You've Got To Be Kidding Me Ep. 54 Genesis November 2006 - Angle vs. Joe, Abyss Wins World Title

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1:53TNA is the best wrestling in the whole world. But can you believe it? Kurt Angle's in the impact zone! Olympic slam! Olympic slam! By Angel and Samoa Joe! Think this is funny? No. Why would you do this? Don't do it. Get a life! Get a life! The American flag! This stands for lies, exploitation, and racism! Summer! We haven't always been America's favorites, but we will always be America's most wanted.

2:25Death to ECW. Long live TNA! This is BS! This sucks! I've lost my objectivity, and I don't give a dad! Welcome, everybody, to You've Got to Be Kidding Me, episode number 54. We are a TNA history podcast that covers TNA one month at a time. On this episode, we are talking about the month that is November 2006. Greg, stop! Get back, baby!

2:52That would have been seamlessly edited had you not interrupted my flawless podcast reset. Hence me interrupting it. On this episode, we are talking about the month that is November 2006, leading to Genesis 2006. I'm Garrett Kidney, and you heard him. It's Liam Jones. Wow, I got, like, a big entrance then. Yeah. Yes, we're back. The most on-time podcast in history is back again. Regularly scheduled programming.

3:25Every two weeks, on the dot, here we are returning. Are you committing to every two weeks? I'm never committing to anything. Because I was like, maybe we can do one a month. If we do one a month, I'm happy. Whereas you're like, back to the original every two weeks. If you go and look at the podcast description, which I originally wrote for the start of this podcast nearly over four years ago now. No, three years? Three years ago. No, four years. This podcast is over four years old. Fuck me. It did say every two weeks, and I did recently have Rich take that out. Was that a fun message to send?

3:58No, because I was getting him to update the podcast logo, because it still had just, like, the plain white background. So I was like, use the nicer looking one. And Rich was like, do you want to take out the every two weeks part, too? Well, okay, so it was passive-aggressive is what you're saying. Yeah, Rich is like, get your shit together. You produce your podcast more often. That's kind of fucked up. We just have four podcasts a day on the Voices of Wrestling Network. We need five. It's true. About damn time. That somebody produces content about wrestling. There's not enough of it out there.

4:30It's true. Like, there's one thing this world has been missing. It is two more Caucasian voices talking about things and making statements known. Two white men who need their voices heard. Who else? Who else is going to be heard? You know? Our voices are the loudest, damn it. Is wrestling content dead? I think, um... Are we in post-wrestling content? Good. I want to be in post-wrestling content. Yeah.

5:00There was too much of it happening. That's why we had to step away. We had to leave because there was too much happening. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair on the listeners. It wasn't fair on any potential listeners, you know? So we exclusively made Patreon content. Because I was thinking about this in that, like, we are firmly in the age of the influencer wrestling content where it's all, like, symbiotic stuff where you just want interviews. You want to make faces when AJ Lee returns on Raw or SmackDown. Like, that's what wrestling content is now.

5:31And, like, because that's the stuff that does well. Like, no one's going to make a fucking four-hour, hyper-researched, 18-notes, pages-of-notes episode of TNA Wrestling Podcasts. Because that's crazy. Why would anybody do that? Why would anyone? And why would anyone listen to it, more specifically? When instead, you could just make faces at the thing that happened on SmackDown this week. Sounds so much easier. It's substantially easier. Not to discredit anyone that makes that content. And if they would like to promote our content, I think that's only fair.

6:02Are we getting into more beefs? We stepped away for, like, months after we had beef. And now we're coming back and we're starting more beef. We, technically speaking, don't have beef with Cultaholic anymore. Or what culture? Which one did we have beef with? It was Cultaholic, I think. It's Cultaholic, right? Cultaholic, yeah. Because the man with whom we were beefing, Jack the Jobber, has gone solo. We also, like, rescinded the beef on audio. That's true. We did bury the beef, but also the beef no longer exists because he is outlas-less.

