Dr. Darin Davis

I’m not talking about “The Franchise” Shane Douglas.

Shortly after Matt Morgan entered into a co-promotion with game producer/publisher NCSoft where his “DNA was going to be shot into space“, the company has announced they are shutting down the massively-multiplayer online game that he was promoting: Tabula Rasa. Not only that, but NCSoft CEO and Tabula Rasa producer, famous game creator Richard “Lord British” Garriott, has announced that he is leaving the company. Garriott was the one to take Morgan’s DNA to the international space station (eeww!).

Just a coincidence, or does Morgan suck the talent and lifeforce out of everything he touches?

Last week, referee interference caused Sheik Abdul Bashir (a.k.a. Shawn Daivari) to lose the X Division title. On this week’s edition of TNA Impact, Jim Cornette reversed the decision and gave Bashir the belt back.

Looks like they did the right thing.

Not sure where this is leading with referee Shane Sewell. Maybe a Bashir-Sewell match? I’m guessing Bashir is going to try to get Sewell fired by making him violate his probation of not having physical contact.

Sheik Abdul Bashir (a.k.a. Shawn Daivari)

Sheik Abdul Bashir (a.k.a. Shawn Daivari) was robbed of the TNA X-Division title when the referee in the match attacked Bashir, giving opponent Eric Young the chance to make the 3-count and win the match.

TNA referee Shane Sewell, a former Canadian wrestler, has had a couple of altercations with Bashir in the past, but they were always post match. This is the first that actually affected the outcome.

It’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t need involvement from TNA management to reverse the decision on that, but I wouldn’t count on them doing the right thing.

The only good outcome of this is that if the decision sticks, it looks like it may cause a split in the “good guys” locker room, creating a third faction. When there are more than just “good guys” and “bad guys”, things can get interesting.

Just happened to see on the Pro Wrestling Torch web site that the “Hitman” Bret Hart is going to be at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN at 6:00pm on Thursday Nov 20th. He’ll be signing his autobiography, “Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling” at the Nickelodeon Universe store.

I wasn’t planning on going, but I thought I’d pass it along. Tour dates for other cities can be found in the same article.

There is an interview at PW Torch where Hart says he’s saying goodbye to the wrestling business after the book tour:

“I’d be happy being remembered for really brilliant storytelling in my matches, not for some last chance to snap up some money,”…“I respectfully understand my light in wrestling is fading. I can live with that.”

“I just wanted people – even my kids – to walk in my shoes and know that it was never easy being gone all the time. I was pretty much on the road for 300 days a year and that didn’t include travel back and forth.”

You can find more information at Bret Hart’s official site.

Ed Sharkey

Back when I was still participating in wrestling camp, a crew was filming a documentary about one of my trainers, Eddie Sharkey, and about a few other wrestlers in the Minneapolis area. I had forgotten about this, but I just stumbled across it recently.

You can see excerpts of the short film and hear audio clips at the documentary site. It doesn’t look like the film is available for sale or rent, unfortunately. The film is called The Minneapolis Wrestling Club.

You can find an audio clip of Sharkey on their site, where he talks about Harley Race and himself getting in a fight with a couple of people from the crowd in Denver, CO.

Eddie’s bio on the site:

Eddie Sharkey wrestled from the early 1960s to 1972. He retired and stayed out of wrestling for a number of years. Eventually he was lured back into the business by some younger wrestlers who asked if he would train them. These wrestlers – Jesse Ventura and the Road Warriors – eventually went on to some success. Sharkey still runs a wrestling school in the Twin Cities and referees matches throughout the Upper Midwest [at the time the documentary was filmed].

There is also a short video clip of Sharkey available in the excerpts (QuickTime). In the background you can see me wrestling Terry Fox in our training ring. The referee was “Rough Rod”. Over on the far right of the screen you can see Scott Free and Hellraiser Gutz (who is currently in the WWE as Bam Neely) standing on the apron.

The second part of the clip shows a battle royal. If you don’t blink, you can see me for a few frames wrestling in a black tank top. Eddie is the ref in that match.

Also part of the documentary is a profile of “Sodbuster” Kenny Jay. I wrestled Kenny twice. The first time I wrestled him he was 63 years old (that is not a typo). That was back in 1999. Wayne McCarty has pictures on his blog of Kenny wrestling in June of 2008! Do the math on that one!

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I was thinking about keeping track of the actual Nielsen ratings for wrestling TV programs in addition to tracking my own viewing habits. Here’s why I don’t think I’ll ever do it:

A story last week stated that ECW had the lowest rating in its history (or something similar). Was it that bad of a program? No, the ratings were down because of the presidential election.

