NWA-TNA 2002 REVISITED

[TravJ1979]

An ongoing project of mine forced me to watch all 2002 TNA PPV’s so my punishment is your “gain?” I thought I’d offer this review to help in the worst of all-time argument of TNA v. UWF. I’ll start with a few quick facts, and then go into each of the title feuds for the year. Most importantly, the last section will list all of the complete stupidity that comprised the year, ranging from minor annoyances to “WTF were they thinking?” Enjoy.

 

 

Quick Facts

 

• TNA’s first PPV was June 19th in Huntsville, Alabama at the Von Braun Civic Center

 

• TNA ran 25 PPV’s during 2002, 23 were live while two were taped (Week 2 & Week 11)

 

• All but the first 4 shows were held at the Fairgrounds Coliseum in Nashville, TN (later nicknamed the “Asylum” by Ron “The Truth” Killings after becoming NWA Champion.)

 

• There were no live shows the weeks of 9/4, 9/11 and 12/25. The 9/4 show was an X-Division highlight show while 9/11 and 12/25 had no shows in observance of 9/11/01 and Christmas respectively. It is believed owner, Jerry Jarrett had decided to close the promotion at the end of August after having ran through all the money of initial financial backer, Health South, and funding a couple of weeks with his own money. However, a new backer, Panda Energy owned by the Carter family emerged and avoided a shutdown.

 

 

The Title Picture

 

NWA Heavyweight Title

 

On the first show, the vacant NWA Heavyweight Title was to be determined by way of a twenty man “Gauntlet” match with the last two remaining then having a singles match with the winner being crowned. The final two participants were Ken Shamrock and Malice (WCW’s The Wall). Shamrock then defeated Malice to become the champion.

 

Shamrock’s reign as champion was lackluster at best. He was completely colorless and the Nashville crowd never got into his submissions which were the basis of his offense. All four of his title defenses were below ten minutes and his challengers mostly weren’t suited to his style. A rematch with Malice went less than six minutes on show three and, after building up Takako Ohmori’s arrival in TNA to absolutely no fan-fair, their match ended in a sub-eight minute no contest on show four. Ken’s last successful defense was against a total mismatch of an opponent in Sabu, in a match completely limiting his style, a ladder match on show six. During the first eight weeks, a challenger seemed to be given title shots for no rhyme or reason and was almost as if a title match was given to whoever the biggest name they could bring in that week was.

 

During Shamrock’s title reign, wrestler K-Krush (WWF’s K-Kwik) was doing a racial discrimination gimmick claiming that “they” were holding him down. This led to a confrontation with then authority figure, Ricky Steamboat on show seven. When Steamboat was trying to convince K-Krush he wasn’t’ being discriminated against, Krush went into a story about WrestleMania III and Steamboat winning the I-C Title, but asked him why he was never given a world title shot. He claimed, “They” were holding him down because of his heritage. Apparently, that’s all Ricky needed to hear to do a total about-face to agree with K-Krush and grant him a title match with Ken Shamrock on the next show. Keep in mind, up until his title match with Shamrock, K-Krush only had a couple of singles matches, one of which was a reverse decision LOSS to NASCAR driver, Hermie Sadler.

 

After K-Krush won the title from Shamrock on show eight, he changed his name to, Ron “The Truth” Killings. Killings title reign was a vast improvement over Shamrock’s as he was much more charismatic and the match quality, although not superb, was much better. His matches tended to have reason behind them, such as a brief feud with Monty Brown again involving race and claims of Brown being an “Uncle Tom.” He had some good defenses against both Jerry Lynn and Low Ki before having a series of very bad showings against Curt Hennig and Scott Hall. Towards the end of Killings’ reign, a masked man dressed all in white known as, “Mr. Wrestling III” began attacking Killings during his matches with the speculation it was Jeff Jarrett since Jarrett had been angling for a title match since the first show. During this period a small tournament was held to determine a # 1 contender for the title which was ultimately won by Jarrett himself setting up a title match on 11/20 on show twenty-one. Jarrett pinned the Truth for the NWA title that night in what was by far the best title match in the brief history of the company. The finish wasn’t clean however as Mr. Wrestling III again attacked Killings with a guitar shot allowing Jarrett to get the pin. Mr. Wrestling III then unmasked to be none other than … Vince Russo.

 

The following week, a rematch was held between Jarrett and Killings that was even better than the first and even had a clean finish with Jarrett pinning Killings after the stroke. Russo was at ringside and handed Jarrett a guitar, but Jarrett smashed it on the ring post showing he wasn’t aligned with Russo. On the final few shows of the year, Jarrett remained champion feuding with Russo.

 

NWA Tag Team Titles

 

The tag titles were initially decided in a small tournament that came down to the Rainbow Express, Bruce (WCW’s Kwee Wee) and Lenny (Lane) v. Chris Harris and James Storm (not yet known as America’s Most Wanted). However, Harris and Storm were jumped and blooded before the bout by an unknown assailant(s) (later found out to be Cassidy O’Reilly and Chase Stevens known then as the Hot Shots). In the vacant slot, A.J. Styles and Jerry Lynn teamed up to beat the Rainbow Express to become the first ever tag champions, making Styles a double champion within four shows.

