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| More should have been done with that headgear Screen Grab via TNA's YouTube recap |
So, what I managed to find was very interesting. First of all, I'm a sucker for old-school wrestling. I actually came off my wrestling hiatus by watching the classics. In fact, the match that drew me back in was Greg "The Hammer" Valentine and the Junkyard Dog at WrestleMania I, a match that consisted mostly of Valentine dominating by working on the leg to set up the figure four. JYD then mounted his comeback, and I felt invested back into the product. Watching the whole match revolve around the idea of Valentine locking in the figure four made it seem as though there something to look forward to, or in JYD's case, something to keep away from.
I really feel like in the post-Attitude Era, more wrestlers are influenced by the wild brawling of Undertaker, Steve Austin, and Mick Foley rather than the technical mantel taken up by the likes of CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. Don't get me wrong; I still marked out hard for those guys and enjoyed the heck out of that era. But even guys like Austin and Foley were watching guys like Valentine and JYD before them, and they took interest in psychology (Austin was even a damn good technician before getting dropped on his head).
Something that actually got to me while watching Impact was the match between Jay Bradley and Joseph Park. First of all, I couldn't really care less about Jay Bradley. He doesn't really seem that charismatic to me, nor does he seem like much of a worker. Therefore, I don't want to pin too much of this on Joseph Park, Esq. However, you would think that an experienced worker such as himself (or even Eric Young at ringside) could have orchestrated the match better, in my opinion.
The psychology behind the match began with a backstage segment between Young and Park (which was awesome, by the way). Young told Park that he couldn't keep getting disqualified for going crazy whenever he saw his own blood, so he had an idea to help. As the match began, Young gave Park a boxing headgear, which invariably was meant to keep him from getting busted open. So, the idea should've been that either Park would win clean or the headgear had something to do with the finish of the match, right?
Nope.
This is TNA we're talking about here. The match actually did utilize the headgear near the end as Bradley pulled off the equipment and threw it (violently) at Young. Bradley then slowly came back to Park, reached down and motioned for his finish. Bradley then rushed off the ropes to hit the Boomstick, but Park countered with a Samoan Drop (that commentary refered to as a back drop *gag*) to get the victory.
I could probably accept this finish if the timing was a bit better. Maybe Bradley should've thrown the headgear at Young, turned around, rushed to Park, and THEN got hit with the Samoan. I could even see Park getting bloodied after removing the headgear and then going crazy on Bradley until he picked up the win. It didn't have to be another disqualification. Quite honestly, I think that there are a thousand different ways that they could have gone with the finish that would have produced a better psychology with the headgear.
Professional wrestling is a tricky business. Timing is everything, and there's so much to learn as a worker that some things go unnoticed. This just seemed to glare to me while watching Impact last night. Throw out the whole Tito Ortiz thing, and this finish was what really resonated with me the most. Is this why TNA will never be on the WWE's level? If they start with the minor nuances, could they increase the outlook on their overall performance? It just seems to me that there's got to be a starting point. And while they're focusing now on bringing in big stars to get ratings, let's fix the matches to start with and see if we could actually make something out of this product.