[Pun]

LINK

"The one thing about Vince Russo and Hulk Hogan is they never disappoint me. I was going into it hoping it would be a bad show because I wanted to prove the point that they can't grab their ass with both hands, but they by far and away exceeded my every expectation.

In five years, people will be looking back at January 4, 2010 as the night that the wrestling business finally fell in the toilet and led the way to change that will be meaningful. Because if anybody wants to buy a ticket to anything that TNA or WWE does ever again after seeing five hours of a bunch of old, gray-haired guys yelling at each other about shit that took place 15 years ago...I am god smacked.

If you look up the phrase buyer's remorse in the dictionary, there's a picture of Dixie Carter today. Even she, with her limited knowledge of anything related to professional wrestling, had to realize that they were dropping a turd on a plate in the middle of all those people."

[Fire-Babe]

he is a bitter old prick with a way with words though.

i gotta think that the whole thing just KILLED ROH's monday night ratings.

[Lucky]

I love Cornette. He's fucking insane and so entertaining.

The best part is if you go and watch his "Guest Booker" shoot video where he fantasy books the Invasion story. Its fucking terrible, worse than WWE's Invasion. The entire WM card is stuff like Hogan vs Dusty, Bischoff vs Vince, and Terry Funk vs Undertaker. Its not just a terrible card but its one entirely built upon gray haired relics of a gone error while the younger stars compete in some random battle royal to open the show.

[BC]

He has a point though. The only way WWE (& Monday, TNA) created excitement for their shows was to look decades plus in the past. Not a good sign about today's product.

[Lucky]

Well his final statement about Dixie is just plain idiotic. Unless he knows something we don't Dixie Carter is looking at the highest rating in TNA history, more exposure and buzz than they've ever had, and an experiment that not just exceeded Spike's stated expectations but which actually managed to swipe viewers from WWE. So Cornette acting like Monday was an unabashed failure for TNA is a hilarious joke and very clearly nothing more than his bitterness towards the company and parties. Unless he's hiding some great secret we don't know.

But while the "had to rely on people and stories from a decade ago" argument looks good at first glance it strikes me as pretty shallow. This is an industry rooted in history and WWF has been drawing on the past to push stories for years. And lets ignore that RAW didn't draw a bigger rating than last week so its not even an issue, but even so its not like it was 2 hours of Bret Hart. Kofi vs Orton, Sheamus vs Bourne, the US title mix, and Maryse/Miz all played a part of that show and got good reviews based on OO's comments. So what exactly is wrong with using stars from the past to draw people in to a product that is dominated by stars of the present? That's a sound business strategy used by all sorts of people. The goal should of course be for Bret to lure you in but for Kofi/Orton or Sheamus/Bourne to keep you interested. Then when Bret goes you stay for those guys. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But there's nothing inherently wrong with TNA using the nWo to draw your interest and hopefully get you to watch Wolfe/Dinero, Samoa Joe, or the Knockouts. There's nothing wrong with using Flair and Hogan to put AJ Styles over as a big deal. These are, on paper, sound business strategies. Of course the problem comes when and if they begin to dominate the storytelling (Main Event Mafia) and don't give room for the rest. Or if the "new" you have just isn't good enough to make the people who came for the "old" care.

But I really don't see the argument to say that WWE or TNA did anything wrong by putting the focus on Monday on what it was. Both companies had no buzz. Both companies used something people care about to create a buzz. That's smart business in my book. And they even managed to use ACTUAL wrestling characters and stories to do it rather than relying on Celebrity Guest Hosts or controversial football players like Pacman Jones or fake gay weddings or Jay Leno wrestling a PPV main event. Wrestling's got a long history of stunt booking to create a buzz and it WORKS, so for Cornette or anyone to get up in arms about Hogan and Bret being used to draw attention when the last 7 months has seen RAW using Al Sharpton, Nascar, and Shaquile O'Neal to do the same and TNA has drawn out Jenna Morasco, Toby Keith, and David Eckstein.

But Cornette would GLADLY use the past to promote stories if he thought it made sense. Like I said, he did an entire Invasion booking shoot where he made the case that in 2001 people didn't care about anyone under 40, they cared about Hogan, Dusty, Funk, Flair, the Road Warriors, and the stars of days gone by and THOSE were the guys you should book a story with dozens and dozens of young and talented wrestlers about. He's just screaming and yelling because Russo and Hogan are the pricks who drove him away and TNA are the pricks who let it happen so he wants them all to crash and burn in a firey mess.


This whole thing might fall apart for either company under the weight of egos, misplaced priorities, and an underwhelming current product. But I don't see the case for why in and of itself its a bad thing to use a story people care about to get their attention.