[tips trilby] M’females.
Chapter Four of the NWA TNA story featured a NASCAR driver defeating one of the company’s top stars, the Tag Team Champions deciding to break up and feud after one title defense, and a segment about how cousin-kissing hillbillies know not to put actual human shit in their mouths before kissing their cousin. They say the action is “total” and “nonstop,” and I guess it’s our fault for not asking what kind of action they meant.
Chapter five manages to crank that up to 11 with an episode Jerry Jarrett described in one of his books as having “too much profanity and too much sexual content.” Just let that sink in for a minute. So far we’ve seen a lap dance from a gangbang queen, a tag team of nude wrestling penises and a pair of stereotypical rednecks that refuse to wrestle gay people but aggressively French their own cousin and this is the episode that takes it too far.
If you’d like to keep up with these columns as they go, be sure to check out the NWA TNA Wrestling: The Asylum Years tag. Again, I’d give you a direct link to the shows but the Global Wrestling Network redirects everything to their main page, because they really want you to watch Impact before it’s gone.
And now, chapter five of the TNA Wrestling story for July 17, 2002.
This Is The One Where The Dwarf Masturbates In A Trash Can
We’ve finally reached the defining terrible moment from the early days of NWA TNA: Puppet the Psycho Dwarf suffering from PMS — “Pissed Midget Syndrome” — and furiously beating off in the trash. I wish I could explain to you why, or the sexual Clark Kent/phone booth situation TNA suggests dwarves have with garbage cans, but I can’t. He promises to wrap his “six-inch pythons” around the neck of “Meatball,” the “world’s largest midget,” and offers to show Goldy Locks his “cobra.” I keep putting quotation marks around stuff to make it easier to read, but I don’t think it’s working. As she’s leaving she runs into the Dupps, who stop their incestuous game of spin the bottle (not a joke) to tell Goldy she’s got “pretty lips.” And they don’t mean the lips on her face. Also not a joke!
One of the most fascinating early decisions from TNA was Goldy Locks. Every character she meets or tries to talk to, good or bad, responds to her the same way. She’ll be like, “hey Jeff Jarrett, what do you think about your match coming up,” and he’ll just waggle his dick at her and scream SUCK DEEZ NUTS BITCHTARDDDD in her face. Then she’ll go up to a good guy, like Ken Shamrock, and get the exact same treatment. She’ll have four or five interviews on the show, and every one of them is, “YOU’RE A BITCH, GIVE ME A BLOW-JAY.” She could try to interview special guest Mother Teresa and Teresa would’ve popped a reverse V and hopped away crotch-chopping.
In case you’re wondering, Bill Dauterive as Santa Claus here is Meatball, apparently a more giant midget than even Dewey Cox. He’s fat, you see, so he can’t stop eating. Mike Tenay talks about how he hasn’t eaten all day because Meatball cleared out catering, and there’s a grocery cart full of food near the ramp so he can eat while he wrestles.
Amazingly enough, “dwarf who can’t stop masturbating” and “midget who can’t stop eating” are only 2 and 3 on the list of worst things TNA does with the little people in this episode, as this is also the one where Teo (the “hardcore midget”) sexually assaults one of the cage dancers and tries to rip off her bra against her will. The announce team is like, “YEAH, WAY TO GO, LITTLE GUY.”
Join us two weeks from now when one of them pulls a gun in the ring, and four shows from now when they’re literally wrestling in the toilet.
Jeff Jarrett Has Been Booked In A Number One Contender Ladder Match But Is Being Thrown Out Of The Building Before It And You Won’t Believe What Happens Next
The main story for the first five episodes of NWA TNA (I guess) has been Jeff Jarrett, a man who can’t stop explaining how much TNA and the National Wrestling Alliance suck, getting madder and madder that he can’t be the most important guy in NWA TNA. He’s feuding with basically everyone in and out of the company, from faces like Ken Shamrock to heels like The Disciples of the New Church to front office executives and legends to entire football teams. And Toby Keith. Imagine if Stone Cold Steve Austin looked and acted like Michael Douglas from Falling Down.
At the beginning of the show, we find out that Jarrett and Scott Hall are brawling backstage. Hall’s insistence on wearing t-shirts for local elementary schools during this time period is super funny to me for some reason, but yeah, no, the brawl gets Jarrett thrown out of the building by Bill Behrens. He stands outside in the rain screaming at security for like an hour, and nobody’s like, “we should remove him from the building slightly farther out, at least into the parking lot.” The idea I guess is that Jarrett was supposed to be in the number one contender match, but someone (or no one) remembered he was supposed to be suspended and wrote him out with this bit at the last second.
