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TNAStars.com Goes Live Over the Weekend!

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Over the weekend I activated a pet project of mine: TNAStars.com. I’m a wrestling fan and have been since I was a little kid watching Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior go at it at WrestleMania VI. However, in recent years I’ve really come to dislike the product that World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) puts out there. In my view, no matter what happens and no matter what year it is, there are certain people who will always either be the champion of the organization or at least on the top of the card.

Because I was disenfranchised by WWE, I began watching Total Nonstop Action (TNA) which is based out of Orlando and Nashville. It’s pretty entertaining, though the writing seems to be questionable at times. This is the same TNA that Hulk Hogan recently announced he would be working for as a management consultant (in fact, he makes his debut tonight).

Anyway, I began watching TNA a few years ago and at some point during the summer of 2008 I began working on a TNA-only wrestling website. Many of you know that I began my foray into the wrestling website world with a personal website called The Balrog’s Lair, which eventually morphed into TBLWrestling.com. That website is more like a wrestling supersite with information dating back over a decade. I intended for TNAStars.com to be a different type of site – one that has news, rumors, results, and opinions, but also one that has profiles of wrestlers from the promotion. I didn’t quite accomplish my goal to have a bunch of profiles of the wrestlers on TNAStars.com, but I did manage to put together what I think is a pretty bad ass design for a small wrestling website.

Anyway, this pet project of mine is now live so if you have any interest in learning some more about TNA Wrestling, then head over to TNAStars.com and enjoy!

Hulk Hogan Signs With TNA Wrestling

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With all of the hoopla surrounding the New Jersey election for Governor, I did not have an opportunity to cover a story that is big news for wrestling fans like myself. If you haven’t heard yet, Hulk Hogan – the most iconic name in the history of professional wrestling – has signed a contract with Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling. I own a few wrestling sites that covered this story and you can read some of that coverage by clicking on these links.

As a wrestling fan, I’m excited for this news. I stopped watching World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programming around two or three years ago. Honestly, it got to a point where Triple H was winning every single feud that he was in and where he and his wife were trying to write him into some mythical figure week in and week out. I couldn’t take watching the utter bastardization of the sports entertainment industry, so I stopped watching. Hey, there are a lot of ways for people to express their support or dissatisfaction with a company or product. With sports entertainment, I decided to vote with my dollars and my leisure hours by taking them away from WWE and giving them to TNA.

That said, it hasn’t been an easy ride as a fan of TNA wrestling. There is a strong argument to be made that these guys have spent the last few years blowing their opportunity to be the clear alternative to WWE programming. For most of the last few years, there was no way that TNA could compete with WWE on a global level. Today, even with signing Hulk Hogan, I think that fact remains. However, bringing in Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff (more on him in a minute) gives TNA a real chance to compete with WWE domestically and, specifically, on the all-important cable television medium. As a fan of TNA, I hope that they don’t blow this gigantic opportunity.

Now to Eric Bischoff. When news broke last week that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff had signed contracts to partner with TNA, most of the people that I talked to were saying that Hogan is too out of shape and getting up there in age to make an impression on TNA. Well, that’s true. But if you ask me, the real value of this transaction is Eric Bischoff. Forget about the fact that he has connections in the entertainment industry through Bischoff Hervey Productions. And you can even forget about the vast connections that Bischoff brings as the former President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW). What Bischoff brings to the table is a unique view on the wrestling business that is not only proven to be successful, but it is proven to be profitable.

The real value of this deal is Eric Bischoff’s brain with Hulk Hogan’s instant mainstream credibility. The only misstep that I’ve seen so far in this whole thing is the fact that while Hogan was on almost every major media outlet promoting his new book last week, he wasn’t wearing any TNA merchandise. I know that this announcement was a bit last minute and that TNA doesn’t even have a marketing plan built around Hulk Hogan yet, but it would have been nice for the company’s fortunes if Hogan was wearing some red and yellow themed TNA merchandise, you know?

However, that’s only a minor hiccup. Hogan was sure to talk about TNA in almost every interview and he talked about how he has a partnership with them and that he may or may not get back into the ring. In these interviews, he was very realistic about his body and how it has broken down over the years. That’s a good sign for Hogan who, as his new book details, has been battling some mental demons lately.

