Talking to Myself: Awaiting Payback

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I am back with the lucky 13th episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article I will be starting 2 new segments as I await WWE's next pay-per-view, "Payback", in hope that they will give me material to bash at them some more.     Before I start, I would just like to mention that WWE seems to be working on getting better programing and is trying to get better ratings. Segments featuring McMahons this and last week were nice and I have enjoyed most of Raw this week. If only they didn't ruin it with Ryback vs. Cena snooze fest at the end, I would say it was very good. Seriously, if they keep it up and stop using Smackdown as a Raw recap show, I might start enjoying watching WWE.    And now, lets start with the segments! I will be using this first new segment every time WWE and/or TNA do something incredibly stupid. The name of the segment is: How Stupid Can You Be?     So, what made me start this segment? Well, as some of you might know, I am a fan of Damien Sandow and in the last few weeks he was showing off his "superior" intellect in a few promos that included Sheamus attacking him at the end. Now, putting aside the fact that Sandow finally got a chance to knock out Sheamus, the rest of the promo was complete and utter crap.    The promo started with Sandow standing in the ring with a table and a monitor on the table. He claimed that he was going to play chess against Deep Blue computer, that was famous for defeating Gary Kasparov in 1997, in a chess game, while Kasparov was the reigning world champion.    Now, there were a few problems with that picture. First problem is that Deep Blue was disassembled in 1997 after Kasparov complained that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves, which means that human chess players might have intervened during the game and that was against the rules. There's that and then there is the fact that a closeup of the monitor reviled that the chess pieces weren't set up correctly. White queen goes to the left of the white king, not to the right, as it was on the monitor and black king and queen were also in the wrong positions. Also, when you make your move, the computer usually follows with a move of its own, which didn't happen and their game ended up after only one move, because Sheamus came out to kick the computer.    So, with all those WWE employees and Sandow claiming to win a chess tournament at the age of 8, it seems that nobody in WWE can set up a chess board correctly (something I was able to do at the age of 5).    Right, with that behind us, I can now start my second new segment in which I will be gloating about any of my predictions that turn out to be true. The segment is called: I Told You So!    Those of you that read my articles might remember that in my "Why WWE, Why?" article I have mentioned Kaitlyn's secret admirer storyline and added that I think that her "secret admirer" is just AJ Lee pulling her leg. Well, guess what. I was right! If you missed it, Big E Langston came out with some flowers for Kaitlyn, pretendin g to be her secret admirer and after dropping Kaitlyn on her behind, AJ came out to laugh at her. It was AJ all along and I told you so!    Well, this is all I have for you this week. My name is Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Awaiting Payback". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article (hopefully bashing WWE's fails at Payback). Until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Future TNA Hall of Famers