6:33He's going out by himself. So we will promote Jack the Jobber, our close personal podcast friend. Who, again, only started the podcast when we started the beef. So it is going to be very strange if he sticks with it long enough to find multiple episodes where we both have the beef, then squash the beef, then say, hey, go check out Jack the Jobber's individual stuff. Because putting yourself out there is tough and he deserves your support. Also, technically, the beef wasn't with you. That's true. I am a pure and wholesome and innocent in the world. I would never start beefs. It's true. It's just me.

7:03I'm a problem. So I'm worried for the state of wrestling content. Because, like, I was thinking about this when Goldberg retired. Partially because no one gave a shit. But also partially because the thing that would happen when somebody was retiring is you'd get, like, recommended match threads. You would get people doing retrospectives, a deep dive podcast. You would get people, you know, writing their personal relationship with Goldberg's biggest moments. You would get all that stuff traditionally. And that stuff's kind of gone. No one does that anymore. I think part of it probably is maybe that wrestling just isn't that interesting now.

7:37There's, like, not that much to talk about. There's not, like, a giant hot streak of some company. It's not the 2010s and, like, everyone's, like, opening their eyes to New Japan. Like, there's not, like, something that is emphasizing or encouraging people to go out there and be like, I need to talk about this. I need to write about this. I need to make an account dedicated to this. Because, like, there is still... I think maybe the content has just gotten more normy. Yeah. Like, there's just, like, WWE stan accounts and things that are a lot simpler. There's not enough, like, sicko shit.

8:08But maybe that's the problem is, like, we're just so into, like, the sicko shit that we don't even, like, see the normy stuff because it just doesn't come across our purview very often. Yeah. And I do think the sicko shit is getting smaller, though. I don't know. I think the sicko shit is not necessarily getting smaller. Well, maybe. Because, like, when I was growing up and listening to podcasts, there was, like, eight different, like, pure, deep cut podcasts that I listen to. And now there's, like, none of that. So it's, like, maybe there is... I don't know. I think maybe wrestling is too homogenized and everything's kind of dull and boring.

8:42And, like, there's not enough sicko shit for people to ingest to be dedicated sicko shit accounts. That's true. Like, what are you going to be a sicko shit guy about beyond? Yeah, well, my thing was, like, I thought about sicko shit today, actually, because I was, like, if I won the lottery, I wouldn't tell anyone, but there will be signs, which will be me booking Mad Dog Connolly versus Kaita Yano. Sure, yeah. And, like, it would just be, like, a random indie pops up and this match is happening, and everyone would be, like, what? Like, because there is no sicko shit anymore.

9:13Yeah, everyone is doing normie shit. And I do think, like, it is a consequence, I think, of the shift from the primary place where wrestling conversation is, like, defined. That shifted in the last, I think, post-COVID, really, shifted from Twitter to TikTok. And I think then the overall sensibilities of wrestling moved with it, whereas, like, in 2015, you had the hardcore diehards, they were all on Twitter, and I think they had a more meaningful impact on wrestling as a whole. They were a larger portion of the voice.

9:43And now those people are all, they're still on Twitter, they're still in their little corners, and then you have just people making their faces on TikTok that does a million views, and that's what everyone's pandering toward. I just think there's too much. Oh, well, we were talking about it, like, a couple days ago. And we're talking about, like, user-generated content is everywhere, so it's kind of nowhere, because, like, you're just lost in the sea of things. And I feel like maybe that has translated to wrestling as well, because it's, like, there's so many Twitter accounts with, like, above 800 followers now. And it's, like, that used to be, like, a point of,

10:16ooh, this is someone who might have something interesting to, like, say. But just based on, like, longevity alone, there's, like, that percentage is way higher. You can even go, like, more macro and be, like, they're, like, 10 years ago, the amount of YouTube channels that were over a million subscribers was quite small, and now it's, like, 40 times that, because there's just longevity, and there's more people that know about it. Like, everything has expanded, which has made, like, the niche less important, or the niche get, like, washed out.

