It's All About the Wrestling: Cutting Ties, Gimmicks and the Frankensteiner

I know that's a mouthful up there but I didn't have a catchy title for this little bit.

TNA has severed ties with the popular independent promotion Ring of Honor, as well as other indy promotions. Many are taken aback by the decision to sever the ties as many top name stars have wrestled on the indy circuit in the past. A scheduled return of Samoa Joe to ROH had to be canceled. While I understand the fans being upset, I also totally understand the business side of it, and TNA could not with any sense of growing their business allow their stars to continue to perform in ROH.

Ring of Honor recently announced that they were going to start PPV services as well as video on demand. Would Vince allow Triple H and HBK show up at an Impact PPV? Hell no. So why should TNA be expected to allow their stars to perform on a competing promotions PPV? They shouldn't. While we as fans want to be entertained and given the best possible product for our money, TNA, ROH and WWE are all still businesses out to take a piece of the pro-wrestling money pie.

Speaking of money, as some of you know I bought the Lockdown PPV. The whole PPV is a giant gimmick, every match takes place inside the six sides of steel, so why do we need to pile gimmicks on top of gimmicks? Electrified cage, blindfolds? Who needs this crap. Team 3D and LAX did not think the match was going to work and guess what? They were right. It might have worked in 1987 but not in 2007. So after an entire PPV filled with gimmicks we return to normal at the Sacrifice PPV right? Well not entirely. Sacrifice is going to feature not one, not two, but three triple threat matches (a triple threat of triple threat matches) as well as a Texas Death Match (whatever the hell that is).

One of those triple threat matches at Sacrifice will feature Scott Steiner and his new tag team partner Tomko. Since Steiner returned from his short hiatus I have been very impressed with his in ring work and partnered with Tomko he has actually strung together a few really good promos. Not only that but at the Lockdown PPV he busted out the Frankensteiner and he says its out of retirement. This turn of workmanship is a good thing for TNA and hopefully he will keep it up.

One last thing before I close out for the week. I only caught the last 10 or 11 minutes of Impact this week but what I saw (The Angle/Sting vs. Cage/Styles match) was very good. Cage and Styles work very well together and I still think that the plan is once Christian drops the belt to team the two of them together as a tag team and make a run at bolstering that division. Overall it was just good old school wrestling which is what TNA does best.