Anyway, the word is that Hulk Hogan will be featured on TNA Impact on Spike tonight, so if you get a chance be sure to watch the show!

DVD Review: Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen

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The other day I went out and bought WWE’s new DVD set, Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen. I normally don’t buy these things when they come out because you can generally get them in the $5 or $10 bin in a year and a half or so, but this one was intriguing. I wanted to see how they would handle the creation of the Four Horsemen up through the final incarnation that was a disaster in WCW (though, oddly enough, it had guys like Benoit and Malenko involved).

After watching the DVD, one of the things that comes right out at you is the thoroughness of the sit-down interviews. All of the Horsemen except Steve McMichael, Lex Luger, Sid Vicious, Sting, and Ole Anderson are interviewed during the DVD. That’s pretty amazing considering that these weren’t the main guys (except Ole, that is). You get to hear the story of the Horsemen right from Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Chris Benoit, JJ Dillon, and Dean Malenko. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that JJ Dillon’s interviews were exceptional. This man is a true wrestling proponent and someone that should find himself in the Hall of Fame soon. If not for his excellence as a manager, then at least for his dedication to the sport.

It would do no good to go over the minutia of the DVD here, but I will say that this is one of the more candid WWE DVDs that I’ve ever seen. Paul Roma is interviewed and he comes right out and said that he shouldn’t have been a Horsemen…which is funny only because Flair’s interview is interspersed with Roma’s in that Flair (and the rest of the Horsemen) were saying how Paul Roma was not a good fit for the group and that he was just the completely wrong person for the job. Then you have Roma’s take that the “idea” of the Horsemen was becoming an ego trip for Flair and Anderson and the gang – it’s a good bit of shoot-style video.

I will say that I didn’t like how much storylines played a part in the one-on-one interviews. It was weird – they would sometimes set up the next part of the DVD by talking about the storyline and then gradually move into the backstage/real life discussion. It was odd at times.

Eric Bischoff had a good, frank discussion about his lawsuit against Ric Flair and – to the DVD author’s credit – the Flair interviews against Bischoff are included either in the extras or as a part of the main story. You have to admire the passion that Flair showed in those interviews on NITRO where he looked like he wanted to rip Bischoff’s head off of his shoulders. Though most of us knew that it was real at the time, Flair tells us straight up in the DVD that he would have killed Bischoff if he had the chance on the night that he returned in Greenville.

All in all, this is a great look at the premier “gang” in professional wrestling. I suggest watching the DVD, though I’m unsure that you should purchase it. If you can rent it for a few bucks at Blockbuster or if you’re willing to wait until the price drops from $20 to $10, then go for it. You won’t be disappointed.

Book Review: Controversy Creates Cash

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Eric Bischoff is a guy that I’ve always been a fan of in the wrestling business. His brash, in-your-face, “up yours” style is one that I admire and one that I’ve employed successfully over the last decade of my life from college to the workplace to my small business to even my volunteer work! So naturally, when I heard that he had finally written his biography and focused it around business end of the wrestling industry, I knew that it was a book that I had to pick up and read.

And I’m glad that I did. This book reaffirms all of the things that I like about Eric Bischoff. He talks (in detail) about how he viewed the wrestling business in a completely different way than how the old veterans of the business viewed it. He calls wrestling the “purest form of marketing.” And you know what? I agree with him 100%. He’s right. Wrestling is as basic as it gets in terms of entertainment. Two wrestlers are in a ring and they have to sell a “product” or, in other words, their feud. If it works, they get the cheers of the audience; if it fails, they get the jeers.

The other thing that I really liked about this book was that Bischoff had a chance to put the record straight on many issues and he hits the internet “dirt sheets” pretty hard. Most of this criticism is deserved since his basic premise is that the dirt sheet writers were not just pro-WWE, rather they were anti-WCW and even more anti-Eric Bischoff. And why were they anti-Eric Bischoff? Well, for the same reason that many of the old school wrestlers were against him – he was an outsider to the industry and he took a much different approach to running a wrestling company than they were used to seeing.

