In Memoriam

Just a note, really. My thoughts are with the family, friends and colleagues of Elisabeth Sladen. They are also with the much larger circle of people, myself included, who loved her portrayal of Sarah Jane Smith. "There's nothing just about being a girl".

MYOPEDIA: TNA Impact - "Hogan's Law"

While I will be reviewing various different wrestling shows in depth, today I'm going to skim over the events of last night's episode of Total Non-Stop Action. Partly because it's sunny outside and I want to go for a walk while still getting my wordcount in for the day, but partly because there really wasn't a lot to say. There wasn't a lot of plot, and there wasn't a great deal of wrestling. Instead, the card was full of multiple-person matches, designed to keep the risk of injury to a minimum. Given that the next TNA show was a pay-per-view, and promoted as a particularly dangerous one to boot, it wasn't a large surprise.

There were only three one-on-one matches booked (and no matches at all for the women. Boo.) - a best of three series between Fortune and Immortal. But when the third match was announced, at the top of the show, as involving the 62-year old Ric Flair of Immortal, I became fairly sure that Fortune would lose 2-0. So it proved.

But a thought has occurred to me, concerning the story about an unknown figure at The Network, who keeps on putting their oar in and wrecking Immortal's plans. After World Championship Wrestling went under in the '90s, the man who had nearly beaten the WWF WWE at their own game was one Eric Bischoff. He's working for TNA now. So are most of the people he brought to that company, including Hulk Hogan. And Bischoff was adamant in his belief that, had WCW's owner Ted "CNN" Turner not given up and pulled funding, then it would have been the WWF that lost.

My guess, for what it's worth, is that this unknown figure is either on-screen former company owner Dixie Carter, or Ric Flair playing both sides against the middle. But I don't think that really matters. The whole 16-month tenure of Bischoff & Hogan at TNA is really about the failure of WCW, and why it happened. In short, Eric is trying to rewrite wrestling history to match his own ideas, and to refute the way that WCW was presented in the 18 months originally following its purchase by Vince McMahon. But he's the only one who really cares. Most of the fans don't. Hell, most of the fans were barely in grade/infant school when this stuff was happening. If I'm right, it explains a lot.

Tomorrow, Myopedia will feature a review of TNA Lockdown, and I shall strive to put another, non-wrestling piece up too. Friday should feature a review of Sarita Mandanna's "Tiger Hills", a recent pick of Channel 4's "TV Book Club". As I used to say at The Unrated Experience at this point: peace, off.