NWA:TNA Weekly PPV #02 (June 26, 2002)

For whatever reason I felt like watching some TNA/IMPACT and so I headed to YouTube since IMPACT does a pretty good job of posting up old-ass shows in full for cheap as free. I stumbled upon this one, assuming at first that it was Weekly PPV #102 but it’s actually the #2 Weekly PPV, I’m pretty sure I saw this way back in the day but don’t really remember anything about it and never wrote anything about it so here’s words about old-ass Asylum Era TNA.

NWA:TNA Weekly PPV #22 (November 27, 2002)

I think I’m going to go all in on TNA/IMPACT Wrestling being the only wrestling promotion I watch for the foreseeable future. I don’t have any grand designs about watching every episode in chronological order or anything like that. I’m just going to watch whatever shows I have available to me on YouTube or that external hard drive of wrestling shows of questionable legality I got. So let’s get down to it.

WWF Metal (May 4, 2002)

I’m testing the waters to see what I want to do when I finally finish up my Raw ’98 deep dive and I’m heavily leaning towards just finding some C-Show and reviewing a year’s worth of wrestling for wrestling’s sake for no real reason. Today, while looking for a potential time period to dig into I watched an episode of WWF Metal from 2002.

Metal and Jakked were a pair of syndicated programs that replaced Shotgun August 28, 1999 and ran until May 19, 2002 after which Velocity came into existence. The two shows aired the same matches though from what I can determine in slightly different orders and with different commentary teams and on screen graphics. I’ve read that Metal was the slightly more “family friendly” version and aired in the afternoon while Jakked aired late on Saturday nights but as I haven’t dug into either I can’t really say if that is indeed the case or not.

WWE Heat (June 30, 2002)

After watching a couple old PPVs I decided to go back to my wheelhouse and take a look at some old wrestling B-Shows and therefore watched a random episode of Heat while folding laundry. Here are some words about it.

WWE Heat (September 1, 2002)

I’ve decided to do a little backtracking and try to find out what the story with D’Lo and Raven was back in the fall of 2002 on WWE Heat and so today we are getting a review of the episode the preceded the last one that I covered because who gives a shit about chronological order? Certainly not any here at the Atomic Drop Blog, that’s for goddamn sure. So here we go, the September 1, 2002 episode of Heat!

WWE Heat (September 8, 2002)

My random WWE C-Show roulette continues with a random-ass episode of Heat from 2002. September 8, 2002 doesn’t seem to be a pre-PPV episode so that means it’s going to be a bunch of midcarders and not much else to speak of which is fine by me.

NWA:TNA Weekly PPV #01 (June 19, 2002)

So the fine folks at IMPACT Wrestling have decided to pull some old shows out of their vault and put them up on YouTube for people like me to watch during lunch. Today I watched the show that started it all: NWA:TNA’s first weekly pay-per-view which aired on June 19, 2002.

NWA:TNA Weekly PPV #21 (November 20, 2002)

Time for another action packed episode of NWA-TNA from 2002. Your hosts for the evening are Don West and Mike Tenay. West talks up tonight’s matches. We’ve got Amazing Red taking on Jerry Lynn for the X-Division championship and in the main event Jeff Jarrett will be taking on Ron Killings for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

WWF Raw (March 25, 2002)

This seemingly random episode of Raw is actually a historically important one as it was the first WWE Draft and the episode that would begin the Brand Split Era. We start things off with a cold open that features Linda McMahon boringly explain the concept of the draft to those of us watching at home as well as a gaggle of WWE wrestlers watching in the locker room.

There will be twenty picks tonight overall between the two brands: Raw (with General Manager Ric Flair) and Smackdown (with General Manager Vince McMahon). The remaining superstars will be put in a draft lottery on WWF.com after Raw ends or something.

She goes on to say that since Triple H, Jericho, and Stephanie McMahon will be competing in a match for the Undisputed Heavyweight Championship none of them are able to be drafted. Steve Austin is also ineligible since he apparently had something written into his contract that said, “In the event of a Brand Split leading to a Draft I, Stone Cold Steve Austin, become a free agent and that’s the bottom line cuz Stone Cold said so.” I guess he was legit having a contract dispute at the time and it was unclear if he’d resign or not and this is what they came up with.

NWA:TNA Weekly PPV #20 (November 13, 2002)

Welcome to the TNA Asylum. Jeremy Borash introduces Goldylocks who will sing “The Star Spangled Banner,” in honor of the veterans (Veterans’ Day would have been a day or two prior to this). She proceeds to sing the National Anthem unaccompanied and does a pretty decent job.

We then get the opening video before we’re joined by our hosts for the evening: Don West and Professor Iron “Mike” Tenay. Tenay tells us that as of yet, Mr. Wrestling III has not contacted him about The Truth’s open contract. He and West then give us a brief rundown of the card.