Yeah, it's a TNA PPV, alright. Glad it isn't my money this time around, though. Since someone else is paying for it, I'm glad to watch and put up the results for benefit of W's everywhere.
-Sting & Kurt Angle v. Ron Killings & Adam "Pacman" Jones for TNA Tag Team Championships. May as well get Pacman out of the way ASAP. And you may as well call it a handicap match, because even TNA isn't dumb enough to let Pacman get a bump in. The match is pretty much all Killings vs. Sting & Angle with Pacman refusing the tag. The match isn't even five minutes in before Karen Angle comes out and makes me pine for the dulcet tones of Stephanie McMahon. Karen takes a dive and gets Kurt's attention as a result. She points the finger at Sting, which results in Kurt running in and giving him an Olympic Slam just as Pacman tags in. Pacman gets the academic cover and the titles, not that anyone could see it, because the cameras were focused on Karen Angle. Hey, you know how surprisingly cool MVP & Matt Hardy have made the cliched Wacky Tag Team Champions That Can't Get Along angle? This is the total opposite of that! And just for kicks, let's go back in time to around two to three weeks ago...
Originally posted by Me from the Impact 8-23-07 threadCould be worse, at least a celebrity isn't holding a major title...yet. Could change at the PPV.
I hate being right. Fuck you, Vince Russo. -Rhino stands with Jeremy Borash. He isn't a machine. He isn't a fish or an avalanche. He's a man. He's an alcoholic man...Terry Gerin. The POINT of this, I guess, is that James Storm is gonna feel a gore tonight. Well, why didn't he just say that in the first place and leave it at that? -Rhino v. James Storm (w/ Jackie Moore). This match goes into the crowd fast. After some bad brawling, the fight hits the ring. Rhino hits the GORE a few minutes in and gets a TWO? Why kill his big finisher for JAMES STORM? Chairs and tables get involved and the match ends with Storm getting gored through the table. Rhino gores Jackie after the match for fun. Crowd pops for the woman-beating, alcoholic babyface. -Karen Angle is still reeling from her "injury", but Kevin Nash points out that he only saw her slap Sting. Sting rushes in and confronts Kurt with Jim Cornette and Matt Morgan coming in to break them up. Karen Angle SCREAMS...A LOT!!! Cornette sends Sting home and, shortly after, sends Karen packing too. The odds on her showing up again before the PPV's over are 2-1. -Kaz v. Robert Roode (w/ Traci Brooks). This match pleasantly surprised me, as I completely expected the angle to take over. Instead, we get over ten minutes of solid wrestling (after some foreign object silliness) that actually has a clean finish. Kaz misses a top-rope legdrop and Roode finishes with the Payoff. Good match. No follow-up with Kaz and Brooks means this feud MUST continue! -Jay Lethal is interviewed backstage and starts his Randy Savage spiel. Kevin Nash comes in and tells Lethal to take a dive, because Kurt has more important things to worry about later. Way to get the X Division guys over, fellas! Lethal is oblivious to this request and continues his Randy Savage impression. Dig it! -Jay Lethal v. Kurt Angle for the X Division Championship. A surprisingly back-and-forth match, but when Kurt's on offense, he dominates the smaller Lethal. Lethal gets his offense in, though, and even looks to finish with the Savage Elbow at one point, but Kurt counters with the Pop-Up Superplex for two. Lethal DOES manage to hit the Lethal Combination and Savage Elbow later, but it only gets a two. Match ends with a reversal sequence, in which Angle looks to polish off Lethal with the Ankle Lock, but Lethal reverses into a roll-up for the pin and the title! Crowd pops huge for the upset! Wow! Way to get the X Division guys over, fellas! No sarcasm this time. Speaking of the X Division guys, they all come out to congratulate Lethal and generally hail him as a conquering hero. What an awesome moment! And this was a great match, too, ranking up there with Kurt's matches with Rey Mysterio. Should easily get Match of the Night honors and almost succeeds in washing the sour taste of the Pacman title victory out of my mouth. It should also be noted that Kurt's 0-2 tonight in his title matches. -And it's back to the other end of the spectrum, as Jeremy Borash stands with "Black Reign" Dustin Rhodes. With the crowd still in a frenzy from the last match, Dustin