| There are some great points made in this thread. Anyone who wants to search past Main Event Mafia threads, you can see I'm very opinionated on this matter. It was a brilliant idea, and the Impact in Vegas where it happened, felt like something was really changing. The next week though, the whole locker room came out to help Joe and AJ stand up to five age-ing men... Why? We're supposed to fear the MEM, they are supposed to be intimidating, not something the entire locker room (including comedy characters like Eric Young, Black Machismo, and ODB) are willing to stand up against.
Daniels initial return was handled very well, but he doesn't seem to have made a difference to the Frontline as a whole, just AJ and himself. That's great for Daniels, but let's not forget the guy's in his late thirties. I've said from the begining that Daniels eventual return should have been used to galvanise the troops, get them fired up and aim them head on at the Mafia, in the final portion of the Mafia storyline. The mid-card star who should have been pushed by this fued (if I had to pick only one) is Jay Lethal. His appearance as a member of the Frontline should have been done on his own as the very first man to join AJ and Joe. He should have then respectfully ditched the Machismo gimmick. He's had matches in the past with Angle and Booker and held his own, he's over with the fans, and he's talented. Why not push him towards the top? He doesn't need to be given the world title, but he needs big wins over the names in the MEM. Sure Beer Money, the Motor City Machine Guns, Eric Young, and many others, deserve a push, but Lethal is the best example for this fued. To respectfully turn his back on a gimmick that emulates a legend in order to make it own his own merit and fight a force like the Main Event Mafia would have been truely intriguing.
As for Joe, his current gimmick is losing him fans. This forum is testement to that. The Samoan Submission Machine is dying and being replaced by a bloated, passionless Umaga rip-off with a penis painted on his face and a plastic knife in his pocket. It's sickening. Joe's only hope is that TNA create a third faction that he leads. The Nation Of Violence, with Rhino and Lashley, and maybe Morgan. A tweener group out to destroy anyone in their path. Otherwise the whole gimmick change and MEM/Frontline fiasco has been wasted. |