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Raw easily won its first showdown with TNA Impact on Monday night, now that the second coming of Monday Night Wars has begun officially and in earnest. Raw drew a 3.4 rating and 5.1 million viewers, while Impact managed only a 1.0 rating and 1.4 million viewers head-to-head with Raw.

It’s early and no first-night-upset was expected. A monkey wrench was also thrown into the works, also; History Channel’s runaway hit, Pawn Stars, had its second-season finale on Monday and drew a strong, record-setting 5.8 million viewers, allowing it to edge Raw as the most-watched show in all of cable.

Pawn Stars draws heavily on the same male demographic that Raw and Impact draw, so once next Monday rolls around and Pawn Stars is no longer around during its hiatus, it will be intriguing to see what gains are made by both Raw and Impact. At least we won’t have to see The Old Man on Pawn Stars trying to underbid for a set of 1920s incontinence products. Heh.

Rob Van Dam may be the latest big-name wrestling free agent to sign with TNA; if he signs, his first appearance will be in a couple days, when TNA moves its signature Impact program to Monday nights permanently on Spike TV.

Of course, I wouldn’t bet the stone sink on it; RVD has actually been talking to both WWE and TNA; however, he has made public comments of late hinting that TNA may be the way he’s leaning, and considering how poorly WWE has utilized him in recent years, as well as WWE killing off the ECW brand, it wouldn’t surprise me if RVD signed with TNA.

Jim Ross’ future with WWE should be determined in the next few weeks. Now recovered from his latest bout with Bells Palsy, WWE is laying the groundwork for a potential Ross return to WWE Monday Night Raw. However, Ross has been wondering out loud on his blog whether he can keep up the schedule he used to keep when announcing full-time.

One can expect WWE will want him around at least in the short term, with WrestleMania coming up and Ross being a favorite of several important veterans including, most importantly, Bret Hart.

Also, the risk of releasing Ross right now is higher than ever; with TNA Impact moving permanently to Monday nights, it would take only a couple used travel trailers to get wrestling fans to check out TNA Impact broadcasts with Ross on the play-by-play; he’s be an immediate and meteoric improvement over Mike Tenay.

So it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out; while WWE seems to be wanting to go younger than Ross, his importance to the success of WWE… or TNA… has never been higher.

Moving TNA Impact to Monday nights could help improve WWE’s product overall. One has to admit that Vince McMahon and company were never more creative and interesting than when they were fending off a credible threat from Ted Turner’s WCW promotion.

So, with some good fortune tossed in, TNA will spark a new round of Monday Night Wars that will re-ignite national interest in professional wrestling in general, and a new burst of creative energy that will push more interesting products out of both TNA and WWE.

A new round of Monday Night Wars could be just what WWE needed; moreso than even how teens need an effective way to treat acne!

The headlining match for TNA Impact’s first Monday Night broadcast will be a tag-team affair, with Hulk Hogan and Abyss teaming against Ric Flair and A.J. Styles. This seems, on the surface, to be a smart blending of wrestling legends with new, TNA-homegrown talent… a smart way to introduce the lesser-known, younger guys to a potentially larger audience.

However, it’s all in the execution and if the egos of Hogan and Flair (oy, the eczema!) drown out the talent of Abyss and Styles, it’ll be all for naught. Sure, Hogan’s been selling the “it ain’t gonna be like last time” story since his arrival in TNA, but that’s all a bit too “inside baseball” for mainstream wrestling audiences who may not remember Hogan’s role in the WCW-WWE Monday Night Wars.

If TNA is to prove a credible threat to WWE’s dominance, the storylines will have to get a lot more mainstream, and quickly.

Use your old birth announcements if you have to, but get the word out: Spike TV just approved a permanent move to Monday nights for TNA Impact!

This move places TNA center-stage to challenge WWE directly for audience share on Monday nights, and marks this as the beginning of a new round of Monday Night Wars… the first since WWE bought out WCW several years ago.

