Another week in professional wrestling that saw a TNA PPV actually be a little better than usual and then the company ruin it all by having the main event of Impact be two coffin dodgers wrestling in what seemed to be slow motion. In the WWE you had most of the heels emerge triumphant in build up to their matches at Night of Champions, hopefully that bodes well for the heels of the WWE and doesn’t just mean that they are setting us up for a fall and a face-friendly PPV, because no one wants that now do they. All we can do is look ahead and get on with the report…

Weekly Top Ten:

1st Place: Mark Henry (10/10)

Once again the World’s Strongest Man dominates the heel chart with more momentum for a challenger going into a title match than, any heel challenger certainly, in recent memory. Even now though I am sceptical about Henry’s chances, the only thing going for him besides his ability to run in and beat the crap out of people is that they are making such a big deal out of Henry never winning a world title that if he loses it will just be really harsh on the part of the WWE and they will have killed all of the momentum that he has been building over the past few months. Will the Viper bow to the Silverback?

2nd Place: The Miz (9/10)

The Miz has finally risen in the chart again after weeks of near stagnation. It looks like his partnership with R-Truth is paying off, although whether it will result in the tag team championships remains to be seen. Again it is unlikely that The Awesome Truth will beat Air-Boom so soon after the teams were formed. Still if they do win, it doesn’t mean the end of everything as they can just continue the rivalry with the titles going back and forth. The tag team division is great because multiple title changes don’t always hurt it , as long as it is between the same teams. You just need a whole bunch of specialty matches thrown in every other PPV and you could extend the whole thing for ages, possibly throwing other teams into the mix every now and then.

3rd Place: Alberto Del Rio (8/10)

The WWE champion might have lost this week but he did so in true heel champion style by using his lacky as a human shield and then abandoning him to get creamed, by a geriatric who performed one move…so it was basically an evenly pitted match. Del Rio has done little to get people excited for the match at Night of Champions, from an impartial standpoint no one wants to see him retain but no one really want’s Cena to win, so whatever happens will probably be fine. I really was expecting more out of Del Rio as champion but hopefully after this shaky first month things will pick up, that is if he can retain of course.

4th Place: R-Truth (7/10)

Miz’s partner in crime comes just a bit below him after having a match with one half of Air-Boom that wasn’t exactly as competitive. The highlight of the match between him and Bourne for me was the Miz’s commentary. But saying that his new rap before the match was pretty decent and saw the return of the gimmick they tried at the start of their partnership of saying “You suck!” to the crowd in time with the music, a kind of reverse Angle if you will. The team together has a lot of potential and I hope they go far together while they don’t have anything to do as singles competitors.

5th Place: Beth Phoenix (6/10)

The future divas champion comes in quite high on the chart this week on the road to Night of Champions. She destroyed AJ on Smackdown, not a hard task but she looked good doing it, so did AJ but that’s beside the point. To me her win over Kelly Kelly for the title is assumed.

6th Place: Cody Rhodes (5/10)

The Clear-Masked Man took a step in the right direction this week with his win over the World Heavyweight Champion on Raw. He was brought down though by being attacked by DiBiase on Smackdown to set up their match at Night of Champions. As quick as this match has been booked I can’t see DiBiase even having a chance of winning against Rhodes, it just wouldn’t make sense.

7th Place: Maxine (4/10)

The hottest new diva on the roster gets another win on NXT against poor little AJ and looks to be in good stead to eventually make it onto the main roster soon enough. For now I’m glad Maxine is being kept on NXT as there really is no space for her while the Bellas and the Divas of Doom are dominating the heel side of the divas division, but maybe in a few months she might be able to pull something off.

8th Place: Christian (3/10)

The two time world champion is still trying to find his footing after his long feud with Orton. Christian looks to be settling into an upper mid-card feud with the Celtic Warrior Sheamus, one that just like with Orton he probably won’t come out of on top. Still it’s better than dropping out into obscurity or perhaps even being made into a tag team like Truth and the Miz have had to do. I suppose the question is whether you would prefer to be on to in the lower card or be on the bottom in the upper mid-card?

9th Place: JTG (2/10)

A surprise entry is a guy who has been doing solid work on NXT despite the fact that his rookie got eliminated weeks ago. Seriously that show has lost almost all point and yet it is still watchable for the wrestling put on by Barretta and Kidd, and the occasional goodness that comes from JTG on the mic.

10th Place: Brotus Clay (1/10)

A man who came from NXT and needs to go back there immediately. It’s widely covered that Clay has been having nothing but squash matches on Superstars for over a month and this week is no different. Then again a win is a win and it gets him onto the chart over some much more deserving heels who didn’t manage to win their matches this week. It’s not fair but it is what it is, at this rate Clay will have a better win-loss record than anyone else on either roster.

