from PWInsider.com

TNA IMPACT! NOTES FROM EUROSPORT AIRING: LOTS MORE SILLINESS FROM COMMENTARY
by Adam & Ian Hamilton @ 1:00:00 AM on 3/5/2005

Adam sent the following...

Last week I sent in a report regarding TNA on Eurosport. I was hoping that the channel would learn and this week use proper announcing, I was wrong, now, I’m not sure if it’s cheaper for Eurosport to buy the shows and do their own commentary rather then buy the shows with proper commentary, but it looks like they learned nothing from last weeks broadcast and the reactions to it, other then the announcing still being very robotic and lacking any excitement, this week we got more pearls of wisdom, here are some of my personal favorites:

-The matches were still referred to as fights, while Christopher Daniels was challenging AJ Styles the announcer kept speaking through parts of it and part of Daniels' words were not heard. When AJ came out to answer Daniels, the announcer actually let him speak, but when Dusty Rhodes came out to announce the match, the announcer once again spoke over his words.

-This time the terms Heel and Face were not mentioned, however the announcer did mention that Daniels and Styles take many “bumps”, during the first match of the night the announcer said Daniels was 6 feet tall, when he wrestled AJ later that night, he suddenly became 2 inches shorter and the announcer said he was 5 feet 10 inches.

-During the broadcast TNA was referred to as competition to the WWE and the announcer said that that TNA was actually challenging the WWE and said that anything can happen in TNA and the show was largely “unscripted." Since when do wrestling announcers refer to wrestling as being mostly unscripted? Mostly?

-It was also very interesting hearing the announcer come up with names for moves. When Abyss set up a table to put Jeff Hardy through the announcer said that someone will be “tabled”, the announcer also called an enziguiri a dropkick; he called a body slam a back breaker; a crossface was called a camel clutch, he called a DDT a face drop, and my personal favorite moment was the announcer calling Jeff Hardy’s swanton a “twist into a drop."

- One more thing, when Dusty Rhodes came out to announce the Iron Man match between Styles and Daniels at the Against All Odds PPV (the shows which air on Eurosport are older), the announcer said that this fight will be Against the Odds for Daniels rather then the fact that it was just the name of the PPV.

However, there is some good news for TNA fans in Israel and the Middle East (I’m from Israel, but Eurosport airs here), as TNA Impact airs on Friday nights on Fox Sports ME (Middle East) with proper commentary!

Ian Hamilton sent the following....

I just watched a bit of Impact on British Eurosport tonight, to see if it really was as bad as people were making out. It isn't. It's worse:

The commentator (I think his name is Sid Hoare, the guy who does the K-1/sumo/world's strongest man/amateur wrestling) botches the names of pretty much EVERY move. Some of his classics tonight were the Evenflow DDT being called a "face drop by the Raven", a wristlock being an "arm irish whip move"; a Lionsault being called a "reverse somersault frog splash"; and a Blue Thunder Bomb became a "spine crusher"

The guy commentates on it as if it were real, using comments like "Here's the security to break things up, hooray", but has obviously not even watched the show before he did commentary. When run ins happen, he spends a few seconds stalling before he can name the guys involved (after which he resorts to cliches).

I can understand Eurosport having the commentary dubbed over for the foreign language stations, but the guy who's been dubbed onto the English show makes Marc Loyd look like Gordon Solie!

Here's the best part: the main event of AJ Styles vs Christopher Daniels (which went to a 10min draw) was shown without an ad break in the middle. Eurosport didn't adjust their on-screen clock (they don't use the TNA tickers for some reason) to compensate for the few minutes lost during the ad break they cut out. So we were told that the match ended in a 10 minute time limit draw, while 2:45 was left showing on the Eurosport 10-minute timer.
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This is pure retardation, if you ask me

Stupid question, but how can they dub in their own announcers over the TNA product? Wouldn't TNA have something to say about that?

Apparently, they don't mind.

Good point Red Hot Thumbtack in the Ass.

THUMBSACK!!!!!!

I'm never going to live that down, eh?

Now you're gonna have to live SQUEE down.

Yes, but SQUEE is the neighbor of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac. I can live with that.

::Scratches head:: Huh? When did you revert back to TheBigSwigg? Who is SQUEE?


Tune into Nitro?

It's the reaoning behind SQUEE that you are gonna have to live down.....puss.

If you only knew my family, then you'd understand.