WWE vs TNA: The Monday Night Wars Redux? (Part 2)

It took me a few days but I finally was able to watch this Monday's edition of Raw.  I tried to do the recap in the same format that I did Impact's as a more reactionary-type thing instead of a play-by-play.  But forgive me if it feels a bit anti-climactic considering I had already read the results and knew what happened before I saw the whole thing.

WWE vs TNA: The Monday Night Wars Redux? (Part 1)

Anyone that knows me well knows that I'm a huge fan of professional wrestling and have been since the day I was born.  But truth be told, I haven't watched wrestling with any regularity in some time.  You see, in my teenage years, the wrestling business had reached a high not seen since the days of Hulkamania in the '80s due to the Monday Night Wars.  WCW went head-to-head with the WWF every Monday (at least when the WWF wasn't pre-empted with stuff like the US Open) and for a good couple years, wrestling fans were in heaven.  On the WCW side, you had the nWo taking over but also some great matches including guys like Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero who would go on to become huge.  On the WWF side, there was Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, D-Generation X and the newfound "Attitude".  After a few years, WCW fell due to bad business decisions and ended up being bought out by Vince McMahon and absorbed into the WWF, which would later become the WWE that we know of today.  But soon enough, wrestling got boring to me with the WWE being the only show on the air and I stopped watching.  Other than a few years ago when ECW (another competing brand that was bought out by McMahon) was making a comeback, I haven't watched any shows regularly.  Now, I'll turn it on every once in a while if I'm with friends and we need something to laugh at but I can't really watch it on my own.  In that time, a new company dubbed TNA Wrestling had risen through the ranks but despite grabbing plenty of top stars in the wrestling business, they've failed to gain a foothold to go toe-to-toe with the McMahon empire.  But with the recent decision to not only hire Hulk Hogan to help run the company but to run a show head-to-head with the WWE's flagship show Monday Night Raw, I couldn't not watch.  Of course, the WWE wasn't going to be outdone as they had brought in Bret Hart, a wrestler who hasn't been in a WWE ring in 12 years and who many thought they would never see him appear in one ever again.  Yeah, maybe I'm a bit more cynical now than I was then but I can't deny that history is being made, whether TNA shows that they're a contender or falls by the wayside when it's all said and done.  So, I decided to do a bit of a recap.  Due to the fact that TNA was running a 3-hour show, starting an hour earlier than Raw, and that the USA Network comes in a bit fuzzy for me, I decided to watch TNA Impact first and I'll watch Raw online at a later date, probably tomorrow.  Forgive me if this review seems a bit scatterbrained as I typed it up while watching.  I'm pretty much copy-and-pasting this a half-hour after the show had ended so I'm not going to edit it.  If you're unsure as to what something or who someone is, let me know in the comments and I'll clarify.  This one's for my fellow wrestling fans and I hope they're not disappointed.