 

After the win, Styles and Lynn were at odds with each other over the X Division Title and due to defending and winning that belt from each other, the Tag Titles were neglected for the first couple of months. Then on 8/14 (Show 9) a match between Lynn/Styles v. Killings/Jarrett ended in a double pin prompting that week’s authority figure, Bob Armstrong, to declare the titles vacant. That match was by far the best tag match in NWA-TNA up to that point.

 

For the next three weeks the titles remained vacated until the twelfth show on 9/18 when a tag team gauntlet, similar to the one crowing the first Heavyweight champion took place. The match started with an “every man for himself” concept where each individual member of the tag teams would compete until all teams had entered and all but two wrestlers had been eliminated. Then those two wrestlers’ teammates would be brought back for a two on two tag bout. The finals came down to James Storm/Chris Harris (still not referred to as AMW) and Brian Lee/Ron Harris with Harris and Storm capturing the belts and becoming the second Tag champs. Interesting enough Harris and Storm didn’t work the first show as a tag team as Storm teamed with Psicosis to lose to the Johnsons (different story) and Harris was a part of the Gauntlet for the title. Bill Behrens, in week two, caught them before leaving the building and had them take on the Rainbow Express. They remained a team through the rest of the year, adopting the collective name of America’s Most Wanted a few weeks into their first title reign.

 

Even though the Hot Shots were found to be the ones to bloody Harris and Storm keeping them out of the first tag tourney final, a feud never really developed between the teams beyond a couple of matches. Actually the Hot Shots inexplicably put their shot at the tag gauntlet on show twelve up for grabs in a four team elimination match earlier in that same show only to be the first team eliminated and thus taken out of the gauntlet.

 

During AMW’s first reign there was no shortage of tag teams, but a definite shortage on contenders. Here is a rundown of a few:

 

Hot Shots – As mentioned earlier, only a couple of matches even though they took AMW out earlier in the year.

 

Rick and Chris Michaels – A team that was not over with the crowd at all

 

Flying Elvis’ – Between infighting and Yang off doing tours of AJPW, they never really got into the scene

 

SAT’s – They were there more for the X Division although they were in the mix

 

Various makeshift teams – These ranged from Ron Harris grabbing random partners like Brian Lee and Ashley Hudson, to teams being thrown together like BG James and Curt Hennig

 

Then there were the Disciples of the New Church led by Father James Mitchell. After the revolving door closed and Mitchell was brought back full-time they became AMW’s most worthy challengers and produced the best tag title matches up to that point. Originally the DotNC consisted of Slash (PG-13’s Wolfie D) and Tempest (WCW’s Crowbar). During down budget times, Tempest wasn’t used anymore due to travel arraignment disagreements and so Kobain (Indy’s Flash Flanagan) was brought in. He lasted a few weeks until disappearing with no mention. At this point the DotNC disappeared altogether until finally returning and consisting of Slash and Brian Lee (after having teamed with Ron Harris for weeks). This feud produced some great action and bloody brawls with DotNC finally winning the belts on the twentieth show on 11/13. The teams feuded for the remainder of 2002 in various forms of matches. One of the better (as in fun) was Storm v. Slash on show twenty-three as it had a ton of false finishes (for a six minute match) that consisted of every cheap win trick (double team, interference, belt shot, etc) only to have the other kick out when the fans thought for sure it was the finish. The year ended with these two teams continuing to feud with the Harris Bros. mixed in. Divine Storm (pushed simply because Trinity can do a moonsault, IMO) were the # 1 contenders at years end.

 

 

NWA X-Division Title

 

The X-Division is what put TNA on the map initially with crazy highspot-infested matches not seen by a national audience up to this point. While most of the matches would be average fairs to those familiar with low to mid card ROH matches, the Nashville audience (and Don West) where amazed by them on a weekly basis.

 

The first champion was determined on the second show with a four-way, double elimination match between AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Psicosis, and Low-Ki. AJ Styles won the match that is arguably the MOTY in TNA for 2002. The following week, as mentioned in the tag section, Lynn and Styles became impromptu tag champions and teased dissension throughout their whole reign until eventually Styles turned heel and later aligned himself with useless manager, Mortimer Plumbtree.

 

From there, the division kind of lost focus with Lynn as champion and on Show eight, Low-Ki won the belt in a three way match with Lynn and Styles. Low-Ki successfully defended the title the next two weeks in four way elimination matches with the flying Elvis’ and the SAT’s/Amazing Red. In the third week of Ki’s reign, he lost the belt to Jerry Lynn on Show 11 (taped) in a three-way ladder match also involving Styles. Ki all but disappeared for the rest of the year at this point due to Zero-One commitments after being pushed strongly the past few months.

 

Lynn and Styles then had a series of gimmick matches with Lynn always retaining. He was later attacked by Sonny Siaki, formerly of the Elvis’ and injured his knee forcing him to vacate the title. The reason Siaki attacked him is due to a mini-feud that occurred when Lynn was challenging Ron Killings for the Heavyweight Title and Siaki interfered knocking Lynn off the ropes after earlier in the show telling the x-division guys they should stand behind him.

