You almost had me there.
Within 24 hours of posting a wrestling-related poll, I had more responses that similar polls about Balloon Boy and the same amount of responses as the one I did about favourite movie franchises. So I guess my faithful readers care just as much about wrestling as they do about movies...and from the number of comments I've received, they care more about wrestling polls than they do about anything I write here.
Okay, I kid! I kid! I'm sure that people care about what I write here, so let's get down to some of that writing.
But one more poll-related paragraph: it was a tie in terms of who you readers believed was the greatest Intercontinental Champion of the 1980s. Both Randy Savage and the man who defeated him, Ricky Steamboat, received a vote.
As much as I enjoyed Steamboat's work, I have to give the nod to Savage over the Dragon in terms of great Intercontinental Champions. In fact I believe Steamboat was one of those wrestlers who made a better challenger than champion. His chase of Savage for the I-C title was a classic, and his match for the strap at Wrestlemania III remains one of the greatest matches of all time (IMODO). Once he became champion, he decided he needed some time off, and so they had him drop the belt to the Honky Tonk Man.
As much as Steamboat's reign as NWA World Champion two years later was just as short as his Intercontinental Championship reign, I believe it was head and shoulders above, due mostly because of his series against Flair. Of course, one could argue that the fans' reaction to Flair's drive to regain the title helped turn Flair face (while doing nothing to diminish Steamboat's relationship with the fans), a turn solidified by Terry Funk's post-match attack after Flair regained the title at Music City Showdown.
Sorry, I'm in a wrestling mode, watching Smackdown as I type this. No matter what the WWE is doing, the big news has to be Hulk Hogan's arrival in TNA. I'm not usually one to echo the baa's of the sheep of the IWC, but my opinion more or less incorporates both trains of thoughts, both the major and the minor.
Yeah, I'm sure that Hogan in TNA will provide the organization with a brief boost of popularity. People will tune in to see Hogan's arrival and initial impact. If Ric Flair, as heavily rumoured, follows him into the Impact Zone, the interest in TNA will increase that much more.
And that's nothing to compared to the buzz rumours of other Hogan compatriots will create surrounding TNA, and the speculation of the impact that those incoming stars will have.
However, how long that interest will remain and how long that impact will be positive is the key question in the short and long term future of TNA. As much as I was a major Hulkamaniac back in the 1980s and as much as Ric Flair remains my favourite wrestler of all time, I don't relish the idea of seeing either man tarnish (or, some might argue, further tarnish) their reputations and legacies in the industry.
And while Hogan in TNA might be the contemporary version of Mr. T or Mike Tyson (something to get people to initially tune in to allow other workers - in this case Samoa Joe, Daniels, A.J. Styles or Kurt Angle - to provide reasons to continue to tune in) and provide a short term boost to TNA, I would argue (as many Smarks have) his presence in the organization, especially if he and travelling partner Eric Bischoff are giving booking duties, could be the undoing of what many people hoped would be viable competition for WWE.
Not only is Hogan (to say nothing of Flair, and whoever else decides to ride Hogan's coat-tails to the top of TNA) too damn old to be main eventing anything but a one-shot nostalgia show, he's never proven himself to be someone who could put the best interests of the business or the company he works for.
The much-maligned World Championship Wrestling has been out of business for nearly nine years, long enough, it would seem, for some to forget the mess that company became with Hogan and Bischoff at the helm. Hogan had one singular purpose: to do what was best for Hogan. There were times in the mid-to-late 1990s where WCW had less to do with promoting solid wrestling and more to do with feeding Hogan's egos and those of his friends.
WCW would eventually lose most of their best workers (a young Steve Austin, Malenko, Jericho, Guerrero, that Canadian guy...what was his name again???) because they grew tired of being passed over in favour of Hogan and his buddies like Duggan, Nash, Sags, Goldberg, and the NWO.
When WCW tired of Hogan, he took his ball and while he didn't go home, he continued to try and be the center of attention, toying with stints in TNA, WWE and even going so far as to open his own wrestling companies, figuring if he was the boss, who could tell him "No"?
In the end, fans tired of WCW, and in the end, one must wonder what the TNA landscape after a year or two with Hogan and Bischoff at the helm? Will Joe, Styles, Daniels be WWE bound? Will guys like the Motor City Machine Guns and the Amazing Red be heading to Ring of Honor, or jobbing to Brutus Beefcake while the announcers gush over whatever version of the NWO runs rampant? Will X Division title matches be replaced with Hulk Hogan promos?
Sadly, as much as this all sounds like just some smark rambling found on message boards, the truth is probably closer to the doomsayers than the TNA press releases making it sound like Hogan is the saviour of the company and the industry as a whole. Hogan is not the catalyst for TNA to finally compete on the same level as the WWE.
Instead, for Hogan, this is just an easy payday. After a messy divorce and his son's incarcertion, Hogan wants to go somewhere that people will fawn over him, stroke his ego, and add a World Championship or half-dozen to his resume.
For TNA, on the other hand, Hogan is just a desperate attempt to get a major name to draw in a major audience. What Dixie Carter and the rest of the TNA brass don't seem to realize is that it's only the casual or old-time wrestling fan who will be fooled into believing this is a big deal, and most don't care enough about the business at this point in its history to tune in to see Hogan.
(There is the arguement that TNA's young talent, like the aforementioned Styles, Daniels, Joe, Guns and the X Division, could be enough to keep them tuning in, but said talent has been sadly mis-booked for some time now. If TNA had a Heyman or Cornette at the helm, that might change. Bischoff, it was proven couldn't, and Hogan wouldn't book the high-flying cruiserweight-type talent of the X Division if his life depended on it.)
The modern day wrestling fans, much smaller in number than what they nor Vince McMahon want to admit are already united in their distrust of Hogan's presence in TNA. While they may follow the future happenings in TNA, they'll do so from a distance or the same way most people will view a car wreck. They may slow down to see how gory it is, but then they'll speed away.
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