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for this 12th episode of "Talking to Myself". Since I didn't write as many articles about TNA as I did about WWE, I have decided to write about TNA roster again. Last Sunday at Slammiversary, Kurt Angle got inducted into TNA Hall of Fame, so in this episode of "Talking to Myself", I will write about some people that in my opinion deserve to be future TNA Hall of Fame inductees. Some of the info has been taken from Wikipedia. Jeff Jarrett     I'm going to start with the guy that should have been the first inductee (in my opinion). Jeffrey Leonard Jarrett was born on July 14th, 1967 in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He is a third generation wrestler and he held seventy championships in various promotions (a total of 22 in WWE, WCW and TNA), including 11 world championships. Jarrett is also one of the founders of TNA and I think it is obvious why he deserves to be in the TNA Hall of Fame. AJ Styles    AJ Styles was born as Allen Neal Jones on June 2nd, 1977 and has been wrestling for TNA since TNA's first show. In the 11 years of TNA, he has been one of their top stars and he held World Heavyweight Championship four times, X Division Championship six times, World Tag Team Championship six times and Television Championship two times. AJ is the first to complete the TNA Triple Crown Championship and the TNA Grand Slam Championship and he is the only wrestler in TNA that held every male championship owned and sanctioned by TNA at any point during the company's history. Any questions about why he should be in the TNA Hall of Fame? Hulk Hogan    A legend of professional wrestling, WWE Hall of Famer, the current on - screen GM of TNA and a guy that I find to be very annoying lately. Maybe if his every other word would not be "brother", I might still tolerate him, but every time he grabs a microphone, I just want to push the mute button. Since everyone knows who he is I won't waste much time introducing him. Born as Terry Eugene Bollea on August 11th, 1953, this 13 time world champion is the second longest combined reigning WWF Champion of all time, the longest reigning champion of the 1980s, the longest reigning WCW World Heavyweight Champion of all time and holds two of ten longest title runs in WWE history (9th and 4th). With all his fame and accomplishments, he will most likely join the TNA Hall of Fame eventually, which is the main reason why he is on this list. As I have mentioned before, I find him to be very annoying and I think he should have stopped appearing full time on TV a long time ago.     Even though TNA has a few more people that deserve or most likely will deserve.to join their Hall of Fame, I'm gonna end this list with only three people on it. TNA inducts only one person every year anyway, so my list is good for the next three years :P. Instead, I am going to use this opportunity to start a segment called: Surprise of the Week    I will be using this segment in my articles every time WWE or TNA do something good for a change. In this first installment of the segment, I will mention a match form this year's Slammiversary. The participants were: Gail Kim and Tarryn Terrell.    I am not much of a fan of Divas and Knockouts matches because they... well, suck. There is a lot of hair pulling, unnecessary screaming and not enough well executed moves. Even though I find most of their matches to be boring, this one was quite good and judging by the reactions from the fans that were in the arena, they liked it too. Sure, there was a lot of hair pulling and unnecessary screaming, but these two ladies went a bit further then Divas and Knockouts usually do. Gail went flying head first into a chair that was wedged in the corner, Tarryn missed Gail on the Spear attempt and went flying trough the ropes, landing on the ramp outside of the ring and after fighting on the ramp for a while, they both went flying off the ramp to the arena floor.    It was a well fought battle and they deserved to be cheered by the fans. I just hope that they plan to give us more matches like that in the future. Comments from Readers    First two comments are from two weeks ago, but since I didn't respond to them last week, I will respond to them this week.    Max van Balen wrote: "Wow man another great article. The only one i really dont get is sin cara. And wy mark henry isnt on this list. I think sin cara is just in his wrestling prime. Altough wwe did change some stuff hes still entertaining. They also changed some other guys wich came out great. About embarrising himself that will be forgoten after a intercontinental push or something like that. My opinion of Mark Henry is pretty much that indeed he can still wrestle. But if you look at the time hes been in wwe and what he got for it is in my opinion way to less. 16 years he is with the company but got way less then brock lesnar who wwe seem to like. So i dont see his point to continue. Atleast thanks for another great article and i am looking forward to next week. Greetz Max"    About Sin Cara: I agree that he is in his prime, but  judging form the mistakes he makes in the ring, he should either practice more or change his style. At this moment, he can do a lot of damage to himself and his opponents if he keeps up botching like that. A change is definitely what he needs.    About Mark Henry: That list was for people who are either to old and too broken or people who are too old and wrestling par time. And Sin Cara. Mark Henry is not too broken and he is wrestling full time, so he didn't get on that list. The fact that he gotten less then Lesnar even though he has been in WWE for 16 years is just another blemish on WWE's record and has nothing to do with Mark Henry.    Arabash MKJ wrote: "wow another great artical I love reading your articals hmm I wonder if you could make a article of people on twitter are trying to threathen the Best In The World CM Punk saying "If you care for wrestling come back to the WWE" or "CM Punk shut your mouth" it's really disturbing but they do not know he is resting his knee.Stupid Zombie Cenation Apocolypse"    No, I will not be writing an article about that. I honestly don't think that people who write comments like the ones you mentioned deserve to be mentioned anywhere at all, so I'll just pass.    brian wrote: "perhaps u could list your favorite finishers of all time"    I was thinking about writing something like that, but I remember a few articles written about favorite finishers on this site already, so I have decided not to write another one. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. My name is Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Future TNA Hall of Famers". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article. Until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Same Old Same Old

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself".     To be honest with you, I have no idea what to write about any more. I wrote about the past, I wrote about the future, I wrote about the present and with wrestling seemingly stuck in a rut, I have nothing to write about any more. WWE and TNA seem to be hellbent on doing nothing to make a better product even though wrestling fans keep "awarding" them with lower and lower ratings. I wish I could recycle articles like they are recycling storylines. I'm sure that would be just as fun to read as watching WWE and TNA interrupt commercials with bad matches and worse promos.    I watched WWE's Raw and Smackdown and TNA's Impact this week in hope I would get some inspiration for an article and the only thing I was inspired to do is quit watching wrestling. Sure, there are other promotions I could watch, but I have no intention of watching a promotion that brags about their top talent leaving to join WWE or TNA. That somehow tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth.    I take pride in being a wrestling fan. It takes some courage to admit that you are a fan of something that is fake/scripted, especially since I live in a country that doesn't have many wrestling fans and people tend to laugh at me when I say I watch pro wrestling. What I am even more proud of is my ability to make them look stupid after I explain to them that watching wrestling is not so different then watching a movie. For every "Wrestling is fake. They don't really fight.", I respond with "So are the movies. They don't really fight in them either.". For every "There is no blood in wrestling.", I respond with "There is no blood in movies either. That crap they use in movies is mostly ketchup (believe it or not).".   Then I go on and explain to them that to me wrestling is not just watching two guys jumping around the ring while touching each other. There have storylines, they insult each other, pull pranks on each other and watching them execute some of more complicated moves is only half of the fun. Watching them fail to execute them is the other half. And after explaining to them how some of the more "dangerous" maneuvers (tables, chairs, juicing, etc) actually work, they realize that I am not just some idiot that thinks that wrestling is real, but that I am an idiot that actually knows how wrestling "works". There were some that even started watching wrestling occasionally after talking to me.     It was easy to get people interested in wrestling during the "Attitude Era". My brother had a friend that called me a month after having one of those conversations with me about wrestling to ask me if I saw what Goldberg did to Henning on WCW Monday Nitro (it was a three move victory for Goldberg) that week. I laughed. These days I'm sometimes having problems getting myself to watch wrestling. Watching moments like Daniel Brian taking on The Shield all by himself help a little because they give me hope in the future of professional wrestling, but those moments seem to be rare recently. Let's hope WWE and TNA wake up soon. They both have talent for great TV moments, they just need to push them a bit more.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. I apologize for a short article and for not having "Comments From Readers" this week, but I am writing this very late, I am very tired and my wife is getting restless. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Same Old Same Old". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article. Until then, I bid you adieu!