 

Bob Armstrong, the most consistent authority figure in the ever changing first year, declared on 10/9 (Show 15) that a “free for all” ladder match would take place with open invitations to all x division wrestlers in the back. This match was a complete cluster fuck going sixteen minutes only to have the finish be Syxx-Pac coming out at about the fifteen minute mark to walk up the ladder and grab the belt with no physical interaction at all. From there, with Syxx-Pac tagging off and on with Scott Hall (when he showed) and a worthless feud with Brian Lawler (covered later) AJ Styles ended up winning the belt back two weeks later (Show 19) only to have Jerry Lynn win the belt back another two weeks later (Show 21). Lynn finished the year with matches against Sonny Siaki trying to tie up all his feuds, but Sonny Siaki beat Lynn for the title on 12/11 (Show 24) due to the interference of an unnamed woman (Kim Nielsen). The X-division title was the most oft-changed title during 2002. On the last show of the year, the woman was revealed to be with Russo and they recruited Siaki into S.E.X. (Sports Entertainment Extreme).

 

 

The Stupidity

 

Minor Annoyances

 

• The Johnsons, Rod and Richard – A short lived tag team, managed by Mortimer Plumbtree. If their names didn’t flat out tell you the premise behind the team, they were outfitted in head-to-toe body suits/hoods that were fleshed colored, I’m assuming to resemble condoms.

 

• Celebrities – Chris Rock shows up, says one sentence and is never heard from again. Dustin Diamond shows up, knocks out “tiny” the timekeeper with one punch, never brought back. Then there was Toby Keith, various NASCAR drivers, and the Tennessee Titans brawling with Jeff Jarrett … all of which led to nothing.

 

• The Flying Elvis’ – I’m not sure if Elvis was big in Alabama, which is where these guys debuted, but unless they always planned on making home base in Nashville, I’m not sure the point behind this. They may have figured this out in short order because as the year progressed the team disbanded. First, Sonny Siaki gradually became a cheap copy of “The Rock” eventually burning his jumpsuit in favor of the ever marketable blue pants. Then Jimmy Yang, after hardly being around due to AJPW commitments showed up one week without his suit and the announcers just explained he wanted to go singles. That left Jorge Estrada who remained the Flying Elvis along with Priscilla, a former girlfriend of Jerry “The King” Lawler.

 

• Here Today, Gone Tomorrow – Call it growing pains or call it throwing it against the wall to see if it stuck, but the first few months was full of guys showing up, getting a push, then never being heard from again.

 

First, it was the obligatory “authority figure” which first seemed to be filled by Memphis Legend, Jackie Fargo, then Bill Behrens (NWA Wildside promoter), to looking like it was going to settle into being Ricky Steamboat. Then the money problems started and he was out. “Bullet” Bob Armstrong finally settled into it late in the year and remained in charge. Actually a masked “Bullet” began feuding with Jarrett and eventually was revealed as BG James (WWF’s Roaddogg) to absolutely no fan fare.

 

For the most part, talent coming in and then leaving was understandable as most weren’t big names and tryouts are a part of the business, but there were a few notable exceptions that just caused continuity problems.

 

Malice (WCW’s The Wall) was pushed hard and even made it to the finals of the NWA Title Gauntlet. He became a member of the DotNC and was an enforcer type. After bad matches with Ken Shamrock and Sabu (another guy who had a cup of coffee) he left for many weeks. He then returned for two squash matches and then left again. Word is he had a good gig in Puerto Rico and couldn’t make the dates.

 

Other names from the cast off’s from ECW and WCW’s demise were Buff Bagwell (says he quit and is going to be Marcus, left for weeks, came back to tag with BG James in the tag gauntlet, then left again for good) Sabu (mentioned above) and Syxx-Pac and Scott Hall (no surprise there)

 

Monty Brown debuted during the year and was being pushed hard, even having a World Title match with Killings only to vanish without mention for the rest of the year.

 

The Drizzling Shits

 

Midgets

 

On the first few shows, the midget wrestlers were featured doing very bad hardcore matches. The most heavily pushed was, Puppet the Psycho Dwarf, doing a dwarf killer gimmick. Among the gems were the worst midget match of all time with Puppet against Meatball in a hardcore match, Puppet inside a trash can during an interview with Goldylocks that most believe was supposed to depict him beating off to the sight of her breasts, to him pulling a gun out on Jeff Jarrett and TNA security only to get beaten down by an unarmed Jarrett. Puppet and the midgets all together were last seen during the Dupp Cupp (which has its own section in this review) at least during the year 2002.

 

Dupp Cupp

 

The Dupps consisted of Bo, Stan (WWE”s Trevor Murdoch), and one appearance of their “sister” Fluff. They were portrayed as redneck inbreeds who slept with their sister, played with fire, etc. Actually it was all innocent enough until they introduced the Dupp Cupp, which was simply a gold spittoon. They came up with their own point system with the first person to ten points getting, at first, sixty-four cents, until it was pointed out nobody wanted that. So they quickly changed the prize to a night with Fluff Dupp as long as they could watch. Ed Fererra (WCW’s Oklahoma) immediately accepted, but lost. The next week Teo the midget wrestled for it and won after opening an outhouse on the stage to find Puppet who hit Bo Dupp allowing his head to be placed in the toilet for the win. The Dupps and the Midgets weren’t seen again.