manages to do the impossible and put them back to sleep with an incredibly boring promo. Oy vey! -"Wildcat" Chris Harris v. "Black Reign" Dustin Rhodes in a No DQ match. Dustin comes out with a rat, which sadly becomes important later. Rhodes goes through his insomnia-cure offense and looks to finish with a metal spike, before Earl Hebner gets in his face and theoretically threatens to DQ him...in a NO DQ MATCH! Harris rolls up Rhodes during the distraction for the pin. This was everything the last match was not. After the match, Harris looks to emphatically end this insipid feud by handcuffing Rhodes and bashing him with a chair. Rhodes hits a low blow, breaks out of the cuffs, and knocks out Harris with the chair. He then does the impossible (2) and makes this feud even stupider by shoving his rat's ass in Harris' face, after initially teasing giving Harris the Richard Gere job. Obviously, this feud MUST continue! The upside is, it can't POSSIBLY get any more idiotic from here...can it? -Interview with the Christian Coalition. Christian Cage points out that he has yet to be pinned during his entire TNA tenure, which is actually pretty impressive if true. Christian then gives Styles and Tomko the night off. -Tag Team Gauntlet; Winners become #1 contenders. I'm sure the winners of this will be shaking in their boots at that unbeatable combination of Killings & Pacman. Rules are Royal Rumble style; over-the-top rope eliminations with a new wrestler coming in every minute or so. Last two survivors get their partners back and a tag match ensues. Order of eliminations: Homicide, Chris Sabin, Havok, Raven, Shark Boy, Jimmy Rave, Petey Williams, Brother Ray, Brother Devon, B.G. James, Elix Skipper (who nearly had his neck broken by a clumsy Lance Hoyt chokeslam), Sonjay Dutt, Hotstuff Hernandez, Tomko, Hoyt, Christopher Daniels, Kip James, and Eric Young. This brings back Tomko and Sabin, leading to... -A.J. Styles & Tomko v. Motor City Machine Guns. Short, but decent match and Tomko actually managed to keep pace. Match ends with a reversal sequence and Styles managing to stay on top for the pin. Styles & Tomko are #1 contenders. Pretty good stuff and I'd like to see a rematch between these teams when they aren't worn out from a Gauntlet match, particularly Styles, who was out there from the very beginning. -Borash interviews Samoa Joe, who talks loud and says nothing. Hey, I hate to give Joe that treatment, because it was an intense promo and all, but I don't buy for a second that he's that angry over a nameless entrance dancer. -Samoa Joe v. Christian Cage. Joe gets DQ'd when he goes berserk and refuses to break his choke holds. Referee Rudy Charles and several X Division guys get massacred. Jim Cornette and Matt Morgan finally manage to calm him down, but not before Stone Cold Joe flips them the bird. Weak match with a weaker finish, but at least they're doing SOMETHING to get Joe over as a monster again. -Then comes the big announcement of the night. Yes, TNA iMPACT is officially going two hours, starting on October 4. I'll add my thoughts on this at the end. -In a lesser announcement, Ron Killings and "Pacman" Jones are heading on the road for Atlanta to defend their titles at Bound For Glory. Wait...Atlanta? You mean the same Atlanta where police wanted to question him for one of the many "strip club incidents" involving him and his entourage? Oh, ESPN's gonna have FUN with that story! -Kurt Angle v. Abyss for the TNA Heavyweight Championship. Fairly boring main event that saw Angle working over Abyss's ankle the entire match. Abyss tried to mount some comebacks, including a Shock Treatment, but Angle wasn't about to get caught with his pants down again, like in the Lethal match. Angle systematically destroys Abyss and wins with the Ankle Lock. Good for a TV main event, but feels lackluster for a PPV main event. No Karen Angle means I owe the PPV buyer a Coke. -Show ends with Jim Mitchell congratulating Abyss on his match before an EVIL HAND reaches in from the ring and pulls Abyss inside.
This PPV was a mixed bag. There were some really good matches and everyone should catch the Angle/Lethal match. But at the same time, stuff like the Black Reign/Chris Harris debacle and the travesty that was the opening tag match should be avoided at all costs. On the upside, at least they're going to try and build up Joe as a badass again. Still, thumbs squarely in the middle for me.
