By John Moore
TNA Impact Wrestling Hits
Ethan Carter III vs. Mike Bennett: One of the things that Mike Bennett was missing during his TNA run was a big win. He still picked up a fluky win here but TNA did give up the EC3 streak so now Bennett has something big to talk and gloat about. EC3 doesn’t lose anything since he’s a babyface and doesn’t need to gloat about the streak anymore. The match was good, but it didn’t give away what the final confrontation between the two could be. Though Carter stopped talking about it, it’s cool how they survived these many years without Carter being pinned or submitted (he’s lost many No-DQ matches and at BFG Drew Galloway took the pin rather than him. Matt Hardy also beat him later on via cage and last man standing stips.).
Drew Galloway vs. Tyrus: This was a surprisingly good match out of Tyrus, but Drew Galloway is definitely capable of bringing the best out of everyone. Tyrus didn’t look bad on his end though as he kept up a good enough pace with the world champ and usually a weakness of Tyrus is that he tends to wrestle extremely slowly. The writers did Tyrus a disservice here in that no one took him seriously as a world title contender due to lack of build. If they just allowed Tyrus and Spud to develop a little more with Tyrus destroying people this would have been much more of an epic encounter, but you can’t complain that it was good in the opening spot. Tyrus also gains a little bit for kicking out of the Claymore. Drew’s finisher, the Future Shock DDT, is being built up well as the end-all-be-all so Drew gain’s there. I wonder what Stone Cold thinks about how TNA is protecting Drew’s DDT (albeit a double underhook DDT).
Rosemary vs. Gail Kim: The moment that Rosemary started on the TNA scene, she had this star aura about her and she played her role great as a manager. She proved here that she can carry all of her greatness over to the ring. Not only did she show good in-ring prowess, but she integrated her macabre character into the fold. Gail Kim was as great a wrestler as she usually is and losses don’t really hurt her since she wins and dominates too damn much. It would be great if Gail Kim stopped talking and hyping up the knockouts division while moving back to what made her great the end of 2015 which was of a silent ass-kicker.
Reby Hardy: Reby has been such a great component to the Matt Hardy act and she deserves a lot of credit in this episode filling in the segment that Matt Hardy usually commands. Matt Hardy has been counted on to promote and take up time every single week and has done a masterful job at it and Reby did well here in her own unique way. She continued to annoy Jeff and rant in his face to draw heat. She also did her job at promoting a “darker” Matt Hardy by the end of the promo which is very intriguing. It’s funny how out of the double-turn a few months ago between Matt and EC3, the veteran Matt Hardy is seeing the most astronomical growth and continues to grow.
TNA Impact Wrestling Misses
Beer Money vs. Decay in the Valley of the Shadows: Maybe when on the storyboard, this thing sounded epic, but overall it seemed to be a running joke on the show as to what was the “Valley of the Shadows”. It was more like “Valley of the [slightly dimmed lights]”. I’m not sure if it was from Michael Cole, Josh Mathews, or both, but I’m pretty sure the explanation that Josh gave about the lights was the exact same explanation that was given about Sin Cara 1.0’s mood lighting during his matches. Does Sin Cara compete in Valley of the nightclub matches? As for the title switch, I felt like there was a missed opportunity here with Bobby Roode’s final match. The tacks were fine in a Monster’s Ball sense, but I felt they could have done more, maybe a coffin or bodybag for Roode? And Decay (mostly Abyss) was celebrating their title win in a huge way when I would expect Decay to react a bit differently to a title win.
Eric Young vs. Bram: There was nothing particularly wrong here, but this match just felt underwhelming. Maybe it’s due to the lack of hype behind the Booker T/Jeff Jarrett toy belt. I’m also not sold on Bram as a babyface. He tried it last year to no avail. Are they going to try to make him the “King of Hardcore” again? I sure hope not. Also, this was EY’s last TNA match if you haven’t heard.
Fact of Life: Wowzers! This was dreadful! TNA’s inferiority complex creeps up again in them trying to be WWE-lite with a makeshift talk show segment. The fact that this was slapped together was a part of the badness. Then the [babyface] BroMans walked in. The BroMans! I feel bad for the tag team division that is left with Decay and the BroMans. On the tag team curse note, how funny would it be if Abyss got sidelined or left the company for some unforeseen reason? Then there will be one, the BroMans!
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