Too Many Babyfaces, So Little Time

With TNA forced to rewrite their big “they” angle, they [no pun intended, well maybe] were left with three extra babyfaces on their roster in the way of young upstart Crimson and veterans Scott Steiner and Kurt Angle.

While Angle is in a feud with Jeff Jarrett, Crimson has no one to wrestle [though maybe once Abyss gets back on TV, they can slug it out for the TV title]; the same thing goes for Scott Steiner. The company’s champion, Ken Anderson is a babyface too, as well is Matt Morgan, who just two months ago, looked like he was going to get a huge push.

Anderson is in the middle of a long angle with Jeff Hardy and Morgan looks like he’s about to get involved in a storyline with Hernandez, which doesn’t help either one of them. Even though they’re both massive guys with a great amount of athletic ability, the matches between the two are far from Bret Hart/Curt Hennig epics. However, the reason behind that is the ring psychology and lack of story structure, not the quality of the in-ring work. You can’t have these guys go out there and beat the crap out of each other and have no definitive reason why it’s happening. If TNA is patient and develops a decent backstory for these guys to work a reasonable angle around, then it will work.

But patience isn’t a word many would give to TNA’s creative team.

As far as the matches go from this week’s Impact!, TNA provided a mixed bag of wrestling action. On one hand, they finally took some time away from the Knockouts, who have had the longest match of the show two weeks running. At the same time, the match they had was a slow and sloppy one, with newcomer Rosita hitting a wishy-washy moonsault on the luscious Velvet Sky to end the match.

In the X-Division contest, Robbie E defeated Christopher Daniels as Suicide and Brian Kendrick, in a match that did little but show off Daniels’ ability in the ring and Kendrick’s ability to sell. If TNA is looking to save the X-Division, their idea of a number one contender’s match at the next pay per view is puzzling. Robbie E isn’t over with fans and neither are the Buck brothers.

But TNA has bigger problems, considering that the TV title is essentially vacated and they haven’t been wrestling tag matches with new teams in over a month.

Seeing Fortune square off with Immortal is interesting, but without Hogan and Abyss, Immortal is lacking some toughness. The sheer lack of a good old-school, “evil to the core” heel is hurting this angle more than anything though.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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