Fantasy Friday - The Trials of Styles: Part 2

Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the finest thing to happen to Friday since Carl Winslow, Fantasy Friday! Now, for those of you who were naughty and didn't join us last week, this feature represents my occasional urge to rebook a famous storyline from history. Maybe I thought that The Rock and John Cena should have had a monster truck tug of war match, or maybe I thought that Hogan/Sting should have taken place in a ball pit surrounded by grizzly bears. Hell, occasionally the ideas will even make sense, which will probably come as a pretty major surprise to both of us.

Today we'll be entering part 2 of my booking plan for the current AJ Styles storyline in TNA. The goal is to put 6 months on the clock and compose a storyline so compelling that leads AJ to Bound For Glory, that people will actually be willing to turn on TNA's shows in order to watch it. It's among the more daunting tasks that I've ever taken on, but my middle name is Danger and my last name is Cansuckit. In the first installment, I already covered the initial build up, leading up to a match between AJ Styles and Samoa Joe, and a title match between Bully Ray and Hulk Hogan that actual makes some semblance of sense. Where do things go from here? Only one way to find out.

To Be Continued »

Fantasy Friday - The Trials of Styles: Part 1

Let me start off this post by making it clear what this feature is and is not going to be. This is a feature about the dreaded subject of fantasy booking. This is NOT going to happen all the time, because there simply aren't enough storylines worth this level of attention to detail going on at any given time, and because I am absolutely terrible at predicting the future, (as we all know very well.) What this is, instead, is an occasional feature that will give me a chance to plot out the possibilities behind interesting storylines that many of our readers may not be following or even be aware of. And it will give me carte blanche to assume the controls myself for a moment, so that I can try to concoct a storyline that holds up to the kind of scrutiny that I would level against the company if I were reviewing it. This is not an easy task, because I'm kind of an asshole. 

The storyline that I'm going to be taking charge of is the booking of AJ Styles in TNA, from this very day today, all the way to the Bound For Glory PPV in October. For those of you who don't watch TNA, (which, statistically, is most of you,) the story currently is that AJ Styles, furious with being overlooked and unappreciated by the company that he dragged into the spotlight, left TNA for a number of months. Commissioner Hulk Hogan and Owner Dixie Carter begged him for months to come back until Hogan finally demanded that AJ do so, only to find that AJ had adopted a much darker persona. Meanwhile Bully Ray is the TNA Champion and rides at the head of the Aces and Eights, a biker stable of his own design that rules TNA at present. I have 6 months to connect the two in a meaningful way, and I've broken the story into 3 parts (April/May, June/July/August, September/October) for easy digestion.

Start the clock.

To Be Continued »