With no one to face in the number one contender ladder match, Malice and the Disciples of the New Church get braggy and offer the match to anyone interested in letting Mal wash his hands “in the crimson life essence of another victim.” The best part of this is the announce team’s response of, “What??” “[deadpan] Blood.” The defining trait of a TNA announcer is over-explaining everything they think the world’s stupidest person couldn’t understand. Don West could say, “grass is green,” and Tenay would chime in with, “that’s right Don, and as you know, green is the COLOR YOU GET when you mix BLUE with YELLOW! Green definitely on display here tonight.”
Answering Malice’s challenge is SABU, who has (1) never appeared on TNA until this, and (2) wins the ladder match to become number one contender to the NWA Heavyweight Championship. SURE.
A motivated Sabu is always fun to watch, but it’s already the most TNA thing in the world to build up a faction of guys as your company’s top heels for five episodes by having them lose every match they’re in, put a star from another company over them in a number one contender match because he agreed to be on this episode, then have the lose faction beat up the star after the match anyway. And then the title change you’re presumably doing all this to build to never happens, and the title change happens because of an unrelated story you came up with the week before. AND THEN WE GO BACKSTAGE TO SEE MALICE MASTURBATING IN A TRASH CAN.
Not really, but I wouldn’t have been surprised. The highlight of this match for me is probably Malice going through a table feet first. Sabu’s victory sets up next week’s “ladder or submission” match with Ken Shamrock, which is wonderfully catering and specific. They should do K-Krush vs. Hermie Sadler in a “dance while wrestling or drive a car” match.
Later in the night, Scott Hall (who was not thrown out of the building, because reasons) faces Brian Christopher, who now demands to be called “Brian Lawler.” As a reminder, Lawler’s explanation for why he turned on Scott Hall was, “I hate my dad,” who is … not Scott Hall. They’re not even friends, really. Here, Lawler cuts a long-winded promo about all of his dad’s wives being younger than him and how he’s been treated like a child his entire life. He’s so into it that almost 7-foot tall Scott Hall is able to get in the ring and stand behind him making “TURN AROUND SO I CAN PUNCH YOU” gestures for like three minutes without being detected. Brother traded in his elementary school swag for a cloak of invisibility.
The match itself is everything you’d expect, complete with K-Krush running out to interfere but getting beaten up. Hall manages to take out the interference and Insider’s Edge Lawler for the win, all to set up a post-match bit where — you guessed it — the heels who lost beat up the face anyway. They choke Hall out with a belt until he’s being stretchered away for the second straight episode, which sets up — YOU GUESSED IT, GUYS — Jeff Jarrett returning to the arena “disguised” as a paramedic to attack a guy we just saw get attacked.
People start running out one-by-one and dying from Jarrett chair attacks (or gentle boots to the stomach) just to lie around in a circle and create the image. Next week’s show begins with Jarrett in the ring with a chair beating up everyone, Jarrett getting suspended, Jarrett responding to the suspension by hitting people with a chair, and then another “he got removed from the building WHOOPS SOMEHOW HE’S BACK IN” angle. And then 15 more years of Jeff Jarrett!
Hilarious Butt-sex As A Lead-In To A Lynching Angle
If it sounded like K-Krush wasn’t being humiliated enough as the most expendable guy in a 3-on-1 show-ending run-in, don’t worry, here he is experiencing the The Wheelbarrow, position two on the Norman Smiley Kama Sutra. If you missed last week’s column, position one was doggy.
We’ve already seen Marcus Bagwell drop the “Buff” gimmick and go home because he “lost to a couple of gay guys,” so it should be no surprise that K-Krush’s response to being comically buggered is to try to hang Norman Smiley to death.
To drive the point home, they have Norman Smiley’s wife show up and beg K-Krush not to murder her husband. Krush stops murdering Smiley long enough to try to murder his wife, and that’s finally enough for security to step in and stop things. And look, I’m not going to use 15-year old TNA pay-per-view write-ups to make any grander social points, but take a mental tally of how many times in the coming weeks this company consciously adds “BLACK MAN BEING HANGED” to their shows. And you thought the NASCAR and country music pandering was bad, holy shit.
Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger Tried To Explain To The Guy From Three Doors Down That THEY Actually Ruined Music First
There’s a lot of unnecessary cursing on early NWA TNA pay-per-views, but none as unnecessary as this Jerry Lynn promo, in which he becomes a one-man South Park episode trying to dress-down AJ Styles for letting Lynn choose him to be his championship-winning tag team partner, or whatever.
“You wanna know why I punked your ass out last week and left you laying like a bitch? While your mama was at home powdering your ass, i was busting mine in this ring! AJ Styles, who the hell are you? What have you done? You walk around like you’re king shit, but you ain’t shit! You ain’t shit til you’ve paid your DUES like I’VE DONE. I’ll be GOD DAMNED!”
If you’re wondering who wrote these promos, here’s a rare look backstage at the TNA creative process:
Nobody seems to know what they want from this angle. You put together impromptu tag team champions by letting Jerry Lynn pick his own partner, win the match, then get mad at the guy he picked for doing well. Now they’re feuding and attacking each other. Whenever Lynn says “STYLES IS A GREEN NOOB WHAT HAS HE EVER DONE,” the announce team is like, “uh, X-Division Champion, Tag Team Champion,” and then Lynn goes, “YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES” and the SAME announce team is like, “DAMN RIGHT!” Lynn screams at Styles until Styles agrees to stop showboating and play ball, and then Styles attacks Lynn from behind.
You know, as much as I complain about WWE not being able to book faces and heels, at least I generally understand who they WANT me to cheer for, whether I agree with it or not. Trying to find moral alignments in TNA is like spilling a septic tank in your yard and wondering which wad of turd will make your grass the greenest. And as we all know, green is the mixture of blue and yellow!
Smile Like You Meanie
In totally non-stop women’s action, Francine (who does not have a TNA contract) is supposed to have a match against Jasmin St. Claire (a non-wrestler who appeared on the show last week just to say she’d been watching the show). Before that can happen, Francine attacks Jasmin in the showers. Thankfully Jasmin was getting ready for her match in all-white, see-through sleepwear, so she shows up for her match in a completely see-through shirt.
The match still happens, with the hilarious image of Jasmin with full-on porno nip “selling” an attack to the ribs and hobbling to the ring while sexy saxophone music plays. Francine attacks her with a belt until Jasmin’s real life boyfriend, The Blue Meanie, shows up and hits a DDT on Francine.
Important things to note about Meanie here are (1) this is during that odd period when he’d lost a bunch of weight and looked like the Smurfs equivalent of Guy Fieri, and (2) this is, to my knowledge, his ONLY TNA APPEARANCE EVER. He gets invited to “Hardcore Justice” in 2010, TNA’s attempt at an ECW One Night Stand, but no shows and gets replaced by an Imposter Meanie.
The X-Division Is Breaking Up!
You know how TNA turned Brian Christopher heel like three episodes in, broke up and vanished The Johnsons at around the same time, and teamed up a team that wasn’t involved in the NWA Tag Team Championship tournament just to have them win it and break up? That long-term booking vision continues this week as The Flying Elvises, Jorge Estrada and Sonny Siaki, defeat Christopher Daniels and Elix Skipper but — get this — one of the Elvii is upset that the other one DID TOO WELL. So now they’re breaking up, because the worst thing you can do in NWA TNA is “perform well in a tag team match.”
With the Elvises already splitting, the Dupps show up and attack Estrada with wooden planks. Siaki walks out on his partner and refuses to help. Note that these are the Flying Elvises who teamed up to attack everyone after last week’s show because they weren’t featured players in the X-Division rankings match. I feel like almost every TNA angle in the first year could’ve been solved by an HR representative inviting everyone into an office one-by-one and asking, “what do you want from your career?”
As for the X-Division itself, the match that could’ve saved the show — AJ Styles vs. Low Ki — is hurt by (1) the weird booking decision to have the opening play like a “worked shoot,” only for it to arbitrarily turn back into DUELING CARTWHEELS or whatever, and (2) a fight (or something) happening in the crowd that takes 100% of the focus off the wrestlers. So it ends up being underwhelming at best, even with a Phoenix Splash countered into a Styles Clash, and all a set-up for Jerry Lynn to attack Styles again. Again.
Next Week, In Chapter Six …
The Hot Shots debut TNA’s latest THESE GUYS HAVE BIG DICKS gimmick, another black man gets hanged, and Disco Inferno debuts with his own talk show segment. At least nobody’s jacking it in the garbage.
