So, TNA (Warning: Spoilers Abound).

The latest TNA Impact! spoilers are up.

I know I often don't talk about TNA in this blog. To be honest, I quit watching it after the Bound For Glory 2006. To be more precise, the Impact! directly after BFG06.

Leading up to this event, I, like many other's, felt like TNA was on the right track and we were on the verge of seeing a truly excellent product emerge, despite the underground reports that Vince Russo had been hired. I still remember forums and websites, abuzz with the 'shot heard 'round the world' when Kurt Angle showed up at No Surrender, earlier that year.

What happened you ask? Absolutely nothing about the booking post-BFG06 made any sense. It was extremely apparent that an entirely different person/people was booking afterwards.

I could write forever about the flaws I see in TNA and what all happened after BFG that made me completely lose interest. It's the flailing booking that didn't make sense. It was their determination to focus on WWE, WCW, and ECW rather their own product and homegrown stars. It was the dumbing down of the X-Division, giving all its stars 'mini-me' gimmicks. It was the increasing desire to add in 'swerves' rather than tell an interesting story with great matches and good finishes.

In short, it was a lot of things, and then some.

I try to keep a vague understand of what's happening in TNA. What brought me to write about this particular episode is the impressive use of faux-shoot in three different segments. Foley's very first segment and he spends it babbling about Vince McMahon- something that people joked he would do all along. You get a guy in who is supposed to be a huge legend and a big deal to your promotion, and you have him show and talk about... his former boss. It wasn't even the first time on the show Vince's name came up. From the sound of the spoilers I would love to see a count of how many times they said his name.

The faux-shoot used in this way is old and tired. It wasn't even that great when they started doing it in the middle of the Monday Night Wars, and it's definitely been done to death at this point. But it just goes to expose TNA's weakness- that it isn't interested in making the fundamentals of the product great, they're interested in tacking on gimmick after gimmick that's supposed to do... what exactly? Be the 'one thing' that brings them up to a true national level?

What really brought my attention to this episode was the line Kurt Angle used during this segment. He said something about how he had lost everything, and then, directed at Jeff Jarrett: "Jeff, it looks like I'm not the only one who's lost his wife."

For anyone who isn't aware, Jeff's wife passed away about a year ago from cancer.

This is supposed to be riveting TV? This is trash TV.

I'm aware that a few weeks ago Triple H made some faux-shoot comments toward Jeff Hardy about his drug problem. While this too was in bad taste, at least it didn't involve a dead body, and at least it was done with some subtly.