I haven’t seen the EliteXC show yet, but did see the Kimbo Slice fight. It reminded me exactly of the first time my friends and I saw Tank Abbott fight, which was UFC 6 in 1995 against John Matua. Tank made such an impact that night, and memories of that knockout made him a career in UFC, WCW, and even to this day he gets MMA bookings. This is despite a win-loss record that is hardly impressive, and he hasn’t looked good in a fight in 10 years.

As for Slice, he has superstar charisma. He’s not at the top level, or even middle level, as a fighter. But still, he won the fight in convincing fashion (there has been talk that his opponent took a dive, and the way he lost, it looks possible even though I think it was legit), and the crowd exploded. Tank lost on the same night he debuted, because back then, UFC did one-night tournaments, and Tank went 2-1 on his first night. The loss, in the final round to Oleg Taktarov, didn’t hamper his drawing power, and if anything, made him seem legit. He lost several fights later on, including to Vitor Belfort and Don Frye, which exposed him as a one-dimensional fighter. Slice will be exposed once he fights top guys, but right now, let’s just enjoy the moment. It has been years since we’ve seen a street fighter come in and make an impact, and damn it’s fun to watch.

So Booker T debuted with TNA last night. Good for him, as it will be good money for much less work and stress than WWE. But it’s funny to watch because he will make not one iota of a difference when it comes to ratings, PPV buys, or house show attendance. Sting and Kurt Angle were each good for one week of a bump in ratings, and one PPV that did higher than usual business. After that, it was business as usual. Yet TNA continues to pay them top dollar to employ them.

When will they learn? Never. TNA is doing the exact same ratings they were before Christian, Angle, Sting, and Booker. TNA has seen no uptick in ratings or PPVs since being moved to 9pm on Thursdays and expanding to two hours. Scott D’Amore, who was the best booker TNA ever had, was doing shows that did a 1.0 rating at Saturdays at 11pm, without Christian, Sting, Angle, or Booker. PPV business back then was even better, because the shows were great (thanks to the focus on good wrestling). TNA continues to spend more and more money on things they think will make them more money, and every single time, it comes up bust.

That’s what you get when you have Vince Russo as your booker.

TNA’s problems are so easy to solve. Make me booker and watch me turn things around. The first thing I’d do is light a match and burn that studio in Orlando to the ground. You don’t need TV tapings. UFC doesn’t do TV tapings, and they draw 10 to 20 times as many buys on PPV. All you need is match highlights, a video camera, and a producer. You produce 60-minute shows that do nothing except promote the PPVs. No matches. I repeat, NO MATCHES unless you’re showing old clips of matches like UFC does. With these 60-minute infomercials, you hype the PPVs, focusing only on the top 2 or 3 matches. And no wrestler wrestles more than 3 times per year. Chuck Liddell will fight 3 times per year, and Kurt Angle will wrestle about 60 to 75 times. Think about it.

But whatever, they wanna do things the hard way. That company is still nowhere close to being profitable, so let them go their blind and merry way out of business once again. To hell with them, and f*ck Vince Russo.

I first want to wish a happy birthday to Mrs. Wrestling Professor. Sorry to get all mushy on you all, but I love her very much for everything she has done for me. There would be no Armpit without her, because she pushed and encouraged me to keep doing it because she knew I loved it. We’ve pumped a lot of money into this site, and never got any return, so I thank her for her patience and understanding. She puts up with this silliness, and all my UFC DVDs and wrestling DVDs that take up so much space in the garage and attic. I come from a family where the wives stay home and do nothing except breed, pump out kids, and accomplish nothing with their lives. My wife is the exact opposite; she makes a damn good living, works hard, and can look back on her life and say she accomplished a Helluva lot. I hope all of you find a good woman (or man), or have already found one. As far as happiness goes, a good woman makes all the difference in the world.

Speaking of emotion, John Koppenhaver showed his human side last night on The Ultimate Fighter. You have to feel for the guy for all he has been through, with the loss of his mother and father at such a young age. Mentally, he’ll need to toughen up and that will be his hardest challenge. He’s got the physical tools and the look. He’s being way too hard on himself for how he performed in the fight. He knocked Tommy down and made him tap (everyone saw the tap except for the ref, and the fight wasn’t stopped), so he should be proud of himself. I think Dana will give him a shot in UFC, which he deserves.

