WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2017

This evening, the Class of 2017 will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. This year, it is a really good class so let's look at the inductees.

"Ravishing" Rick Rude
Rick Rude was a tremendous wrestler who had a gimmick of an arrogant ladies' man. He is best known during the Hulkamania era for his feud with The Ultimate Warrior. For people who watched both WWE and WCW during the Monday Night Wars will also remember from when he appeared on both shows at the same time in 1997. He won the WCW International World Championship 3 times, the Intercontinental Championship once and the WCW United States Championship once. He passed away in 1999 but he is well remembered and he will be inducted by Ricky Steamboat.

The Rock 'n' Roll Express
Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson formed the Rock 'n' Roll Express in the 1980s and they worked in various promotions including the NWA, WCW, TNA and WWE. They won eighteen Tag Team Championships during their time and they will be inducted by Jim Cornette.

Theodroe Long
Teddy Long had been in wrestling for years in WCW and WWE as a manger and a referee. He is most recently known as the long time General Manager of Smackdown and for making tag team matches at every opportunity. He will be inducted by John "Bradshaw" Layfield and Ron Simmons.

Beth Phoenix
One of my favourite female wrestlers in recent memory. Whilst she was a great talent, it was in an era where women's wrestling was fucking horrible. Despite that and being in horrible creative decisons, he was a shining light in that era and she went on to become a one time Divas Champion and a three time WWE Women's Champion. She will be inducted by Natalya.

Eric LeGrand
This year's winner of the Warrior Award got paralysed while playing American Football for Rutgers University against the Army in 2010. He has since gone on to become a motivational speaker.

Diamond Dallas Page
Dallas Page started out as a manager in the AWA and WCW before becoming a wrestler in 1991. He went on to win 10 Championships in WCW, including the World Championship 3 times. Page was one of the few shining lights in the catastrophic Russo/Bischoff era and in WWE, he won 2 more Championships. Page will be inducted Eric Bischoff.

Kurt Angle
Before becoming a professional wrestler, Angle won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics. After a very brief stint in ECW, he joined WWF and went on to win 11 Championships and the King of the Ring there. After he left WWE, he went to TNA and won 9 more Championships. He will be inducted by John Cena.

A Slap to the Face

In an earlier article, I wrote about what TNA will do with Bobby Roode after his Bound for Glory match with Kurt Angle for the TNA World Championship. If you haven’t read it (and you should because, not being biased, it’s a great article), the two options that I gave were for either Roode to continue on his quest and eventually become World Champion; or for Roode to go back to tag team wrestling with Beer Money Inc.

On the following Impact after Bound for Glory, TNA decided to go with a third option: completely fuck Bobby Roode over. I heard about this on Friday afternoon but I had to wait until Sunday to see how it went down.  With the company now back under the control of Dixie Carter, she appointed Sting to run the day to day operations of Impact. Kurt Angle came out to boast about cheating beating Roode, prompting Roode to come out. Sting made a match between Angle and Roode for later on that match. Unfortunately, that match was shot down almost instantly, as Angle pointed out that the contract for the match at Bound for Glory said that Roode could not get a rematch if he lost. James Storm came out and promptly challenged Angle instead, which Sting agreed to.

The match itself was a joke. It consisted of Angle continually beating the crap out of Storm in the corner and arguing with the referee. Angle put his arms in celebration, turns round and walks into a Last Call by Storm and he gets the pin becoming TNA Champion. It lasted less than 90 seconds. Understandably, the match couldn’t last long due to Angle’s injury, but I hate matches in which one man would be completely dominant and then have his opponent do just one move to win the match.

This makes no sense to me and I feel really sorry for Bobby Roode. The Bound for Glory Series took place over 3 months and when Roode won that, TNA had videos of him speaking about his family, his background and the match with Angle. I thought it would be crazy for TNA to do all that and then let Roode lose. Apparently, it was all set for Roode to become the TNA World Champion, but Hulk Hogan thought otherwise and it was changed at the last minute.

If I was Bobby Roode, who has been with the company for years, I would feel that it was a slap to the face. TNA had plenty of time to decide who was going to win the Bound for Glory Series and to see if that person would win the TNA World Championship. More importantly, Hulk Hogan had plenty of time to decide if Roode was ready or not. If Hogan thought Roode wasn’t ready, he should have told TNA a long time ago, and that way they could have arranged for someone else to win the Series. For that to happen to Roode, and then have his partner win the title a couple of days later, must be heartbreaking.

There’s no doubt that this will result in a feud between Roode and Storm. This could go one of two ways with one of them turning heel. You could have Roode slowly turning heel as he gets jealous over Storm being the champion; or you could have Storm turning heel by him becoming arrogant and saying that he doesn’t need Roode or his Fortune teammates any longer, perhaps developing his character away from the cowboy persona.