I’m trying to measure the quality of the programming. The ratings are not direct measure of quality or how enjoyable the program was to a wrestling fan. The ratings can be/are affected by the enjoyment, but they can also be affected by other factors.

The ratings measure how many people (wrestling fan and non-wrestling fan) decided to watch the programming rather than doing one of a million other possible things they had available to them. They could have decided to watch another program, play a video game, read a book, or believe it or not even go outside.

BTW, “share” is a measure of how many people that decided to watch TV watched a given program. It is a percentage of the total viewers during that time period. A “10″ share would mean 10 percent of the people who were watching TV at the time were watching that program.

I’m more interested in what wrestling fans that watched the program thought of it than whether or not the general population watched it.

As a follow-up on an earlier story about the WWE getting into Japan and heading back to the ’80s, I’ve read a few posts where people are wondering if TNA will step up to the plate and fill the void (if there ends up being a void) of wrestling programming for those of us that are more than 14 years old.

From Wrestle World- New “Kid Friendly” Direction for WWE, could this be TNA’s opening?:

WWE has been taking a drastically more Kid Friendly direction. The storylines are cleaner, less sex less violence… They have brought back the classic heel/face story lines. Gone are the days of grey area. What about TNA you ask? Well, Mick Foley seems to think its worth a shot. And if it’s good enough for Mick, it’s good enough for me.

JustJeff09 writes about TNA:

I’ve been TIVO’ing TNA for the last year or so and I find myself fast forwarding less and less. I’m a huge mark for the X Division guys… TNA is faster paced with better storylines. The mix of old WWE’ers with the new generation works well.

I wrote a post called Circling the Bowl? back in January about some of my problems with the TNA product. The main problems I have with them is that they seem to be copying some of the WWE or WCW angles or ideas when they could be doing so much more with the talent they have.

Another post on Wrestle World- Ways to Improve TNA:

…if TNA continues running its program they way it is now, I don’t think Vince will be losing any sleep… TNA needs to stop ripping off WWE and attempting to be the same company. Remember WCW? How did that end. ECW at least used to offer an alternative… TNA also has the X Division which is amazing. It is actually exciting to watch. TNA also has a new interesting story line with the MME (main event mafia) vs young talent.

I agree with most of what they have to say, except for the MME. The whole Main Event Mafia thing has gotten a favorable reception, but it smells like the NWO to me (except in this case it would be the OWO: The Old World Order). The thing that made the NWO interesting was that it hadn’t been done before (at least in the time that I’ve been watching wrestling), and that it introduced shades of gray- an alternative to just “good guys” and “bad guys”. You could argue that the lack of respect that Sting is complaining about and the “young lions” disagreement with that could have fans cheering or booing either side. But I haven’t seen anything to make me think they aren’t going to just duplicate what’s already been done instead of taking it to another level.

From Off The Mat- Changing the face of wresting forever:

How many times have we heard that from TNA, WWE, WCW, et all? I’m all for the hype, but seriously. Do we need yet another earth-shattering announcement that will cause the world to spin off its axis and hurtle uncontrollably at the sun?… There is simply no way to live up to that pronouncement.

It will only end up “changing the face of wrestling” if we’re able to look back on this and say that it was the beginning of a legitimate competitor to the WWE. Otherwise it’s just another angle.

From Pinakin’s Weblog- I’m Glad:

i’m glad…That TNA has started revamping themselves in a big way and stepping up the non-wrestling aspect of their shows… The wrestling was always there. (Many times it has been better in the TNA ring than anywhere else) But the one thing they lacked was the high quality production values…

While I’m usually not as interested in the non-wrestling aspects of the shows, it’s probably because they’re bad (or that they could be better). I see his point. I would agree that making the production better would help. Part of that is not copying everyone else.

Will TNA step up? Only time will tell.

I’ll continue to track the amount of time I view the program to see if anything changes.

I think Evan Bourne being out of action for possibly the next few months will affect the already low amount of time I spend watching ECW. His matches were definitely ones that I wouldn’t fast forward through.

Other than having to sit on the sidelines when you are on a hot streak and being given a major push in the promotion, what’s the worst part of severely injuring your right ankle in a match? Having to sell the left one because that’s what your opponent(s) are beating on.

If you didn’t see the tag team match on ECW last week, Bourne did a somersault outside the ring on Bam Neely (another shameless plug for Bam) and came down wrong on this right ankle (we’d later find out that it was a dislocated ankle and ligament tear). After the injury, he finished out the rest of the match with his opponents working over his left leg for the duration. I was cringing watching it because I was aware that it was the wrong wheel. And I knew that to do a good job selling the left leg he would have stop using it. So for about ten minutes he had to hop around on his dislocated, torn right ankle to let everyone know how badly the left one had been pummelled.