Serra’s impersonation of Hughes was hilarious. As stated before, Hughes is one of my favorites, but this season has changed my opinion of him. Serra has a great personality and will be a great champion if he wins on 12/29.

Last night’s CNN special on wrestling was pretty good by the standards of mainstream media coverage of wrestling. CM Punk did very well, but everyone else looked really bad except for Kanyon (who looks much worse after he cut his hair). Dynamite Kid was made out to be a jerk, but it was interesting to see him again after all these years. Chris Jericho is doing his best to lose as much respect as quickly as possible, saying you don’t need to be on steroids to make it. Jericho thinks he’s “small,” which is such a joke. I’ll show him small. I’m still waiting for an explanation from him on how he appeared so much bigger and more cut after he won the unified title in WWE many years ago. He looks so ridiculous in short hair, and that will be more apparent when he starts wrestling with his shirt off. As for Vince, he looked huge, and I wonder why. As usual, he came off heartless and sleazy, as did the entire business.

When watching UFC 37.5 yesterday, I saw Joe Scarola accompany Nick Serra (Matt’s brother) to the ring. How sad. Everyone who watched this season’s Ultimate Fighter knows who Scarola is, and boy, did he ever blow his opportunity.

TNA Impact is tonight, but no one will watch it. I know I won’t. Please, somebody fire Vince Russo immediately.

Just got word from Keith Lipinski that Chris Masters was finally fired.  It was bound to happen.  Masters got tons of heat from wrestling fans for being an untalented bodybuilder who got hired for his muscles.  While he did get hired for that reason, he does not deserve the blame for that.  WWE deserves blame for bringing him up too soon, not Chris Masters.  I thought he had some talent, especially his promos, and had potential.  Unfortunately his inexperience caught up to him, and he didn’t have the natural talent to be that good that soon (few do).  We wish Masters well in his recovery, and hope to see him back some day after he has at least 5 good years of training under his belt.

We made the cover of TheSpoof.com, which is flattering.  It’s the Dana-Randy press conference story, and we might be in future editions of TheSpoof.com.  I heard about that site on the Howard Stern Show, and it’s cool because anyone can contribute satire pieces.  Check it out.

Also, there’s a cool new message board up that’s very Armpit friendly.  It’s called Board with Everything (BWE), and you can see it here.  They’re also going to post our weekly quizzes, so be a good sport and register with them.

I love watching old UFC’s; they make my time in the gym so much more enjoyable.  I’m going though all the UFC’s in chronological order, starting from the very beginning.  Right now I’m at UFC 37, headlined by Chuck Liddell vs. Vitor Belfort.  This show actually aired on FSN at the time, so some of you may have seen it but don’t remember.

Remember tonight is Ultimate Fighter.

Someone plugged our Mock My Brain with Joel Gertner in the WrestleCrap message boards, which we very much appreciate.  However, the person who posted it said it was from our archives.  That’s half true, as the questions are old, but the responses were brand new.  We try not to post old columns anymore except for some of the guest columns.

In an age where UFC dominates the PPV marketplace, WWE and TNA remain clueless.  Imagine you were a fan of wrestling during the Monday night wars, but lost interest around 2001 (millions of wrestling fans fall into this category).  Nowadays, you watch and spend money on UFC because of the realism it offers, along with the well hyped feuds, personalities, and simplistic booking.

Now imagine you tune in to Raw last night for the first time in years, just to check out what you’ve been missing.  To your dismay, you see DX doing an angle with a midget called Hornswoggle, with tons of bad comedy (the short jokes) and pathetic crowd laughs permeating the arena.  As someone who was used to seeing Rock, Austin, nWo, Goldberg, and Mick Foley, you just roll your eyes, tell yourself, “I’m sure not missing anything,” and change the channel.

Yes, WWE and TNA still ignore what fans are demanding and continue to focus on lame comedy, bizarre cartoon characters like Hornswoggle and Boogey Man, and aging, tired stars.  The new stars are incredibly impotent and look like smiling preppies (Cody Rhodes, DH Smith).  Announcers, interviewers, and short-haired rookies look like empty headed, Barbie-and-Ken, vapid, made-up Ryan Seacrest-types who don’t know the first thing about wrestling and command no respect from wrestling fans.

I’ve stuck with WWE and WCW through the worst times, but never has the product been as bad as this.  There’s just nothing interesting going on in WWE right now, and TNA is even worse.  Meanwhile, over in UFC, fans are clamoring for Serra-Hughes and Liddell-Silva.  We’re hanging on Randy Couture’s every word at press conferences, hoping he’ll come back to UFC.