The Rules for the Dupp Cupp:

Put opponent through a table = 2 ½ points. A burning table was worth 5 points.

Put opponents head in the toilet = 2 ½ points. If it had shit inside it was worth 3 ½ points.

If you goosed a woman = 2 ½ points. A man = 3 ½ points.

Punch either Jeremy Borash or Sara Lee the ticket lady = 2 ½ points

Use a weapon given to you by a fan = 1 point

Use a farm animal in any way = 2 ½ points

Introduce Jay ( a blowup doll) to your opponent = 2 ½ points.

Spank your opponents bare ass with horse-e-poo (stick horse) = 2 ½ points. If they liked it, it was minus 2 ½ points

If you cry like a pussy = minus 5 points

If you stick your opponents head in a cotton candy machine and get one full rotation = 10 points and automatic win.

 

Women/Miss TNA

 

The early shows featured women heavily with the second show having a lingerie battle royal to determine the first ever Miss TNA. It was god-awful and ultimately won by Taylor Vaughn (WWF’s B.B. the EMT). Her early feud was with Francine who they seemed to be pushing, but every week would lose and end up being groped by Ed Fererra for no reason. Right before the women stopped being used, Jasmin St. Claire began a feud with Francine by stripping, which made no sense. Francine, and pretty much all other women stopped being used when Shane Douglas said he wouldn’t come in if they used Francine. The thing is, Douglas never came in that year.

 

The Miss TNA crown lasted a while longer though after Bruce challenged Taylor for the crown in an evening gown match which he of course won. Bruce kept the crown for weeks by challenging “women from the crowd” and at one point, April Hunter. This all came to an end when Bruce ended up being tangled in the Brian Lawler/April angle (see below.) Towards the end Lenny, Bruce’s tag partner came back and when he found out he would be next in line for the crown had anything happened to Bruce, he began sabotaging Bruce even leaving a banana peel for him to slip on during a match. This story ends in the next section …

 

Brian Lawler + April

 

Before April, Brian Christopher started as face, but after couple of weeks he turned on Scott Hall during a tag match. He then cut a promo pronouncing himself Brian Lawler and ran down being the son of The King. Besides being an abysmal wrestler during 2002, he was also involved in a stupid, disjointed angle involving his “girlfriend”, April. Highlights included:

 

He began attacking Jeff Jarrett (also a heel) for weeks without the audience knowing why. Eventually it was found out that he thought Jarrett was fooling around with April. After weeks of this build, it quickly ended when Jarrett pinned Lawler against a door and basically called his girlfriend a tramp that slept with all the boys and he didn’t do anything with her. I guess calling his girlfriend a lying whore was enough for Lawler to drop it.

 

Lawler continued his jealous, abusive boyfriend gimmick with syxx-pac being the next to “bang” April causing Lawler to go crazy. This brief feud was completely nonsensical. First, April denies being with Pac. Then, she comes out during one of Lawler’s matches and makes out with Pac. The next week she claims she was forced. All of this DIDN’T come to a head because Pac left the company before any type of blow-off match.

 

Lawler continued being a whiny bitch about his girlfriend (which I believe may have been a rib on Jerry Lawler and The Kat, but not sure.) and when he heard her moaning in the shower he confronted her (while topless covered in soap), but she claimed nobody was in the shower. Unseen by all but the audience, Bruce then popped his head out of the shower. Yes, the man who was Miss TNA and portraying a homosexual. Lawler finds out and jumps Bruce a few times. Even more ignorant is that briefly during this same time they did a couple of segments making it seem as though Goldylocks and April were having a lesbian relationship. One week they held hands, one week no mention is made, the next week April says Goldylocks is jealous.

 

This all mercifully ended when inexplicably, Bruce does a straight interview saying he wasn’t Bruce, but Allan Funk and he was handing over the Miss TNA crown to April. During the interview Lenny came out and called Bruce/Allan Funk a fake homo and they brawled a bit. Later in the same show Lawler comes out crying about April and says he quits wrestling. This was all for nothing because this was the last we saw of them as none of them were used for the last two months of 2002 and possibly not again as I haven’t seen any 2003. Lawler’s last appearance was leaving the building grab ass’ing Priscilla, the ex girlfriend of his father.

 

Russo “Shoots”

 

Vince Russo storms the ring on Show twenty-two and “shoots” on Jarrett telling their history together and other various nonsense. The following week Roddy Piper shows up to promote his book and he “shoots” on Russo claiming he killed Owen Hart, took WCW from making 67 million a year to losing 80 million, and calling him the Bin Laden of pro wrestling. Russo storms the ring, but nothing comes of it although later Russo comes out after Piper is gone and says Piper is going to hell for using Owen Hart to sell books. You might think this is going somewhere. Well, Piper never shows again and is not mentioned.