10:46The niche is somehow even nichier. Like, the percentage of which the niche takes up is smaller than it has ever been. And then also when you pair that with the niche being less interesting. Hmm. Because, like, what's, like, the only thing you could really do an interesting niche on, not the only thing, because, like, you can do Dragon Gate podcasts. K-Slow and Mike Spears do. K-Slow, by the way, might legitimately be the one exception to everything we're talking about. Yeah. Because, like, I don't know if I have heard a better wrestling interviewer in, like, my entire time listening to wrestling content than K-Slow.

11:18Because the problem is, you get one of two people interviewing wrestlers or wrestling people. You get people who know nothing about wrestling, who will just be like, oh, you know, you're coming to town, tell us about it. Which can be kind of fun in its own thing. Like, there can be, like, little moments that are interesting. Seeing how people handle that dynamic is interesting more than anything. Yeah, and you'll see Kyle Fletcher do the weather, and it'll be a fun little thing. But you're not going to learn anything about, like, Kyle Fletcher's mentality about professional wrestling from that kind of interview. And then the other side is the,

11:48when are you coming back to this town? How did it feel to win a title, people? Which you also learn absolutely nothing from. And then you get, like, the feckless cowards cloud chases. Yeah. Whereas Case is the very interesting case of, pardon the pun, a person who has a Norby platform, he works for a frickin' music radio station, but somehow gets interviews with Tony Khan, but is a wrestling fan. So he can spend seven minutes just talking about frickin' Dragon Gate with Ricochet. And I'm sure Ricochet is utterly delighted to do that, because no one else is going to ask him

12:18to talk about, like, Naruki Doi and Shima. Yeah. I don't know. And, like, as a listener who cares more about, like, those sort of topics. It's refreshing. And also, like, even just how he conducts the interviews, like, this is the Case Glaze session, but even, like, how he just conducts them, I feel like they're more interesting and they're, I don't know, it feels passionate in a way that, like, everything else feels so fucking stale. Because it feels like they're actually, because that's the thing that drives me crazy about, like, the terrible press conference questions. Because there is the crew that always, like,

12:50ask hard questions, which I'm on the side of, yes, do that too. But, like, you can ask softball questions that get interesting answers. You can ask somebody about, like, oh, you know, how did this pay-per-view come together? At what point did you know the main event was the main event? And, like, that's not a hard question. That's not challenging somebody. But you'll get, like, an interesting insight into Tony Khan's booking philosophy if you ask him something like that. As opposed to, like, when are you coming back to San Antonio? Yeah. But, like, I get it. If you're, like, the San Antonio star. Chronicle or whatever, yeah.

13:20And you're, like, like, what is the question that, like, your readers might care about most? Yeah. It's like, hey, when will this show return here? But to circle all the way back, the point I was going to make is I think CMLL is the only, like, interesting thing you can make niche content about. And, frankly, increasingly less niche by the day with the level of success they're having in their freaking Pokemon crossover. Well, the more thing is, like, to go on a CMLL tangent for a minute, it's like, it's only niche to us. Yeah. Like, in its world, it is the biggest thing, you know? And, like, that's what I kind of appreciate about it.

13:50I like being on the outside a little bit and looking at CMLL and going, like, wow, this thing is fucking massive and cool and we don't talk about it in, like, Western wrestling media as much as we probably should. And it doesn't get the accolades that it probably should. Because you look at it and you're like, this is the second biggest company in the world, probably. Yes. It's like, it's, between it and AEW, like, and you can call, which, you could call consistency versus, like, highlights in that argument, you know? AEW, it depends on what you're measuring. Like, CMLL sells more tickets than AEW.