The big test for this company starts on October 4. A lot of people have given TNA the benefit of the doubt over the whole Crash TV thing, because they've only had one hour of TV time a week to give airtime to a bunch of different guys. That will not be an excuse anymore. If October 4 comes and it's still full-speed-ahead Crash TV nonsense, those same people who were willing to give TNA a chance for so long will start to tune out. And those new viewers the company's been so desperate to attract will never come.
Originally posted by It's False-In a lesser announcement, Ron Killings and "Pacman" Jones are heading on the road for Atlanta to defend their titles at Bound For Glory. Wait...Atlanta? You mean the same Atlanta where police wanted to question him for one of the many "strip club incidents" involving him and his entourage?
The same Atlanta where Chris Benoit killed his family? What a festive atmosphere. Maybe Dr. Astin can get comped.
This was a really good show, I thought. Sure the opening tag match was crap and the Chris Harris match made me sad because he could do so much better, but the rest was well worth it.
When was the last time you saw Kurt Angle give TWO great matches in the same night.
Something I noticed was that any match that went over ten minutes was good and the ones under that were shitty.
This show should get a lot more praise than it has. The good things far outweigh the bad.
The bad - Pacman's match - Dark Reign's match - Abyss angle at the end
The Good - Excellent Lethal/Angle match - The Tag Team Battle Royal was a lot of fun, and Styles/Tomko vs. Motor City Machine Guns was excellent for the few minutes we got to see. - Robert Roode/Kaz, Joe/Christian and Angle/Abyss were all good matches. - Simple booking. Roode played the part of wrestler mistreating his woman with Kaz saving the day, Lethal was the underdog, Angle did the ole target on one body part and Joe did the "I don't care about winning I just want to hurt him thing". Very simple stuff that all worked better than their usual booking. - Clean finishes. Okay so Joe and Christian ended with a DQ but it actually worked in that case. The other matches were clean finishes. - Lack of ref bumps. Again there was a ref bump in Christian/Joe but it worked. The other matches didn't have ref bumps.
Is TNA going to start putting on shows like this every week? Probably not, but this was an excellent show.
I was in Canada last night and didn't catch the PPV 'til now.
I thought it was a really solid show -- not spectacular, but solid. Angle/Abyss, Angle/Lethal, and Cage/Joe were all good.
I was amused by Pacman "waving off" the tag from Killings. (Instead of teasing that he'll actually wrestle, they should play him up as a big-talking coward who hides behind his "no-touch" contract.)
Camera work should have been better -- missing Kaz's piledriver thing, missing Abyss tapping, cutting away from Pacman getting the pin -- WTF, dudes?
Tag Gauntlet was alright -- they maybe should have cut it down to eight team and given some extra time to the tag match at the end (which was really cool, while it lasted -- man, MCMGs are a ton of fun). If you're going to have a match that "demonstrates the depth of the tag division," you're going to look like dorks if the match includes thrown-together teams like Eric Young and Sharkboy.
I thought the Judas Mesias introduction was fine -- I mean, I laughed 'cause it was goofy, but it didn't bore me or piss me off. (I don't think he's supposed to be Mitchell's actual son, but his metaphorical son -- I could be wrong.)
Congrats to Jay Lethal. Let's see if they can follow up!
Dustin Rhodes continues to suck. Him "letting" his rat "crawl" on Harris looked more like they were re-enacting the animal cracker scene from Armageddon.
--K
Last 5 movies seen: The Man From the Alamo *** - The Desperadoes *** - 3:10 to Yuma (1957) ***1/2 - Antibodies *** - Blades of Glory ***
Originally posted by Karlos the JackalCamera work should have been better -- missing Kaz's piledriver thing, missing Abyss tapping, cutting away from Pacman getting the pin -- WTF, dudes?
TNA PPVs have been notoriously bad for this for months. It's as though the director has never seen pro wrestling before in his life. And yet, it's David Sahadi, who used to make those cool video packages for WWE, so you'd think he'd know better.
On one hand, giving the nWo a company of their own doesn't seem like a great move. On the other hand - what ELSE are they going to call the second company?