21 Years Ago In TNA #02 – Improvement On The Second Show (June 26th, 2002)

So last week, I revisited the very first NWA-TNA PPV and it was a thing that happened. The show may have opened with a recap of prior events, but I will not. You’ll just have to read my previously posted post from last week to catch yourselves up.

Anyway, we’re continuing onwards with the second-ever NWA-TNA weekly PPV, which you can watch on Youtube for free because Impact is such a loving company that’s willing to give stuff for free and hope it’s enough of a selling point to subscribe to their Impact Plus service. We’ll see if this, as well as the next three shows that are also available for us freeloaders, will do just that.

For the record, I have not seen this show in decades… as in, the last time I saw this show was when it first aired. So this is definitely going to be revisiting some forgotten realms… please don’t sue.

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WWF Backlash 2000

Well, Wrestlemania 2000 came and went. Triple H managed to become the first heel to walk out of the event as WWF Champion and the show as a whole wasn’t very good despite having some good stuff on it. We’re skipping that one because I already covered this one as part of my Ramblemania series and I’m saving the reboot for next year.

Fortunately, we have Backlash, which usually does a good job of being better than Mania if the 99 show was anything to go by. And besides, we got Rock vs. HHH for the title, with Stone Cold Steve Austin serving as a special enforcer. This will be the first time WWF audiences will get to see Stone Cold live since Survivor Series 99 – not counting the Halftime Heat appearance in made in January, which was a pre-taped interview with Jim Ross. This is, of course, following the crazy empty arena match between Rock and Mankind… and then there was no more Halftime Heat.

Anyway… enough padding. On with the show.

21 Years Ago In TNA: The First NWA-TNA PPV (June 19th, 2002)

Hello, kids.

This week, famed wrestling journalist Bryan Alvarez and his long-suffering co-host, Big Vinny V, will begin their revisiting the early days of NWA-TNA for some reason or another. And to celebrate the occasion, I will also revisit the early days of NWA-TNA… because the first five PPVs are available on Youtube at no cost for all to see. Yes, the first five weekly PPVs are made available for masses to watch and entice them to subscribe to their Impact Plus subscription service.

Indeed.

So I have already written about this show years ago. In fact, the great majority of this post is just a copy-and-paste of that old post (originally posted March 27th, 2016). I’ve rewatched the show and decided that the post as it was originally written still holds up for the most part, though I had changed a couple things around and even expanded on some stuff here and there, so don’t think you’re just getting a lazy copy-and-paste. You’re getting lazy additions to go along with it.

This is going to be a weakly weekly thing for about a month or so and we’ll see if I’m enticed enough to continue this journey onwards or if I decide to throw in the towel. At worst, the five freebies are all I touch. At best, I might keep going until “Oh shit! It’s Vince Russo!” is a thing and that’s when I’ll drop out. Unlike Bryan and Vinny, I ain’t suffering this shit for the long haul… but is it really as bad as I remember it or as others have claimed?

Well, let’s find out…

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The Current Situation

A bit of a quick update and some full disclosure regarding reviews…

June 19th will see one review uploaded. The rest of the reviews between now and August is up in the air… but there’s a technical reason behind this.

So my old Omen that I bought back in 2017 recently decided that it was going to blow the fans really loud. The system still works, I can still play stuff on it, but it’s so loud that I can’t dub and quite frankly, having that thing blow for hours on end is a bit of a headache. I’m looking into getting the thing fixed; if it’s something like replacing the case fan or something minor, it’d be no problem. But if it’s a CPU thing, then I’ll need to take this to a shop and have it checked out by somebody who knows what the fuck they’re doing.

Naturally, this is going to impede my ability to make videos. At the moment, only one video is available for upload this Monday, but the rest are either still in various states of development or non-existent. So the scheduling is going to be slightly out of wack. Fortunately, things isn’t a total lost cause because I recently bought a mini-PC gaming that is supposedly designed with gaming in mind. It runs well enough that I can capture some decent footage with OBS and I have enough portable DVD readers to hook up and rip footage. So I can get some stuff going on.

It’s not the ideal set-up and for all intents and purposes, I do want to get my old tower up and running because it is a nice machine and I’d hate to see it go to waste. But for now, this is where we’re at with technology and stuff.

Will keep you all updated down the road.

Later.