2011-2012 Season Top Ten: Overall Top Ten:

1st Place: R-Truth (155/240) – 1st Place: The Miz (681/1240)

2nd Place: The Miz (137/240) – 2nd Place: C.M. Punk (666/1240)

3rd Place: Alberto Del Rio (107/240) – 3rd Place: Chris Jericho (564/1240)

4th Place: Cody Rhodes (104/240) – 4th Place: Jack Swagger (356/1240)

5th Place: Christian (102/240) – 5th Place: Cody Rhodes (341/1240)

6th Place: C.M. Punk (88/240) – 6th Place: Dolph Ziggler (311/1240)

7th Place: Mark Henry (87/240) – 7th Place: Alberto Del Rio (302/1240)

8th Place: Wade Barrett (70/240) – 8th Place: Sheamus (294/1240)

9th Place: Sheamus (51/240) – 9th Place: Wade Barrett (273/1240)

10th Place: Jack Swagger (48/240) – 10th Place: Randy Orton (224/1240)

Weekly Filler:

The Face-Off: The Great Khali

Speak about the botches with Punk and Triple H all you want but this was the real botch of recent memory. The WWE brings in this new talent and has him turn the Great Khali heel, something that then is used so inconsistently that it never gets off the ground, then you arbitrarily turn him back to being a face to run a program with the same guy that nobody cares about. Surely the perfect outcome to this angle would have been to put over Jinder Mahal and make Khali look like a dominant monster again, both of those things haven’t happened and the whole thing is just sad. I’ve been arguing for ages that the WWE needs storylines at all levels of its promotion, but if this sloppy booking and story is the result then they shouldn’t bother because they clearly did the whole thing half-arsed and don’t really care how things progress or how they end. Saying that I’m pretty sure it’s also Khali’s fault for not being able to convey anything to the crowd at all so it all falls on the shoulders of Mahal, who must be new to the WWE’s style. The whole thing is just poor, dull and isn’t worth the little airtime it has got.

Face the Facts: Robert Roode

A slow burning story that has worked is Robert Roode as the winner of the Bound for Glory Series. Now don’t get me wrong, the series in general was a shambles, with far too many storylines and dead ends, but this is TNA we are talking about, who can’t really do anything right. Yet here is a guy, who hasn’t really seen much main event action in his career and he has come out of this thing looking like a legitimate contender. Now I’ve always been a fan of Roode, he just has something about him. I liked him in Beer Money but I liked him more as the boss of Roode Inc. and think he has enough skills to carry himself over as a singles competitor and champion. It remains to be seen if he can actually beat Angle for the title, but I think he has a pretty good shot all things considered.

On the Rise: Bully Ray

On the flip side of Robert Roode there is the man he beat to become the Bound for Glory Series winner. Bully Ray, like Roode, has consistently been delivering good promos and solid matches throughout the year and really saw his peek at No Surrender as he managed to work the crowd up into a frenzy and really gave Roode someone to work with that made him look like the conquering face and someone that you wanted to see triumph. I’ve never really placed much stock in Bully Ray as a competitor, even as one half of the most decorated tag team in history, I never saw why he could get such a reaction, bar the obvious catchphrase. I’m starting to come round now as the guy almost stole the show and if the champion going into Bound for Glory was going to be a face then I would put my money on it that Bully Ray would have won and gone into TNA’s biggest PPV of the year as the challenger.

Flat-Footed: Bound For Glory Points System

Despite all this praise for the two finalists in the Bound for Glory Series, the structure of the series in general was a shambles. Multiple things went wrong and angles were changed and added constantly. One of the worst things was Morgan’s injury, which TNA were begging for by setting up a fixed angle that far from its end. Morgan was clearly the guy that TNA would get behind, judging from his promos, performance and what Hogan was saying anyway. Then the guy gets legitimately injured and your whole angle is blown. So they then backed Crimson but seemed to get cold feet and had him taken out with the rest of the guys that Samoa Joe got to. In the end when you look at the talent that was in the Series it is seriously surprising who the top four guys turned out to be and I doubt that they were exactly the four that TNA had in mind from the beginning, they are just lucky that these guys took the ball and ran with it and made the whole thing look like an overall success.

Then there is the shambles that was No Surrender in terms of points system, I’m pretty sure that most people went in thinking that it was going to be a fatal-4-way and the victor would be the overall winner of the series, then it got changed to two singles matches and I presumed that they would have the final match there as well, which they did. But the weird thing is that they set it up like that wasn’t the plan all along and that this was something the fans were getting for free. Also it was confusing because they were acting like Bully Ray would have won just on the points alone if Roode hadn’t won his first mach by submission, something that makes little sense when you look at how things were set up going in and at the beginning since nothing of the sort was mentioned until the night itself. Now I run a points system myself, with multiple guys in it, and I’ll admit it can get a little confusing, but TNA somehow seemed to go into this thing with a clear structure for how it was going to work and then at the last minute seemed to forget that and everything looked like the shambles it always does. Basically TNA managed to mess up something that should have given them the stability to get back to where they were before Hogan and Bischoff came in, in short those two are just a cancer that infect everything they touch.

That’s all for this week, be sure to check out my other report on 411mania.com on Wednesday where I will be covering everything that went on from Night of Champions as well as all the other shows running up until then. And come back next week to see how those results effected the chart sans TNA wrestlers. Hopefully Night of Champions will live up to more than being just another throw away PPV and we will end up with a result that doesn’t make the past couple of months of improvement look like it was all for nothing. For now this is James Wright signing off.

Source: wrestlingtruth.com