By James Caldwell, PWTorch columnist

- Welcome to a brand new feature on the Torch that I'm starting with the goal to update on a daily basis. It's part Ticker, part Cube, part commentary on the happenings in pro wrestling for the day. When you stop by the Torch every day for the latest news, be sure to check out the Daily Word for relevant analysis and live features on what's happening in wrestling.

Updated Friday, October 24 - evening update

- Tonight is a rather significant edition of Smackdown after WWE spent one full week advertising the Triple H vs. Undertaker main event. And by one full week, I mean they headlined with that story on their website through Raw, through ECW, and through the past three days. It's kind of a big deal.

I would expect a strong rating for WWE tonight. They're fortunate not to be against a World Series game and the only other major TV programming on tonight is the traditional Friday night juggernaut, Ghost Whisperer. The table is pretty well set for Smackdown to grab its highest rating on MyNetwork TV tonight.

Some other matches to pay attention to tonight are a divas tag match and a Guerrero vs. Colon tag match. First, with the divas, it's pretty much a repeat of every divas tag match on Smackdown with Michelle McCool & Maria facing Natalya & Maryse, just with a musical twist involving Festus involved. Yeah, anything to spice up the usual Diva fare on Smackdown.

One of the things missing from ECW this past Tuesday was some love for Chavo Guerrero, who had an excellent match against Evan Bourne on Oct. 14. Alas, Chavo found himself on Smackdown this week, as he teams with Bam Neely to face Carlito & Primo Colon in the second match of the show.

- Be sure to check out my Cyber Sunday PPV preview currently on the main listing. I break down the PPV from top-to-bottom, mix in a few all-caps statements on Raw, and have a good batch of video selections, including the end of Honky Tonk Man's IC Title reign in 1988 when Ultimate Warrior beat him in about 15 seconds.

In honor of Goldust and Steve Austin possibly appearing on the same WWE PPV for the first time in some time this Sunday, check out this clip of Goldust stuttering his way through a message to Austin.



- We've been pretty critical of TNA's HD effort last night. I think our staff expects a great deal more from TNA than has been shown from them on a consistent basis. Paul Heyman calls it a wasted opportunity and it truly is. There's no excuse for having this talent roster and this much network backing without showing some sort of steady, gradual, consistent increase in TV ratings and PPV buys.

The booking philosophy is bankrupt and the lack of action to back up empty words spoken on TV is unbelievably concerning. How many weeks do we have to hear the line from Jarrett about fighting for the "A.J.s, Joes, and Lethals" of TNA before something is actually done? It's just a tired refrain and the TNA audience is tearing of hearing about it, to the point where they just don't care for Styles and Joe. It was pretty obvious last night.

Let's check some poll numbers on the TNA show last night to see how you, the Torch reader, evaluated the show. For the MVP vote, I personally selected Awesome Kong because she re-established her dominance and did the most with four minutes to deliver a compelling championship match.

The vote is coming in with 22 percent for Kurt Angle, 17 percent for Kong, 15 percent for Mick Foley, and 13 percent for Christian Cage. No one else is even close to sniffing ten percent, which I'm not surprised by. Christian certainly had a stand-out performance last night opposite Booker T on the microphone. He was a bit over-scripted with the Lil Jon references, but it also came across like something Christian would actually do if prompted at 11:00 p.m. at night hanging out at the bar after a show.

Kurt Angle was my second pick for MVP, as he seems to be one of the wrestlers on the roster who is in tune with the direction of his character. Many of the wrestlers just don't have a vision for their character right now. We don't know what's motivating Jay Lethal right now. He seems happy-go-lucky, but he lost the girl and hasn't re-focused.

With Angle, we know he is motivated by greed and power while coveting Jarrett's position of authority. He even over-sold the reaction to Mick Foley's underwhelming announcement so well that Vince Russo might as well have invaded Angle's soul for a few moments. Angle isn't going to be a regular in-ring wrestler due to the wear and tear on his body, but he's refreshingly in-tune with the direction of his character.

As for the 0-10 rating for the show last night, we have a wide range. Very wide. The top vote-getter, though, is a zero. Big fat zero. 17 percent voted that way, which is why Wade Keller also says it's a poll of 0-10 and not 1-10. There has to be room for a completely vacuous show with no redeeming quality.

However, there appear to be some TNA employees fans who checked in the last 20 hours to vote on the positive side. We have 12 and 13 percent of the total vote going to a 7 and 8 score, respectively. Only 9 percent went to the far extreme of giving this show a perfect 10, though.

Let's remove the middle road of scores from 4-6, which comprised 21 percent of the vote. So, we have 79 percent of the vote on the two extremes of 0-3 and 7-10. That's a very strong percentage of fans who felt very strongly one way or the other about this show. I personally rounded up from my Roundtable score of 3.5 to vote for a 4 in the poll.

Totaling up the reader scores of 0-3 for those of you who despised the show, the total is 40 percent. Totaling up the reader scores of 7-10 for those of you who were pretty high on the show, the total is 40 percent. Split right down the middle.

What does that tell us? For starters, we have readers with a mind of their own. Wade Keller and I were not high on this show at all, but our reader reaction came in positive for the most part. In the minds of 40 percent of our readers, the positive elements of the show - and there were some - out-weighed the negative segments.

If I had to take a guess, I would say TNA finally clearing up the question of whether the heels are aligned by booking the Main Event Mafia was a major positive that readers focused on. NWO Wolfpack v.2008 at least gives some stability to the TNA roster, and could set up the young wrestlers to align together and create interesting TV feuding against MEM.

Imagine a potentially-down-the-road-drop-the-Curry-Man-and-returning Christopher Daniels against Sting. Or Booker. Or Angle. We'll see how this plays out, but it was not a good start for the New Blood when Styles & Joe took a loss, then took a post-match beating last night. Speaking of Daniels, here's an old-school XPW promo when Daniels had hair and spectacles. Good times.

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