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WHY TNA WOULD LET LASHLEY FIGHT IN MMA WHILE CHAMPION, DARK MATCHES, KENTA AND MORE

By Mike Johnson on 2014-07-17 10:00:00

Cross-promotion opportunities aside, isn't it a monumentally risky move to have the TNA champion fight a legit MMA match for Bellator? What if he gets destroyed by a low level opponent? Lashley has been unimpressive in every MMA fight I've seen him in. If I recall correctly, this didn't work out well for Inoki's wrestlers in Japan 15 or so years ago.

I agree it’s a high risk situation because in MMA, anything can happen in three seconds to change the outcome of a fight, but I suppose TNA sees it also as high reward potential. If Lashley wins and can continue to win, they can boast of the credibility of their champion…if he is still champion by the time his first fight comes around.

I was a little disappointed watching Tanahashi on ROH TV last weekend. He didn't seem to nearly as good, and crisp, as I expected grom someone who's been in all these five-star matches and is IWGP's top guy. Am I missing something, or did he just have an off night?

He didn’t have an off night, but he was working an undercard bout. If he was in the main event, I am pretty sure we’d have seen a more insane, physical style.

Whatever happened to Total Divas star JoJo? Is she still with WWE?

She is training at the WWE Performance Center.

I'm finding it hard to be excited about WWE signing Kenta. Reason being is because I've seen them sign really good Japanese stars just to use them wrong and release them. Thoughts?

They’ve also signed really talented American stars and used them wrong, but that doesn’t make me think that they are going to blow it with Colin Cassady, for example. You have to take each talent signing as a singular, unique situation because no two talents are the same. Sure, WWE could have gotten more out of say TAKA Michinoku in the past, but it’s a different regime today, so we can’t judge them on what the creative team did a year, five years or a decade ago.

Question about WWE after the show dark matches. Why exactly does the WWE do these anyway? Wouldn't they think that the 3 hours the fans have to sit through RAW would be enough for a night? And atop of that, I get the whole send the crowd home happy but there really is no suspense to it. Back in the Attitude era, not every show had to close out with sending the fans home happy. And even on TV, how much more would the fans get into it if not every time John Cena is standing on top at the end of the show?

It’s a tradition that has dated back decades in WWE to have a final match to send the live crowd home happy. Plus, it gives WWE something to locally advertise as opposed to “WWE is coming to town.” It’s just giving the audience something extra for their ticket price, so I can’t knock anything that gives the paying fans something beyond what they think they are paying for.

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