At the close of No Surrender, Jim Cornette announced that TNA Impact was moving into primetime at 9 PM on Thursday, November 9. Cornette went on to say that the time change isn’t the big announcement. A Kurt Angle video aired concluding with a closeup of Angle saying “It’s real. It’s damn real!”
So TNA had three big events surrounding No Surrender: Vince Russo rejoins the Creative Committee, Impact moving into a prime time slot and Kurt Angle. Do any of these change the face of TNA or wrestling, no. For all the hype, I expected more. Kurt Angle is mentally and physically beat up and you can’t convince me that a few weeks of rest has him ready to go at 100%. I expected something along of the lines of TNA going to two hours, possibly up against one of WWE’s shows or maybe the signing of Brock Lesner or Bill Goldberg.
And I am a little suprised that Angle jumped ship like this. Angle seemed very loyal to the WWE and I was shocked at his release. And I would wager that Vince released Angle to rehab himself, not sign with a rival promotion. Angle blew more smoke about the situation by leaking his interest in MMA. This whole Angle situation seems a little shady and takes away credibility from both Angle and TNA. I’m not one to agree with the likes of Jim Ross, but he is right on the money criticizing TNA for trying to copy the WWE. I can only question what logic the people running TNA are using for these recent moves. Vince Russo will not take TNA to the next level and neither will Kurt Angle. These kind of decisions are the reason why TNA will always be what it always is and certainly not a legitimate competitor to the WWE. What are your thoughts about TNA’s recent moves?
WWE’s third brand, Extreme Championship Wrestling, is here to stay. The SciFi Network announced the following this morning:
SCI FI CHANNEL EXTENDS ECW
New York, N.Y., August 31, 2006 – SCI FI Channel today announced it will keep its new hit program, ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling®), on the network through at least the end of 2007. ECW is produced by World Wrestling Entertainment®, the producer of the No. 1 weekly basic cable TV series, “Monday Night RAW®” on USA Network.
Continue reading SciFi Extends ECW Through 2007
For those who forgot, Raw will air tonight live at 9 PM Eastern on the Sci Fi Network for this week only. For those of you who do not receive SciFi, the show will also air at 11 PM Eastern on USA Network.
After only announcing a 20 man battle royal with 10 WWE wrestlers and 10 ECW wrestlers for Wednesday’s USA Network special, WWE.com has just added the following two matches to the show:
WWE Champion John Cena vs. Sabu and World Champion Rey Mysterio vs. Rob Van Dam.
World Wrestling Entertainment issued a press release, finally confirming the return of Extreme Championship Wrestling as a third brand for the company that will be airing on the SciFi Channel.
The first episode of the WWE’s Extreme Championship Wrestling TV series will be taped on 6/13 in Trenton, New Jersey and will air the same evening. The date was confirmed this morning in a Hollywood Reporter article about WWE reviving ECW and bringing it to the network.
Sci Fi Network President Bonnie Hammer was quoted as saying the series would have a test run as a summer series, but could get a longer pickup if it proved to be successful for the network.