The first Impact to air on Mondays will take place on Monday, March 8 on Spike TV. It will be interesting to see how WWE responds to this new challenge from the ratings-starved but momentum-driven upstart promotion.

Beginning Monday, January 4, we just might be witnessing the birth of Monday Night Wars, Take Two. That’s because TNA and broadcast partner Spike TV will be taking the Impact show to Monday night on that day.

No, Spike TV isn’t moving TNA Impact to Monday nights permanently, at least not yet. But if TNA does well against RAW, don’t doubt for a second that TNA will press Spike TV to give them that time slot on an ongoing basis.

And TNA is going all-out to make the three-hour episode of Impact as Impact-ful as possible, with both Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan scheduled to appear on the show. Hogan cut a promo promising that TNA is “going to war against WWE.” That might be a bit premature, but if the ratings for Impact hold and Raw’s drop as a result, well… stranger things have happened. Like that time Elvis took slimming pills while on the john… umm… never mind.

Former WWE mainstay Mick Foley, now wrestling for TNA, has announced the title for his newest autobiography: Countdown to Lockdown. Lockdown is a reference to his first title victory in TNA at the Lockdown PPV.

The book is said to focus on his decision to jump to TNA after so many years with WWE. While that move, so long after the decision to retire and write books for a living, made many people wonder whether Foley had been hit in the head by a 115334 vacuum motor… or maybe just one chairshot too many.

But no… he’s serious about it, for better or worse.

Hulk Hogan, not content yet with his place in wrestling history, has announced he’s moving to upstart WWE rival, TNA. Can I go back to sleep now? You woke me for this?

This would have been huge news about 20 years ago, long before TNA was conceived. Might have even been interesting when TNA was first starting up. But now? Yawn. It’s about as exciting as term insurance quotes. Which isn’t to say boring, but isn’t to say world-shaking, either.

Mick Foley lost the TNA title at the Slammiversary PPV on Sunday, with Kurt Angle becoming the new title-holder after defeating Foley, Jeff Jarrett, A.J. Styles and Samoa Joe in a King of the Mountain match. It’s been a while since TNA switched champs without using Jarrett as a transitional title holder, so that was refreshing.

And that’s about the only thing that was refreshing, as the names Foley, Jarrett and Angle were a lot more interesting back when they were new, in the 90s. Until TNA develops and takes more seriously home-grown young talent like A.J. Styles and Samoa Joe, there’s just not much to be excited about here. The Attitude Era is over, and both ECW and WCW are dead everywhere… except on TNA, which is dwelling somewhere in the Outer Banks, where the houses are beautiful, but the wrestling is so 10 years ago.

And at WrestleMania this year, the big opponent for Chris Jericho will be… three men, all WWE legends and all past their prime. In a special handicap match, Y2J will face off with Jimmy Snuka, Roddy Piper and Ricky Steamboat.

He might get a better match out of a set of Plum trees. Not a one of these guys is still in even his 40s.

Of course it’s bound to be disappointing considering what the rumor mill threw out there: Steve Austin, Ric Flair, Mickey Rourke, even Hulk Hogan. None of them came to fruition. While the handicap match is sure to be a setup for making the fracas seem more competitive, it’s just disappointing considering the alternatives.

Where’s Mick Foley when you need him, Vince?

Oh yeah. Pissing his legend away over on TNA.

An over-the-hill Mick Foley finally debuted on TNA last week, and the result was a nice surprise, but little Impact. It’s been almost a decade since Foley’s been an in-ring impact-player, so although his sudden appearance on the big screen at the arena was a nice way of introducing him, one has to wonder at how much Foley can actually contribute to TNA, which needs to be focusing on developing its own young stars and not remain just a hangout for old WWE castoffs.

While at WWE, Foley demonstrated a lot of selflessnes putting over younger talent; but will he do likewise in TNA, where there’s a lot less star power? Only time will tell, but right now Dixie Carter’s crew seems to be throwing everything, including farmhouse sinks, into the mix to see what sticks.

Not a good sign.