14:22Like, Slam Dunk easily maybe doubles the tickets AEW sells if you were to do the math. AEW probably has a larger global audience. So however you want to juggle that, juggle it, but... Well, AEW definitely has a larger global audience. I don't think there's, like, even a debate about that. It's, but it's like, do you, like, again, it's like, what do you count more, doing 10,000 seats multiple times a week or year or hitting 80,000 in one, you know? Yeah. And, like, I think there's merits to both the discussions. You know, like, we talked about, me and Garrett, like, privately have talked about

14:52how crazy the Dave quote is that, like, CMLL, if you do all the addition, might have outdrawn WWE this year. They might have sold more tickets in 2025. Like, Dave was like, you know, he hasn't quite done the math yet, but, like, when you think about they sell 10,000 to 15,000 tickets maybe three times a week, like, it's going to be a conversation. Like, it's going to be pretty close. So, in conclusion, wrapping up this brief segment before I have something else I want to ask in relation to wrestling content, CMLL for every award

15:22at the end of the year. Oh, yeah. Like, not even close. If anybody else wins, like, best company, best booker, I, like, I have no idea who books CMLL, which might be the problem that most people don't have any idea who books CMLL. That was always the problem with, like, giving Dragon Gate its clout or whatever. Mm. But, like, it is the best book promotion. It is the most successful promotion in 20. Like, there's years where, like, it didn't win, but WWE was the fucking biggest booming business in the history of wrestling, which I guess it technically still is, but it's kind of on the downswing of that now rather than the upswing of that. Whereas CMLL is just,

15:53like, runaway success, great company, just great shows to watch, the easiest watches. Easiest shows in the goddamn world to just put on. They just fly by. They're very simple, straightforward wrestling. You'll never be like, what the fuck is happening? Which is always the thing when people are like, oh, you know, I need to commentary, I need to speak in. It's like, it's the most, like, route one, straightforward wrestling to understand. You should never be confused. And, like, even if you lose a little minutiae, it's like, I don't think it takes away very much. And also, you have the, like, maybe the best,

16:24like, most accessible range of English-speaking Twitter accounts to get you caught up. If I ever have a CMLL question, like, Rob Viper, Lucha Blog are right there and they will answer it every time. Like, I don't even have to DM them, it's just on their fucking timeline. If I'm watching a show and I'm like, this is confusing, I can go to either of them talking about the show and I will find the answer. Yeah, so, so that was content not being dead between a Lucha Blog and Case Low. I was gonna ask, like, what not wrestling,

16:55like, promotion-specific generated content do you watch that isn't, like, uploads from a company on the YouTube or whatever, like, what wrestling broader content do you ingest in 2025? I'm a very bad person to ask this question because I talk about how wrestling content is dead, I watched very little of it anyway. I, like, I, or listened to, like, I'm a Days of Thunder listener, our boys, over at Days of Thunder, shout out to Dave, who recently got married, congratulations Dave.

17:25Congratulations. That's maybe it in terms of regular stuff, in terms of, like, something I would regularly consume, I think it's just Days of Thunder, which is on hiatus at the moment. So I'm a hypocrite, that's what I'm talking about. I like reading, like, I like Joseph Montesio, I enjoy reading his content. What does Simon call his blog? Handwork. Handwork. Yeah, I enjoy Simon's writing, Brock's writing. So I enjoy, like, blogs and writing more than I enjoy, like, written or video, or audio or video content.

17:56But, yeah. I've been watching a lot of a YouTuber called Rushmel. Yeah. Who makes, like, feud storyline summary videos, where he, like, uses clips throughout the entire feud. I find them really fun. They're, like, a really easy watch. Like, I watched one that he did on Nigel's, like, ROH title run that was really fun. So, content dead, not ours. Our content's back. Yeah, our content never left. You're only a hater and a hypocrite, if you think that we did. We have Patreon.

18:27If you're a hater and a hypocrite that wants to give us money, you can head to patreon.com slash kiddingme or tnachad.com where you can support us on $1 a month, $5 a month, or $10 a month tiers where you can get extra shows, watch-alongs, in-person watch-alongs as well from now on. We're in the same room for watch-alongs for a while. Extra shows, show notes, the frickin' Chris Rock movie reviews, Randy Savage album reviews, end-of-the-year drafts, end-of-the-year rewards. There is an absolute pile, an absolute bundle of content.

