Mickie James Isn’t Dead, TNA and ROH Ratings

James Storm Mickie James

When Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) was pushed in to an oncoming train by Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) on House of Cards, it was absolutely shocking. When TNA did it on Thursday it was hilarious. Not least because pro wrestling storylines operate within the real world and are supposed to play out in a sports-like environment. We can tell the creative team still had some grasp on reality because the footage was displayed as CCTV, however I’m not sure CCTV at train stations can record audio from the tracks!

Perhaps the saving grace is that Mickie James was not killed off as speculated, she simply suffered concussion symptoms and was able to get off the tracks before any train posed a risk. Despite the clear criminal evidence TNA have explained the incident away as “borderline criminal” and suggest Mickie probably won’t be pressing charges.

Storm walked Mickie James to the train station and that is where Storm, for whatever his reasons are, knocked Mickie James onto the tracks. While Storm’s actions are despicable and borderline criminal, we have reached out to Mickie James and have not yet gotten comment. We also reached out to security at The Nashville Star Train Station who were first on the scene after James Storm left and they were able to tell us that Mickie briefly blacked out and showed symptoms of a concussion. Mickie was tested and passed all concussion field tests. Mickie was emotionally disturbed following the events We will do our best to keep everyone up to date and we wish Mickie a very speedy recovery. We will be following up with Mickie James to see if she plans on filing criminal charges with Nashville PD.

Some may argue that the angle has gotten people talking, but there’s a difference between getting people talking about a train-wreck (for the lack of a better term) and getting them talking about something that was compelling and entertaining. The atmosphere is “did you see what silly TNA did now?” NOT “OMG you have to check out this awesome TNA storyline.”

While the two won’t be connected because nobody knew it was coming, Impact’s debut on Wednesday night saw a considerable viewing drop off from the previous timeslot. The show drew 297,000 viewers, down from the prior week’s 413,000 number. If they’re fighting to survive cancellation in the Fall this isn’t a good sign.

Even Jim Ross chimed in on the train track angle on his JRSBARBQ.com blog:

I’m a big fan of both Mickie James, who was on our talent roster when I was in WWE, and James Storm whose work I’ve always enjoyed a great deal but the creative that they were provided Wednesday night regarding the train was undesirable and completely unrealistic and had me feeling embarrassed for two, very good talents. I do like the direction of Storm becoming a deranged character with scary tenacities but the train business did that few favors.

As for Ring of Honor they drew 163,000 viewers for the first showing of their one hour syndicated show.

If you count replays, Impact did a total of 369,000 viewers and ROH did 273,000 viewers.

Interestingly since ROH is also syndicated across the Sinclair markets and usually draws around 500,000 viewers combined, the show is now seen by more people than Impact. That won’t matter to Destination America however.

The test will be to see how the shows do next week.

Mickie James Train

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