 

Russo then mentions all of the Athena signs (many signs were brought by fans since Week 1 for Athena, a local who was also a ring girl for TNA with no mention from the announcers) and says he is going to give them what they want. He brings Athena in the ring and tells her to take her top off and show her tits. She refuses. Russo then calls her a whore and the Harris Bros. beat her down. The Harris’ become the first members of Russo’s new Sports Entertainment Group, S.E.X., Sports Entertainment Extreme. Later in the show BG James would do the same after jumping Jarrett. Paul “Percy Pringle” Bearer shows up in the closing minutes of the show and laughs on the stage, seemingly in approval of SEX.

 

The next week it was said Russo wasn’t there. The Harris Bros. “win” the tag belts with interference from James, only to have Percy Pringle come out and have the ref reverse the decision. So last week he seemed to like what he saw, the next week he is costing them belts. At the end of the show ~RUSSO SWERVE~ he is in the building and interferes in the title match with Jarrett v. Curt Hennig, hitting Hennig twice with a guitar that doesn’t break. Show ends.

 

On the last show of the year Hennig declares he will beat Russo down and when Russo comes out, he chases him only to be jumped by Low Ki, Elix Skipper and Christopher Daniels, the newest members of S.E.X. Russo “shoots” while introducing the newest members and then tells BG James there is no compassion in S.E.X. (last week BG hit his father with a chair and showed remorse). He also tells the Harris Bros. not to let him down or they are out of the group.

 

Finally, what has been teased since Russo showed up is if Jarrett was with him or against him. Jarrett comes out and “shoots” on Russo telling his version of what Russo said during his first promo and said he wasn’t with Russo and so S.E.X. beats his ass.

 

The last segment of TNA in 2002 was a mixed bag. The last match of the year were the S.A.T.’s and Amazing Red v. Low Ki, Daniels and Skipper. It was probably the second best TNA match of the year with Red playing underdog babyface perfectly. After the match ends with Russo’s team winning, Hennig comes out for a big schmoz that included Jarrett and a surprise of David Flair (groan.) AJ Styles comes out attacking Jarrett and the announcers claim he has joined Russo, but wasn’t official. Styles last week denied joining Russo and said he jumped Jarrett so he can be a heavyweight title contender.

 

The show ended with the unintentional comedy of Russo getting blown up by taking an ax to the TNA sign on top of the ramp.

[goc]

I appreciate you writing this up and it makes me glad I never finished my project of watching all of 2002 TNA. I tapped at around week 11 or 12.

[El-P]

Oh God.

The most amazing thing is that there was a time TNA was actually pretty decent when Russo wasn't around, yet, after the godawful shit you describe, Russo still got rehired.

AT one time I had the project of watching the weekly TNA PPV too. I may still do it. Morbid curiosity. Maybe not after all.

[Jingus]

I was present live at many of those shows, so here's some rememberences and clarifications.

 

after building up Takako Ohmori’s arrival in TNA to absolutely no fan-fair, their match ended in a sub-eight minute no contest on show four.

Even worse, it ended in a damn DQ. Apparently NOAH insisted that Omori couldn't do any jobs, but TNA either didn't know or didn't care before they booked him in a pointless world title match.

 

This led to a confrontation with then authority figure, Ricky Steamboat on show seven. When Steamboat was trying to convince K-Krush he wasn’t’ being discriminated against, Krush went into a story about WrestleMania III and Steamboat winning the I-C Title, but asked him why he was never given a world title shot. He claimed, “They” were holding him down because of his heritage. Apparently, that’s all Ricky needed to hear to do a total about-face to agree with K-Krush and grant him a title match with Ken Shamrock on the next show.

If you ever need a good go-to catchphrase in any argument against Russo's few remaining defenders, here it is: "He tried to turn Ricky Steamboat heel." If that's not the sign of being the worst booker on the fucking planet, I don't know what is.

 

He had some good defenses against both Jerry Lynn and Low Ki before having a series of very bad showings against Curt Hennig and Scott Hall.

I wouldn't blame the latter on Truth. Hall was still just as lazy as he was in WCW, if not moreso. And poor Hennig was so bad at that point that he was actually worse than Hall. Nobody could get anything out of Mr Perfect anymore.

 

The following week, a rematch was held between Jarrett and Killings that was even better than the first and even had a clean finish with Jarrett pinning Killings after the stroke. Russo was at ringside and handed Jarrett a guitar, but Jarrett smashed it on the ring post showing he wasn’t aligned with Russo.

That one actually had a neat, almost Japanese finish. Russo tries to give Jarrett a guitar, and babyface Jeff angrily smashes it apart over the top of the ringpost. Then he hits Truth with a Stroke. Even at that time, the Stroke was, shall we say, not terribly over. Truth kicks out strong. So as he's getting up, Jarrett grabs him and hits the move again. Truth kicks out again... at 2.9, and is slow to get up and looking woozy. So finally Jarrett yanks him by the hair and gives him a super jumping Stroke with extra mustard to finally get the pin.

 

Interesting enough Harris and Storm didn’t work the first show as a tag team as Storm teamed with Psicosis to lose to the Johnsons (different story) and Harris was a part of the Gauntlet for the title. Bill Behrens, in week two, caught them before leaving the building and had them take on the Rainbow Express. They remained a team through the rest of the year, adopting the collective name of America’s Most Wanted a few weeks into their first title reign.