18:58Explozone, which I'm not sure if I've done a main episode of the show since I started Explozone. No, you definitely haven't. We are reviewing Explosion on the Patreon, or at least I am. I'm going through the Explosion archives as they're being uploaded to TNA+. So if you're ever wondering, if you're listening to this show and you're like, you know what? The one thing, the one knock on the You've Got to Be Kidding Me podcast is they don't talk enough about what's happening on Explosion. I'm a big Exploz head and I need someone to break down these shows. That is happening over on Patreon

19:29where I think I have seven or so episodes of Explozone up. They're like 20 minutes ahead. I cover three episodes of Explosion per episode. It's a freaking recap show with squash matches. So there's not a ton to talk about, but it's fun to be like, hey, Kenny Dykstra was on this episode. And then you can hear me talk about Kenny Dykstra for two minutes. It's more like you hear a name and then you wax poetically about their career. Yeah, it's like, Chris Hero's here. Whoa! Robbie E in 2003? Did you know that? An original. So that's on the Patreon feed, patreon.com slash gettingmetnachat.com.

20:01Your support is greatly appreciated and we will have regular content. You can also check out the link in our description where you can buy our merchandise where, once again, we've had a new shirt for five months, but we haven't had an episode to plug it. You can get the brand new Scorpion and Birds t-shirt, which we designed. It has, I think, black, white, and long-sleeve variants. So you can check that out based on our iconic bit, Scorpions vs. Birds. You can also get the Kevin Ashgraf shirt, the Stas Daniels Joe shirt,

20:32and if you've ever looked at our posters, we have a cool Abyss poster this month. If you've ever looked at those posters and thought, gee whiz, I'd like to have a copy of that poster for myself, there's a bunch of our posters up there in our store. If you are a patron, you can save 10% with a code that's in our pinned post on Patreon. So you can save, again, our little pro tip, if you go to Patreon, you subscribe on the $1 tier, you can get that discount code and you will save more money than you actually spent on Patreon. So if you buy a t-shirt,

21:02you'll save 10%. That's more than the $1 you'll spend to get the coupon code. Life hack for you. You can do all that as we bring us to the month that was November 2006 in TNA Wrestling. We start with the news. As we always do. Vince Russo is back. And you know what? Yeah? My cold heart has formed. My hard-knock concrete stance, this is where you slice in me screaming about him, has softened.

21:34I am happy to welcome back Vince Russo into the arms of TNA Wrestling. I enjoy Vince Russo, I've decided. I'm a Vince Russo defender. Right. There are, like, the thing that makes me not tear my hair out about having to go back and watch Russo's stuff, it would have been a different case in the moment, but having to go back and watch his stuff is, could be worse, there's been worse bookers in TNA history. Yeah, it's true. There's been less interesting television

22:04booked by people who are supposedly better bookers. So at the very least, Russo's TV until we get to 2014 or whatever, it's not boring. There's lots of stuff. I have to write a lot more notes. That is the real burden here because there's 7 million segments and stuff happens in every single segment now. There's not just a match anymore. There's a match that has four angles that run through it. So I have to type more. But other than that, stuff happens on these shows. My thing is, and I talked about it in the watchalong at patreon.com, where my problem with Russo is not his TV.

22:35I think TV can be wacky, it can be stupid, bullshit can happen that doesn't make sense. My problem is when that bleeds into pay-per-views and into pay-offs and then, so it feels like that we never actually get proper pay-offs. That's where I have my problem is I feel like pay-per-view should be sacred, it should be the place where we get good matches, it's the place where we get clean finishes. That's the point of it. It's the bookmark to the story. I don't care about all the fucking bullshit and wacky wild ways that you have to get to it. Because that's better

23:05on the most than just boring television. It's funny, I didn't include it in the show notes, but Dave has like five paragraphs based on the primetime special that aired this month. TNA had a primetime special where they went they had a two-hour episode to celebrate the fact that they're on Thursdays in primetime going forward. And Dave had like a five-paragraph tangent about how because he had heard the show was good, he had invited some wrestling friends over to watch that TNA primetime episode. So it's like

