BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
“Worst Case Scenario” is a new take on the concept of “fantasy booking”. For years professional wrestling fans would spend endless hours of thinking up the coolest things that could happen. Why waste the energy? This only leads to high expectations. “Worst Case Scenario” flips that. Instead of looking through rose colored glasses, let’s take a bi-weekly look at the worst possible scenarios in professional wrestling. I’m not going to be malicious or anything too mean, but I will not refrain from letting my brain come up with the worst possible shit I can. Sadly, it seems the writers and producers of mainstream TV wrestling and the mainstream iPPV level indies are doing the same thing but charging us for it. And now…
“TNA’s New Division!”
TNA has always tried to push the envelope. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and sometimes it’s at least somewhat interesting, but rarely every entertaining and worth the time. Regardless they’ve found a small fan base to follow them and they’ll get the casual wrestling fans stepping in here and there out of curiosity and basically just because it’s wrestling. Some random “innovations” include the “King of the Mountain” match, that weird round robin thing they did for like a year, and Women’s Tag Team Titles. They’ve done PLENTY more and I’m sure some of it was cool. I’ve just not seen it, read about it, or heard about it.
TNA is at that point where when they do something crazy it’s not a big deal. They’ve “jumped the shark” so much that I’m pretty sure they’re miles past the water. Moving forward anything good is basically a mirage. Aces and Eights? I loved The Dudleys as much as anyone, but the second largest company in the US is being fronted by a guy named “Bully Ray”. I’m happy for him and the dude totally deserves it, but I wonder if it’ll result in any real company growth. Will ratings go up? PPV buys? Merch? Anything? If so, awesome.
TNA has put a new twist on their X-Division. It’s something different at least. I’m pretty sure I know the next “new division” for TNA and that is the MMA Division. Yep, let’s just admit that a good chunk of MMA is all a work. TNA seems to cling on to MMA as much as they can. Spike TV had them paired up with UFC and it worked kind of nicely. There was cross promotion and Kurt Angle’s insane “I’m gunna fight in MMA!” campaign at least got people talking. If people are talking, TNA knows. If something is popular, it almost feels like TNA goes out of their way to put a stupid spin on it.
So let’s imagine this “MMA-Division” in TNA. OBVIOUSLY we’d have “bad ass” guys like Kurt Angle, Joe, and others be all about it. They’d be able to go in there, do all their grappling and then at the end work the finish. There is NO WAY they could do it legit without egos getting screwed up and animosity spreading over to the “normal wrestling” portion. This opens up a lot of doors though. Bobby Lashley and Batista are two dudes who tried to get into MMA on a big level, but didn’t. This would be a reasonable enough compromise for a lot of the border-line MMA/pro wrestling guys.
But this is TNA. As interesting as this COULD be (it’s not), they’d surely screw it up. You know that somehow and someway Hulk Hogan or Sting would have that belt. Imagine Sting locking on the Scorpion Death Lock on Kimbo Slice to win the MMA Division Title.
MMA and Joker paint… THIS IS WRESTLING!
|