I dunno if they were planned to be a team from the start, but it just made sense. They were the two top guys in Bert Prentice's local promotion that he'd been running out of the same building. The match which got them hired by TNA was against each other. So it was logical to put them together as a team.

 

Hot Shots – As mentioned earlier, only a couple of matches even though they took AMW out earlier in the year.

We never figured out why these guys didn't get used more. Oddly, the office must've had some plans for them, because they commissioned a special pair of tights to be made for each. Specifically, tights with a fake cloth penis sewn on the inside. Yes, I'm not kidding, I actually saw them, TNA really did this shit.

 

Rick and Chris Michaels – A team that was not over with the crowd at all

It's sad, because both of them were damn fine workers. But they were both mediocre at best on the mike, and both less than six feet tall, and the promotion didn't even try to give them any kind of personality. It was just "Hey, here's a heel team of two little guys who happen to have the same last name, boo them!" and then they wondered why there was deafening silence.

 

Divine Storm (pushed simply because Trinity can do a moonsault, IMO) were the # 1 contenders at years end.

Nobody had any idea why the fuck these guys kept getting booked. Like a much shittier version of the SATs and nobody cared about them. A worker friend of mine kept referring to them as the "mean-muggin' no-sellin' midgets". Trinity was pretty quickly taken away and given better stuff to do, but not quickly enough.

 

Styles turned heel and later aligned himself with useless manager, Mortimer Plumbtree.

Mortimer wasn't useless, he was actually pretty decent. He was just absolutely the wrong guy to put in that spot. They kept trying to make Styles some kind of Ric Flair type of traditional heel champ, even long before he was actually managed by Ric Flair, but everyone else (besides TNA) could see that was all wrong for him.

 

Celebrities – Chris Rock shows up, says one sentence and is never heard from again. Dustin Diamond shows up, knocks out “tiny” the timekeeper with one punch, never brought back.

Chris Rock was shooting a scene for his movie Head of State in the ring after the show, so that's why he was there that one night. I think Dustin Diamond actually had some kind of boxing match with Tiny, iirc.

 

Then there was Toby Keith, various NASCAR drivers, and the Tennessee Titans brawling with Jeff Jarrett … all of which led to nothing.

Nobody cared about most of the celebrities, but the Titans brawl was a HUGE deal. Every local news outlet had that as their lead story the next day. Even TNA would have to know that they should've followed up on that, but it led to nothing even on the very next show. I'm assuming that the Titans management (if not the NFL higher-ups themselves) had a very stern talk with the players afterwards, ordering them to never do such a thing again.

 

The Flying Elvis’ – I’m not sure if Elvis was big in Alabama, which is where these guys debuted, but unless they always planned on making home base in Nashville, I’m not sure the point behind this.

It's one of Russo's shitty pop culture jokes. He was making a reference to the phenomenon of Elvis impersonators who are Asian, which really is a popular thing in some small circles. And the name is an oh-so-timely reference to the 1994 Nic Cage movie Honeymoon in Vegas.

 

Monty Brown debuted during the year and was being pushed hard, even having a World Title match with Killings only to vanish without mention for the rest of the year.

In his title shot, Brown damn near killed Killings with a sloppy-as-hell suplex on the floor. That might've been part of the reason behind his time off. But still, he was over, you'd think they could've stuck him in a tag team or something.

 

Lawler continued being a whiny bitch about his girlfriend (which I believe may have been a rib on Jerry Lawler and The Kat, but not sure.) and when he heard her moaning in the shower he confronted her (while topless covered in soap),

It wasn't soap. It was supposed to be soap, but it was quite clearly an entire can's worth of shaving cream.

 

Vince Russo storms the ring on Show twenty-two and “shoots” on Jarrett telling their history together and other various nonsense. The following week Roddy Piper shows up to promote his book and he “shoots” on Russo claiming he killed Owen Hart, took WCW from making 67 million a year to losing 80 million, and calling him the Bin Laden of pro wrestling. Russo storms the ring, but nothing comes of it although later Russo comes out after Piper is gone and says Piper is going to hell for using Owen Hart to sell books. You might think this is going somewhere. Well, Piper never shows again and is not mentioned.

The Piper segment did seem a bit shoot-ish. Russo came out there looking very uncomfortable, and he's not that good an actor. And then the Harris brothers came out to get between Piper and Russo, also not looking like they were acting, but more like they really were protecting their boss from this crazy old wrestler. But then again this is Piper we're talking about, he's infamous for going off script in his televised promos, so who knows what the deal was.

 

Russo then mentions all of the Athena signs (many signs were brought by fans since Week 1 for Athena, a local who was also a ring girl for TNA with no mention from the announcers) and says he is going to give them what they want. He brings Athena in the ring and tells her to take her top off and show her tits.

Poor Athena. She's a friend of mine, and got a pretty raw deal from TNA. They treated her much the same as the WWE treats Zack Ryder, in a "you're not allowed to get over unless we let you get over" sort of way. And once they finally hired her, they gave her a mute role as a generic ring girl and cheerleader. This despite the fact that half the fans in the building were already familiar with her from the local promotions, and everyone knew her best work was done as being a slutty conniving heel manager. TNA had her do a couple of brief things here and there, but nothing important. And then Sonny Siaki dropped her on her head twice in a row, on two consecutive weeks, doing the same move both times. What a great fuckin' company to work for.