23:35it's a five-paragraph tangent about how like oh, you know, we watched the Christian Rhino cage match and my old because he's like oh, they're like old wrestling fans who were like wrestling in the 80s and 70s. And he's like oh, well, they didn't like when the referees handed things in. That was goofy and they rejected the match going forward. So it is funny. And there's like paragraphs of those little anecdotes of like oh, you know, this took them out of it. And it's not Dave's opinion about any of this shit. It's all just him recounting his friend's reactions to the various

24:06Vince Russo wackiness that took place on this episode of television. And it is funny to see like that different perspective from yours there which is like I kind of am into a little pro wrestling goofiness once you give me good matches on pay-per-view. Whereas Dave is like there's good wrestling but anytime something stupid happens it takes me and my friends out of it. Which is like I can understand that perspective but I just I have to think like like A, I went to this shit-eating convention and they were eating shit. I'm shocked. You know what I mean? It's like what's the point?

24:36Like you know what you're getting into. You know what you're watching. And B, it's like I don't know it must be fucking boring. Like maybe wrestling just isn't for you. Or maybe US wrestling isn't just for you because like this is part of the deal. There's gonna be silliness. There's gonna be shit that you go eh you just gotta kind of shrug it off. Like you can't expect a Vince Russo book pro wrestling company or even an American TV company in this day and age to just not have something that's gonna make you roll your eyes a little. You know? I feel like you have to be charitable

25:07and just if 80% of it's good and 80% of it is not gonna ruin it for you then I think you can just accept the 20%. If you look at the history of US pro wrestling in totality this is what it is you know? Yeah that's my biggest thing about it it's like again like what are you expecting? Like I understand if it's not what you want but there's a lot of other wrestling out there. And I'm always of the firm opinion I try as best I can to never put

25:38pro wrestling in a box. I try to never say this is the the limited parameters of what I think pro wrestling can or can't be. I'm like was that thing done well? Is it silly? But it's done well? I can be on board with it. There is silly and done bad which is a lot of the history of US wrestling that's the problem. It's not that it's silly it's that it's bad. Silly is not inherently bad bad silly is bad. But the circle back Vince Russo's back so TNA he's been back for about a month now they decided to interview him on the website

26:08on TNAwrestling.com That's that is a choice at least they're not hiding him at this point. It's very interesting to see how companies handle websites back in these days because this is the era in which websites were a thing. You actually had content for websites as opposed to everything is just social now. So this is where like we had columns and we had websites and like it's funny to see the differing approaches to websites because we'll talk about that in relation to both Monty Brown and Kurt Angle in this in terms of how the companies portray each other on their official

26:39company websites. You know what I liked about the WWE website growing up? What? The Power 25. Ah. I used to check that shit religiously as a kid. Mmm. Like the day it came out I was like gotta go to the WWE website I gotta see who's at number one in the Power 25. Who had the best week and you're like fucking no Jack Swagger had an amazing week why is he only at number four? Yeah I don't know I like that shit I thought it was fun. I do kind of miss that kind of stuff where like AEW's website is the most like here's our events we don't even put our TV lineup on it most weeks. It's just

27:10It's just Because I don't know their TV lineup most weeks. Well that's a problem too. Like the idea of like a weekly column on a website for any company now is just done. No one does that shit. Yeah. People like film a TikTok instead. Hey I think all social media managers and community managers that make their talent do their stuff is perfectly reasonable. Mmm. They're the real heroes I think. That's what I'm saying. In that interview Vince Russo said he is no longer all about ratings. He says when I started with WWE and WCW

27:40I was a man on a mission. It was all about ratings. All about writing the best show I possibly could he told Ross Foreman. It was tunnel vision because it really was a personal challenge to me. Today at 45 it's not about that. My goals are much much different from what they were 10 years ago. My goals today are to make the wrestling industry a better place and to really give the boys