Ask FK... 04

Do you think that when TNA has a strong X-Divison years from now, they should create the X-Division tag team titles?

No. There would be no point. There's no reason why those guys shouldn't be going after the normal tag team titles. And the more championships you have, the less important they all become. Inevitably one set of tag titles would take a back seat and look inferior. Look at what happened to the Knockout tag titles as a cautionary tale about why that wouldn't work.


Do you think Magnus will win the world title, I was hoping for Roode, but Magnus is cool with me to?

All signs point to Magnus being the next world champion. They've been building him up to win it and it would probably be a good business move with the UK tour not far off. That said, I think they need to put more heat on his character before he wins it and hopefully that will happen soon.


Do you think Magnus is ready to be world champ? A lot of people seem to be criticizing him about not being ready

If he's not 100% there yet, I think he's close enough that he could fake it at least. Give him some strong opponents like AJ to help him along and he should do fine. IMO it's not so much a question of him being ready as it is about the company putting enough heat on him. If he's going to win the world title tournament, he's kind of coming in under the radar because while he has been built up, he's not getting an incredible amount of attention yet. They should be devoting more screen time to him, giving him a more high profile role, making sure his character is as hot as possible if/when he wins it. Him being the world champ when they go on the UK tour should help with that, but this is a critical period for his character and they have to be careful not to drop the ball him.


What do you think about tna's decision to record commentary during post production as opposed to the commentators doing it at ringside?

Giving themselves the option of post-producing and editing Taz's commentary could only be an improvement. I'm surprised they didn't start doing this a lot sooner.


for every one good idea vince russo had, would you say that he had 100 bad ones?

That's hard to answer because in a lot of cases we don't know exactly which ideas over the years have been his and which ones he just contributed to or had a hand in.

Here's the thing about Russo. He has a lot of ideas. Some of them are good and some of them are awful. He is capable of coming up with good storylines, but he has two big problems that would constantly get in the way:

#1) Even if he could come up with a good idea, he would have little to no clue how to execute it effectively. Plenty of times, angles he wrote would start off great, but completely fall apart before they concluded, if they even concluded at all and weren't just dropped uncerimoniously with no explanation. There were a lot of times during his run as head writer in TNA that I had no idea if a feud he booked was finished or if it was still going on.

#2) Either he isn't able to tell which of his ideas are good and which ones are bad, or worse, he simply doesn't care. It's part of his booking philosophy where he lives and dies by the quarter hour ratings, and just books whatever he thinks is going to draw eyeballs to the screen at that particular moment even if it's complete garbage or makes no sense whatsoever. If he thinks people will watch it, he doesn't seem to care very much about the actual quality.

"Car Wreck TV" is a good way to explain it. If you drive passed a gruesome car wreck on the highway with mangled human corpses strewn all over the place, most people are probably going to slow down and take a good look at it. It doesn't mean the horrific sight is a good thing, just that it's something people can't help but look at, even if they hate themselves for it and want to forget it afterward. That's kind of what Russo's booking style is like. It might be good, it might bad, it might be absolutely awful, but either way, casual fans may be compelled to watch just for the spectacle of it.


Which Tag Team from the Indies do you want to see in TNA?

I think TMDK should be signed. They had a tryout a while back and I thought TNA should have picked them up then. They need some new tag teams, and Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls are not only a solid team, but they both have personalities and are good on the mic as well. And I like the combination of styles they bring with one a high flyer and the other more of a grappler. TNA doesn't have any teams like that right now, so I think they would stand out nicely.


The bromans were booked horribly (jobbers until the day they won the title) but if they weren't would you still hate them. I don't think they're that bad in the ring especially Jessie and they've got charisma. I don't think they're a bad tag team.

I'd still hate them because I find their gimmick stupid and irritating, and think Robbie E is just a lazy, untalented clown (Jessie seems to be improving though). However, IF they had been built up organically prior to winning the titles, I might at least be able to believe that they could be the tag team champions. I wouldn't like it, but I might believe it.

The problem is they were the biggest jobbers on the roster up until the day they won the titles. They couldn't win a match if you put a gun to their heads and were getting embarrassed out of the arena on a weekly basis. TNA did everything in their power to make these guys look like the biggest losers imaginable and never gave us a single reason to take them seriously in any way. And then suddenly, just like that, with no build up whatsoever, they're the tag team champions and we're now supposed to believe that they can actually beat people and win matches? It doesn't work like that.

Their characters were never set up for this. We've been given no reason to believe in them whatsoever. So now when I see them with the tag team titles, beating guys like James Storm, I just shake my head and call bullshit. TNA conditioned us to think that the Bromance were a total joke and then made them the tag team champions without bothering to rectify that or trying to change our perception of them. It's like they went from Point A to Point C and skipped over Point B entirely, forgetting that Point B was a necessary step they needed to take in order for Point C to work.


Do you think Chavo Guerrero deserve all the hate he's been giving?

I don't think he deserves it on a personal level because he seems like a good person and a decent human being, but I think he does invite a lot of criticism on himself by continuing to stick around when it's clearly time for him to step away from the limelight. His wrestling is still good, but you can see how age is catching up with him, he has a big gaping hole where charisma should be and his mic skills are just embarrassing at this point. You'd think now would be a good time for him to bow out gracefully and take a backstage role, but that's not happening. I think the criticism comes from people looking at Chavo and seeing a guy who's trying to hold on to his spot for too long and not really doing anything to deserve it other than just coasting off his last name.


Regarding TNA free PPVs on Spike.. What's your take on this idea? Making the "Free PPV on Impact" really seem special by making them 3 hours just like a regular PPV? To me, that would set them apart than just another edition of Impact with a PPV title.

Making the PPV-themed iMPACTs 3 hours long would probably solve a lot of problems. Turning Point in particular suffered from having too much content and not enough time for it all. The issue is actually getting that extra hour. They've had so much trouble getting additional TV time/programming, there must be road blocks impeding that process that we don't know about. I imagine they'd take the extra hour for the PPV specials if they could get it, but that doesn't appear to be an option at the moment.


What do you think the most realistic or reasonable way to either bring back or reimagine the television championship?

First of all, they shouldn't bother bringing it back until they get additional TV time. Right now they just don't have the time available to showcase another championship, and they've proven that. If/When that happens and they decide to bring it back, they should really just kill the title and create a new one.

The TV title might as well be cursed. It was introduced as a joke, had an embarrassing championship history and been marginalized for years. That belt will never mean anything, so they shouldn't waste their time trying to force a round peg into a square hole. The TV title is trash; let's just discontinue it and introduce a new secondary title that they can treat appropriately this time.