And that’s a great way to sum up this book. It’s Eric Bischoff’s tale of being an outsider to the wrestling world and then, in a matter of only a few years, finding himself rising from an entrepreneurial third-string announcer to the head of the biggest wrestling company on the planet. Not many people liked his rise to power, but many of these same haters made a lot of money from his out-of-the-box ideas. Bischoff also tells the real story of the corporate suits who killed WCW. He pulls no punches when he talks about how guys like Vince Russo had no chance of helping WCW and how the people who were making decisions for AOL Time Warner were completely unrealistic in terms of the wrestling industry. It was nice to finally read this all from Bischoff’s point of view.

This was a man who brought professional television writers to the wrestling world to help stretch storylines over the course of two to three months (a practice now used heavily by WWE). This was a man who saved untold hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving WCW’s syndication to a sound stage in Florida (a practice now used by TNA). He was the first to go live week in and week out, he was the first to break the wrestling business down to its 4 core “wheels” of revenue, he was the first to shun the “inside” fans and dirt sheet writers (though not the last)…

Eric Bischoff has made a remarkable contribution to what we watch each week on RAW, Smackdown!, Impact!, and ECW. This just cannot be denied. A lot of what is out there on the internet about Eric Bischoff just isn’t true (even his birthday isn’t properly reported online). For the objective reader, this book finally puts a lot of the bullshit to a halt and gives Bischoff the credit he deserves for restructuring the wrestling industry.

Before I give my recommendation for the book, I have to say that the biggest problem I had with the book was the spelling and grammar errors. I don’t see how the publisher could have let this book go to print when there were punctuation errors, misspelled words all over the book, improper grammar used… Hell, they even labeled a picture of “Sensational Sherri” incorrectly as “Missy Hyatt!” That’s just basic stuff that made what should have been a nice, smooth read a pain in ass sometimes.

I highly recommend Controversy Creates Cash for the fan of professional wrestling. For those of you who aren’t wrestling fans, I wouldn’t bother with the book unless you’re one of these entrepreneurial types who looks at the world of business a little bit differently. You may enjoy this book for its look at the business side of professional wrestling.

DVD Review: The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior

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World Wrestling Entertainment named this DVD incorrectly. This is not the story of the Ultimate Warrior’s self-destruction, it’s a story of his absolute insanity. Now, I know that the Warrior is on the conservative speaking circuit (the low-budget conservative speaking circuit, that is) and that he maintains a freakish online presence with rambling, incoherent blog posts, but this DVD tells you the story of the way he completely neglected the push and the rub that he was getting in the wrestling business.

By far, my favorite part of the DVD was the story of how Andre the Giant almost knocked out the Warrior during a match. For those of you that don’t know, Andre the Giant was a legitimate “tough guy” wrestler who could easily smash anyone that was in the ring with him. He told the Warrior time and time again that he wanted to do a “spot” during the match, but that he wanted to do it his way. And after the Warrior did it his OWN way for two matches in a row, the Giant took matters into his own hands. In the third match, the Warrior came off the ropes looking to clothesline Andre and all Andre did was put his bowling ball-like fist out and smashed the Warrior right in the head.

The Warrior did the spot Andre’s way from that point on. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

The other thing that is really funny about this DVD is the way TNA’s Christian (a WWE wrestler at the time of the taping) and WWE’s Edge and Chris Jericho go over some of their favorite Ultimate Warrior promos. First of all, their memory of these promos is uncanny. And second – it is absolutely hilarious to hear them say things that make you think to yourself, “the Warrior would never say that,” only to have the tape of the Warrior saying it from almost two decades earlier.

I was glad that they went over the Warrior’s time in WCW because that’s what really sealed the deal on his tenure in professional wrestling. I was also glad that they covered the now deceased “Renegade” and how he was a cheap Warrior rip-off (though Bischoff claims otherwise). Looking back at Warrior’s time in WCW shows you just how crazy the guy was; his first promo upon debuting made little to no sense at all!

Hulk Hogan has a few good lines where he says that both he and Bischoff knew in the ring that night that the Warrior was an exhausted commodity.

For the wrestling fans who remember the Ultimate Warrior, I suggest seeing this DVD. It gets a little long in some places and thus it could easily be a half an hour shorter in length, but the story told about the Warrior’s maniacal ways in the wrestling world is worth the time watching this DVD. For those of you who are NOT wrestling fans – don’t bother seeing this one as it will probably make little sense to you.