championship

I was not aware of the fact that since its inception many many years ago, Television Championship was meant to be defended on every television tapings. But alas, here we are and the rule that I was not aware of has been reinstated again!

This particular match does not have as much speciality to it as compared to other matches because it will happen at every TNA Impact show and hence it is not exclusive for Open Fight Night. Some might feel that regular defending will make the title uninteresting due to repetitiveness. I don’t disagree with that statement totally and I do believe there will be some rough patches in the Television Championship saga. But I really don’t think that this will lead to a too long bad time in this particular division.

Boredom or disinterest will arise when for some time, only one person or two people are getting the chance at the title. And we are kind of facing the same problem right now when every time the title is defended against either of the Robbies or a combination of them both. But that much repetitiveness is necessary for the storyline to develop between Devon and Robbies.

This simple rule will ensure that there is at least some sort of storyline being focused on the television championship. I would be interested in finding out which are the wrestlers who can emerge as worthy contenders for the Television Championship. The fact that this championship will be defended every week makes the title reign that much more prestigious and meaningful. This is because now the title reign will not be about number of days but about number of days as well as number of defences!

Tag Team Championship

Let me say this, for one night, and for one night only, they treated their tag team champions like the bestest champions in the company. For one night, the booking and the hype were picture perfect. For one night, I liked Hulk Hogan’s multi thousand appearances!

The show began with Hogan considering which champion apart from the television champion should defend their titles on the Open Fight Night. Everyone was on their toes. Hogan played up well and it almost certainly looked like he was going to zero in on the TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bobby Roode. But no! He decided to go with the tag team champions instead.

Every team he interviewed was put over huge by Hogan. Not only that, he actually gave each team a reason, a chance to show why they should be chosen as number 1 contenders and why the other teams should not be considered for this.

Sure there was an eye-sore of a team of EY and ODB. They are an anomaly and a slap in the face of every single tag team that is out there and yes I even include any team in which Orlando Jordon is a partner. But they did what they do best and that is to provide some comedic relief. I legit laughed out loud when EY offered ODB to Hogan for one night and claimed it was her idea!

And I know the final team chosen was less for emphasising the importance of the tag team division and more for advancing their own storyline, but you need to look at the bigger picture.

Recently I had seen an interview of Paul Heyman circa 2010-ish where he was being asked about what was right and what was wrong about TNA product. He said they were concentrating on the wrong guys. He spoke about one particular event, I cannot remember which event he was referring to, but the gist of it all was that there was a very important match that took place between Beer Money and Motor City Machineguns. He said why was the match placed in the middle of the card? Why should you not put the match at the end of the card? Why shouldn’t you use your entire two hours showcasing to the world how important this match is by showing past footages throughout the show in many small skids? He said that is how a main event should be hyped.

And boy, did they do just that! Every skid featuring Hogan and the tag team title contenders was hyping for the main event (not exactly, but still nothing less than that). And I was enjoying all of it. And you know what’s more interesting? It was tag team championships on the first episode of Open Fight Night, it could be X-Division Championship some other day, it could be Knock-Out Championship some day, it could be Television Championship one day (unlikely) and it could even be World Heavyweight Championship some day. We are worrying about the state of X-Division due to over popularity of the X Division Champion Austin Aries, but in reality, it does not need more than a day to build some feud and build some future feuds! Open Fight Night will do it for you!

And thus, due to above reasons, I am excited about this concept of Open Fight Night and will look forward to the next episode!

I have a lot to talk yet but do not have enough time, so see you next time!