 

The last segment of TNA in 2002 was a mixed bag. The last match of the year were the S.A.T.’s and Amazing Red v. Low Ki, Daniels and Skipper. It was probably the second best TNA match of the year with Red playing underdog babyface perfectly.

Funny thing about that match: its unusual quality was basically an accident. Someone backstage pulled a Kidman and fucked up the timing of the show, sending the main event into the ring much earlier than anticipated. As you may guess, most of these guys are of the "script the whole match in the back" school, and they didn't have any extra spots planned out to fill the extra ten minutes that had suddenly been tacked onto their match. The solution: just beat the living shit out of Red for eons and eons, until it's time to go home. Red did the best Ricky Morton impression I've ever seen, to the point where Don West actually stood on top of the announce desk and started leading the audience in chanting for him.

 

The show ended with the unintentional comedy of Russo getting blown up by taking an ax to the TNA sign on top of the ramp.

That was hilarious. I could tell that Russo imagined it would be this great image, with him literally chopping the company's logo to splinters. Well, he hit it once, and the ax promptly got stuck. He was yanking on that thing like a masturbating teenager, desperately trying to pry it out of the sign. Once he finally got it out, he was winded, and he just said "hell with it" and hit it one more time and yanked the sign down.

[MikeCampbell]

The thing that always stuck out to me was on the first show when Jeff Jarrett was burying the Gauntlet for the Gold match and Hall and Shamrock came out, as babyfaces, and told Jeff "You're right about this battle royal, it sucks."

[Sean Liska]

Truth was so great in the early days of TNA. I don't know why it took 9 years to get back to that role.

[artDDP]

Then there was Toby Keith, various NASCAR drivers, and the Tennessee Titans brawling with Jeff Jarrett … all of which led to nothing.

Nobody cared about most of the celebrities, but the Titans brawl was a HUGE deal. Every local news outlet had that as their lead story the next day. Even TNA would have to know that they should've followed up on that, but it led to nothing even on the very next show. I'm assuming that the Titans management (if not the NFL higher-ups themselves) had a very stern talk with the players afterwards, ordering them to never do such a thing again.

 

I have a vague memory of the Titans players getting some heat for doing a physical angle without permission. The angle was covered on many news stations, even here in Sacramento.

[goc]

Then there was Toby Keith, various NASCAR drivers, and the Tennessee Titans brawling with Jeff Jarrett … all of which led to nothing.

Nobody cared about most of the celebrities, but the Titans brawl was a HUGE deal. Every local news outlet had that as their lead story the next day. Even TNA would have to know that they should've followed up on that, but it led to nothing even on the very next show. I'm assuming that the Titans management (if not the NFL higher-ups themselves) had a very stern talk with the players afterwards, ordering them to never do such a thing again.

 

I have a vague memory of the Titans players getting some heat for doing a physical angle without permission. The angle was covered on many news stations, even here in Sacramento.

 

I still wonder how much of that brawl was actually supposed to happen. Jeff Jarrett clearly looked uncomfortable when he was getting manhandled by the Titans and I know there is no way they would have scripted one of the Titans players having to block a chairshot.

[Guest Ventura]

It's official, "TNA is the greatest wrestling in the world" is the funniest thing Chris Rock ever said.

[artDDP]

I still wonder how much of that brawl was actually supposed to happen. Jeff Jarrett clearly looked uncomfortable when he was getting manhandled by the Titans and I know there is no way they would have scripted one of the Titans players having to block a chairshot.

It may just be athletes not knowing how to really fake a wrestling angle. I recall Shawn Michaels writing in his autobiography that he was really worried Mike Tyson wouldn't be able to pull his punch at WrestleMania XIV because he was getting incredibly animated during rehearsals. I imagine football players aren't used to slamming into and picking up someone who is cooperating with 75% of the motion and thus could get manhandled pretty easily .

[Victator]

After bad matches with Ken Shamrock and Sabu (another guy who had a cup of coffee) he left for many weeks.

That Sabu ladder match was awesome and I hate ladder matches.

[smkelly]

...

 

The early X-Division stuff was good. I have recently watched the Ki/Styles/Lynn feud again. Not superb juniors work by any means, but solid, respectable, and not downright embarrassing like most of it nowadays.

[Jingus]

After bad matches with Ken Shamrock and Sabu (another guy who had a cup of coffee) he left for many weeks.

That Sabu ladder match was awesome and I hate ladder matches.

 

Even my little brother, who is not a wrestling fan despite all my attempts to make it so, admitted that "I'd definitely go watch a Ken Shamrock vs Sabu match, especially a ladder match".

[Victator]

I was referring to Sabu/Malice. The Shamrock match was disappointing. I think Shamrock was good during his WWF run but that two years he was back in MMA seemed to kill the pro wrestling part of his brain.