As for Ring of Honor, it’s a non issue.  No one knows who they are, and no one cares.  After 5 years in business, they couldn’t even draw 300 fans in San Francisco.  The wrestling itself is solid, but the characters are 3rd rate and the production is laughable.  It’s glorified indie wrestling with lookalike nobodies doing dangerous moves that no one cares about outside of 300 East Coast fans who must have never seen ECW, because 12 years ago, ECW put out a product 100 times more entertaining.  That isn’t a knock on ROH guys, because some are extremely talented.  But the problem is, wrestling talent means little.  Personalities and promo skills are what matter, and as long as the wrestling is decent, fans won’t notice.  John Cena is okay as a wrestler, but his character and promos are strong.  He matters and he draws.  Fans who boo Cena are not doing so because he’s not a good wrestler, but because he’s portrayed as a smiling babyface with lame lines that are scripted for him.  Those same fans who were booing him were cheering him like crazy when he was a cool heel.

I was really jonesin’ to re-start The Armpit, but since the product has become so unwatchable, it is really hard to write about and even spoof the current scene.  Our MMA articles don’t get as many hits as our wrestling articles, but we love writing about MMA so much more.  It’s hard to please everyone, especially since it’s so hard to sit through a WWE program these days, even when fast forwarding through the sucky parts.

Sorry.  If you feel differently, let us know.  But like many other wrestling fans, my interest in the product is at an all-time low.

Good show last night, with Matt Hughes about to fly off the handle and Matt Serra rubbing it in. Amazingly, Hughes is down 6 to 1, which has to hurt. George looks to have the drive and determination to make it as a fighter, while J-Roc needs to mature to where he can mentally handle the success his talent should allow him to have. Crying after a loss? That didn’t do Andy Wang any good.

As for Ben Saunders whining and b*tching about not being woken up, give me a f*ckin’ break. George isn’t his mother, and hats off to George for doing the right think and calling him out on it. If you can’t get up at 10am, you deserve a smack in the mouth. The rest of us are getting up at 5am (or earlier), and not living in a mansion in Vegas. I hope George meets him later in the tournament and knocks him out.

This morning’s episode of the Howard Stern Show will go down as one of the most infamous in the 20+ year history of the show. You can’t create reality like that, and it was really intense listening to it live. For those who missed it, we strongly recommend getting a copy somewhere. At the very end of the show, Artie Lange and Sal the Stockbroker were really having it out, and Artie lost his cool. He threw a CD at Sal twice, aiming for his eye, and thankfully missing. Sal had to leave the studio and Howard had to really calm down Artie, who was daring Howard to fire him. Things had been brewing for a few days with lots of on-air fights, and it finally came to this. It was great radio, but it was an ugly situation because no one wants to see either guy fired. Howard eventually calmed them both down to where they could at least peacefully co-exist. This type of bickering and pent up aggression reminded me of how it must be in some pro wrestling locker rooms during times of bad morale.

In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t talk much about wrestling in our blog posts. It has gotten boring beyond belief, and I don’t even watch it anymore unless I read that something good happened. I still record all the shows, but never watch them, not even TNA. It’s very sad, because just think about how hot things were 10 years ago this month. The WWF was very good, highlighted by the Hart Foundation giving great promo’s, Steve Austin’s star rising, and well, that’s it. Raw was losing the ratings war, and deservedly so, because its product was inferior. But still, they were gaining steam.

Meanwhile, over in WCW, things were peaking. The nWo was red hot, Bill Goldberg had just debuted and was catching fire, and the undercard was chock full of cruiserweight action and interesting characters. ECW was also interesting, churning out entertaining PPVs. I was a senior in college at the time, 20 years old, and watching the Monday night shows was such a fun thing to do after a hard day at class.

It’s all extremely depressing. If it were not for UFC, I don’t know what I’d do for fun. Wrestling sucks and music sucks even more these days. Howard Stern and Sirius radio are great; that and UFC are my passions right now when it comes to entertainment. My weekends are spent writing for the site and spending quality time with my wife and all the nice downtown areas around us. Life is good, and thank goodness, because if it sucked and if UFC never existed, I’d hate to rely on wrestling right now because it’s horrible. Mark my words, Stephanie and HHH will be the death of that company, and Russo will be the death of TNA. But they are both going to take a long, long time to die. And we have to painfully watch it happen… or do we??