It might seem as if I’m shitting all over James Storm and I’m not. I’m interested to see how he will do as champion. However, the fact remains that Roode has been completely screwed over by one man. I don’t even get why Hogan did it as he didn’t do it in order to benefit him. Hogan, due to his success, has a massively overinflated ego, which has been damaging to other people (WCW being a prime example). If TNA want to become anywhere near as successful as WWE, they need to start building new stars and take risks. Hogan needs to realise that, otherwise TNA could end up like WCW.

What Will TNA Do With Bobby Roode?

On Wednesday night, I got to see the TNA’s flagship event Bound for Glory. TNA is shown on Challenge TV in the UK, and they show Impact on a Sunday night (repeated on Tuesday), Xplosion (which is crap) on a Wednesday and the PPVs on a Wednesday (Xplosion gets moved to Tuesday when that happens).

I thought the event was pretty solid with some good wrestling, although I really can’t explain Hulk Hogan suddenly turning face and being best friends with Sting. The main event had Kurt Angle defending his TNA World Championship against Bobby Roode. Roode had won the Bound for Glory Series against 11 other wrestlers to become the No. 1 contender. After Roode won the series at No Surrender, there were a few videos really building him up. Angle, taking advantage of his new position in Immortal, had Roode facing his fellow members of Fortune, AJ Styles, Kazarian and James Storm; followed by a handicap against Gunner and Jeff Jarrett in the weeks before Bound for Glory.

I wasn’t sure who was going to win this match. With Angle being part of Immortal, my shenanigans sense was going wildly (which happens constantly with any match involving Immortal), so I can see Angle retaining. However, the way that they built Bobby Roode, especially over the last month, made me think that TNA wouldn’t waste all that time doing this build up for him to just lose.

Some of the highlights were Roode reversing Angle’s attempt at a moonsault into a throwaway back suplex, sending Angle halfway across the ring; Angle managing to reverse a crossface into an ankle lock; and Roode getting out of another ankle lock and then hitting a Spinebuster. The end had its typical TNA screwjob with Angle hitting an Angle Slam and getting the pin despite referee Brian Hebner missing not only Roode’s arm under the bottom rope, but Angle holding onto the middle rope for leverage. The match wasn’t the best of the night although I was impressed with Angle’s performance, especially since he was carrying a leg injury. My main criticism of the match is that Roode went for the crossface submission manoeuvre way too often for me (it was least 5 or 6 times).

There’re reports on the internet stating that the plan was to Roode to become TNA World Champion. However, Hulk Hogan thought that Roode wasn’t ready to become a main eventer and carry the company. This seemed to be supported by the fact that Hogan criticised Roode in a radio interview before Bound for Glory, prompting AJ Styles to defend Roode. Therefore, the TNA writers decided to have Angle retain. This doesn’t make sense to me as Angle was carrying an injury going into this match so Roode could have won it even if it’s just for a few days.

The question is now what to do with Bobby Roode. They could continue with the build and have him win the World Championship.  If TNA do that, they have two (maybe 3 feuds) built in. Obviously, he would have a feud with Kurt Angle; but he could have a slow building feud with his Beer Money Inc. partner James Storm with Storm slowly getting jealous of Roode and turning heel. Maybe even one with AJ Styles in the future as Styles is the only one in Fortune who has been a World Champion and Styles could grow increasingly unhappy with the way Roode has been acting as champion. Roode could turn heel with this. However, except for Sting, the last few champions have been associated with Immortal and it would be nice to have more faces as potential Champions.

The other is for Roode to go back to tag team wrestling with Beer Money. At the minute, there seems to be only 3 other tag teams (Ink Inc, British Invasion and current champions Mexican America) and TNA don’t really seem that interested in that division. With the way that both members have been performing in single matches, it would be crazy to effectively put them back there. It would be slightly similar to what happened to R-Truth in the WWE. Over the Spring, R-Truth was becoming one of the hottest heels in the company and had a WWE title shot against John Cena at Capitol Punishment. Even though he lost, I thought that he would get another chance at Money in the Bank. However, WWE went with CM Punk and his “leaving the company with the title” angle, which was vastly superior to anything that they would have done with Truth and he ended up teaming up with The Miz.

Personally, I’m not quite sure yet if Bobby Roode is ready to be a TNA World Champion. However, they can’t depend on people like Sting and Angle carrying the company for ever and it may be time to build a new star. I think that TNA has some good wrestlers (especially Austin Aries and Bully Ray) and a decent women’s division. I just think that with Vince Russo, it has been a creative mess. Hopefully, with Bruce Pritchard becoming head writer and Dave Laguna joining the company, it will start to get better. For that to happen they need to create some new main eventers and Bobby Roode may be that man.