[kjh]

Vince Russo storms the ring on Show twenty-two and “shoots” on Jarrett telling their history together and other various nonsense. The following week Roddy Piper shows up to promote his book and he “shoots” on Russo claiming he killed Owen Hart, took WCW from making 67 million a year to losing 80 million, and calling him the Bin Laden of pro wrestling. Russo storms the ring, but nothing comes of it although later Russo comes out after Piper is gone and says Piper is going to hell for using Owen Hart to sell books. You might think this is going somewhere. Well, Piper never shows again and is not mentioned.

The Piper segment did seem a bit shoot-ish. Russo came out there looking very uncomfortable, and he's not that good an actor. And then the Harris brothers came out to get between Piper and Russo, also not looking like they were acting, but more like they really were protecting their boss from this crazy old wrestler. But then again this is Piper we're talking about, he's infamous for going off script in his televised promos, so who knows what the deal was.

My sense is Piper was given an open mic and was just told to shoot on Russo, no script or bullet points. Russo writes this up in his book like it's the greatest segment in wrestling history and he was one of the hottest heels ever.

[MikeCampbell]

Something I just remembered, did anything ever come out of that bizzare angle where Ryan Shamrock was collecting money from random people each week?

 

I can only assume the point of Omori was to help get over the NWA Title. It's funny that NOAH decreed that he not do any jobs. He only went over to the U.S. because he was in Misawa's doghouse, and before he went over, NOAH was jobbing him out to everyone under the sun.

[TravJ1979]

The Alicia taking money thing is something I forgot to add to the review. When they did the first major budget cuts (about 8 weeks in) she wasn't brought back and nothing was ever said. It may have come out in an interview later somewhere online, but in the world of TNA it was just forgotten about.

[cm funk]

Russo then mentions all of the Athena signs (many signs were brought by fans since Week 1 for Athena, a local who was also a ring girl for TNA with no mention from the announcers) and says he is going to give them what they want. He brings Athena in the ring and tells her to take her top off and show her tits. She refuses. Russo then calls her a whore and the Harris Bros. beat her down

Well, this just about sums up Vince Russo

[JMFabianoRPL]

What I remember was Russo doing promos at this time where it would seem that he'd try to say "shit" as many times as humanly possible. This became somewhat of a personal meme...

[artDDP]

My exposure to TNA during this time was extremely limited as I just didn't care about the promotion. I don't recall if it was 2002 or 2003, but the moment when Tony Schiavone appeared and he and Tenay had a face-off. A fan, directly across from the hard camera, holds up a sign reading "Total Nonstop Action has officially stopped." That just killed me.

[TravJ1979]

My exposure to TNA during this time was extremely limited as I just didn't care about the promotion. I don't recall if it was 2002 or 2003, but the moment when Tony Schiavone appeared and he and Tenay had a face-off. A fan, directly across from the hard camera, holds up a sign reading "Total Nonstop Action has officially stopped." That just killed me.

Schiavone's appearance was January 2003. It's funny because that sign shows up for weeks and to be quite honest he is exactly right. I'm watching 2003 now and on average it takes about 20 to 30 minutes after the PPV's start before the first match gets in the ring.

[Mad Dog]

The matches still stand out to me from this era:

 

Styles vs. Lynn vs. Psicosis vs. Ki

Styles and Lynn vs. Rainbow Express

Styles and Lynn vs. Devon Storm and Slash

Styles vs. Lynn vs. Ki

Styles vs. Lynn vs. Ki - Ladder Match

Ki vs. Red

S.A.T. vs. the Flying Elvises

Killings vs. Lynn I and II

Killings vs. Ki

Killings vs. Jarrett I and II

 

And there's probably several matches in there that I'm not remembering.

 

The Ron Killings push is really amazing to go back to. He gets brought in as pretty much an afterthough high-end mid-carder and he goes out and cuts that discrimination promo around week 5 or 6. Then his music hits the next week and the crowd just absolutely exploded for the guy. For all the dumb shit they've done, this is the one time they did something right. They tossed their plans out of the window and put the belt on the guy that the crowd wanted to see.

[Jingus]

Styles vs. Lynn vs. Ki - Ladder Match

I just caught that one a few weeks back, and it doesn't hold up so well. Lots of the work is rather sloppy and indy-looking. Furthermore, in A Post Money-In-The-Bank World, the spots often come off as being fairly unambitious and pedestrian. It's trying to be a huge spotfest trainwreck, but they just can't get the level of sheer spectacle that they were clearly planning on.

[Mad Dog]

I always found the regular three way to be better than the ladder match. I'm sure it didn't considering it probably doesn't even hold up against the AMW/XXX matches or some of the Ultimate X matches either.

 

I also like the 5 way elimination they did around week 5 or 6 where the order you were eliminated in was the contender you were. Then Styles proceeded to defend against some of those guys. There's also a couple of good Flying Elvises matches that I know I'm missing that were entertaining.

 

As a side note. Jimmy Yang as Elvis was more entertaining than he had any right to be. It's also sad seeing the potential Siaki had early on and realizing he fizzled out pretty quickly.

[FLIK]

Glad to see people bring up Killings vs Ki. One of my fav matches from the early TNA days but at the time it sort of got lost in the shuffle and didn't get as much props as the X-division matches and some of the others around then.