WWF No Way Out 2000

The 2000s were an interesting period in wrestling. It was a period that saw WWF rises to its highest profits at the time, even with their top star on the shelf. It was a period that saw WCW – once on top of the wrestling world for eighty-ish weeks – begin its steep, maddening decline. It was a period that saw the cult favorite ECW get national television exposure on a network that was clearly using them in hopes of securing a bigger promotion to run on their channel. To the common fan who lived through the period, it was a boon of wrestling material.

The year 2000 is probably my favorite year of WWF. The edge of the Attitude Era was still pretty much in full swing and still as edgy as ever, even with the architect of Attitude having long since jumped to the competition. 2000 was where WWF finally got around to fixing its wrestling problem, with the timely arrival of former disgruntled WCW wrestlers as well as the grooming of some true wrestling machines to compliment the big names that kept the crowds coming back for more. In essence, it was the total package. Great angles, great wrestling, and great talent.

So yeah, I’m all but willing to revisit these PPVs… most of them. We’ve already covered the Royal Rumble 2000 years ago and that Royal Ramble post still holds up. So we’ll be diving into the next major show, No Way Out 2000, which saw reigning WWF Champion Triple H put his title up on the line against Cactus Jack inside Hell In A Cell, and if Cactus were to lose, he’d be forced to retire. Clearly, the stakes were high in this main event, so let’s check it out.

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Thoughts On The Lost Sailor Moon Pitch

Someone had told me about the lost pilot for the aborted attempt at an Americanized version of Sailor Moon that used a combination of live-action and animated sequences. I had known about that thing for years and even saw the pilot in question that was uploaded by Youtuber by the moniker of Ray Mona.

So when Sailor Moon was originally going to be brought over, they weren’t going to use the anime, but rather create their own version that used some of the names and concepts, but only in the loosest sense of the term. The idea was that the civilian forms of the Sailors would be depicted in live action, while the hero sequences would play out in traditional western animation that was typical of the 1980s. They put together a pilot, it was rejected, and we eventually ended up with the original English dub of Sailor Moon that most people know and love… I guess.

I’ve seen the pilot and it’s easy to see why this was passed over… but not necessarily for its deviation from the source material. Going any further will dive into spoiler territory for a three-decade old pitch video that very few people outside of the internet know exists, so details after the break.

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About Roman’s New Belt

So now that my two month wrestling embargo and subsequent one week hiatus has come to a close, I can finally talk about this “new” undisputed WWE title that Roman Reigns was gifted for reaching a thousand days, which I assume was the whole point of this deal. As you could probably tell, it’s just the usual belt buckle design, except now the center plate has a yellowish/gold backdrop and it says Undisputed Champion.

Much ado about nothing, I suppose. But at least Roman has a shiny new belt to carry around.

This also presumably means that the original WWE Championship that has been a thing since the inception of the promotion itself back in 1966 – the one held by Bruno, Hogan, Bret, Shawn, Austin, Rock, Cena, and others – has been put to rest so that focus can be put on both Roman’s one new belt and the fake World title that Seth is carrying around.

History is apparently nothing more than a number to surpass and flaunt on social media these days.

Oh well… at least GUNTHER is still IC champion. That’s the only reign I give two shits about these days.

State Of The Blog – June 2023

Back from hiatus… on the blog front, at least.

Not going to go into any further personal or family details other than things are improving and looking a little better by the day. However, content on the blog – at least for the moment – will be minimal. The most you’re likely to get are weekly classic PPV Musings and the usual video reviews, which will be starting up next Monday, June 19th and will begin the last countdown to #1000 – I’d go with “final”, but Europa might sue. If anything else pops up, that’ll be a bonus, but the focus is getting these reviews up and running before moving on to other things.

In any event, no formal schedule for reviews or musings has been finalized, but classic musings will cover the WWF 2000 Pay-Per-View shows that I didn’t already muse on in the past and if I end up watching any current shows and decide to do a post on those, I’ll do that too. As far as what the reviews will cover… well, I’ve got a couple ideas, but I’m working backwards here, which means the stuff towards the end (a.k.a. the really big and important shit) is on the verge of completion while those set to be released a week away is still in the editing stage. Don’t worry; we don’t get to the major stuff until July.

Anyway, that’s the update. A couple things might pop up this week, but I don’t know what yet.

Later.