By John Moore
TNA Impact Wrestling Hits
Final Deletion Aftermath: TNA’s big money draw right now is Big Money Matt, who is now playing the role of Broken Matt Hardy to perfection (it looked rough at first, but he has smoothed out the rough edges). The cinematic portions were hilarious again and Matt Hardy is totally into his own joke and it works! The dilapidated boat now has a name, “Skarsgard”. Also Vanguard 1 is sentient? Great! I’m intrigued and hoping they do something different with the Jeff Hardy slave angle. It’s a bit odd that they are going to the exact same angle that they did around Bound for Glory last year with Jeff Hardy being EC3’s slave because of “money problems”(?). Jeff Hardy even wore the same pink Little Mac hoodie that he wore last year. The reason I’m confident this will be different and work is because Matt Hardy hasn’t let us down all year and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he will freshen up the slave angle, maybe even with Jeff this time just not listening when it counts.
Matt Hardy Family Dinner: This in particular was the best of the Hardy cinematics. There was a Matt Hardy bust. Maxel was rockin’ the camera! Matt’s belly box was broken and therefore he needed food. Did he call his Armenian waitress “Señor Rita”? He called his drink a libation. He likes green beans. He hates mustard. He also had better mood lighting than Sin Cara. Matt is on a roll right now!
Moose’s Debut: This was a solid debut and a nice get for the TNA Impact roster. It looks like he’ll be thrust into the top superstar mix, which hopefully jumps up to nine wrestlers with Eddie Edwards and Davey Richards inserted into the mix of wrestlers who matter. I’m also a fan of his theme song and it looks like he owns the rights to his ROH theme. That goes into the reason to be a bit wary about this. Did they just put Moose on as the heel buddy of Mike Bennett? My fear is that because TNA really likes their “Invasions” involving Dixie Carter, and Mike Bennett and Maria have been mixing it up with Dixie, this somehow leads to some sort of strange ROH Invasion. I hope that’s not what Mike Bennett meant about burning TNA to the ground. Hopefully Jeff Hardy doesn’t join them because Matt feared that he would join the wrestling that was “honorable” (as well as the New company in Japan and McMah-han). Is this the Kingdom of Miracles?
Bobby Lashley vs. Eddie Edwards: Jason Powell predicted an unclean finish as the best finish to this match for a variety of reasons and it turns out they went in that direction to protect both Eddie and Lashley while also introducing Moose to the Impact audience. I almost could have easily have given it a Miss, but the solid kickout by Lashley at the end put me in the other direction. The Miss aspect came from the ref bump and D’Angelo Dinero’s commentary. Pope was saying “caffeine” in almost every single sentence. You could have turned that into a drinking game and probably be sent to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.
Mike Bennett vs. DJ Z: This is exactly how you should present X Division matches (as opposed to another match that happened tonight which will appear in the Miss column). Z was allowed to shine by himself while Mike Bennett provided a nice pest heel as an opponent. It was a bit lame though when the X Division heels and babyfaces did that wall thing to block off Mike Bennett. Josh Mathews called them the “Stars of the X Division”. All that screams out to me is the “Superstars of WWE Superstars” (a.k.a. cannon fodder). Ultimately, Z picked up a win and got a little bit of individuality, which I totally expect them to totally squander in a few weeks when they have another match for a wooden letter hanging over the ring.
Rosemary: This Bram storyline doesn’t seem all that great, but at least Rosemary is still a good enough actress to keep this thing interesting. That’s the sole reason that this angle is getting a Hit. Let’s see where this goes. Maybe Abyss and Steve are just jealous that Rosemary gave Bram a kiss while she threw up in their mouths? It’s sad that Decay has no other teams other than BroMans to work with in the dilapidated tag division.
TNA Impact Wrestling Misses
Drew Galloway and EC3’s “Fight”: This was strange all across the board. EC3 and Drew played their roles right, but what the hell did TNA want out of this? Wrestlers “fight” all the time, and these two had a pretty formula fight. The announcers tried to say “fight” as much as they could. What made things strange in the end was that even though TNA was allowing this “fight” to happen, the officials and locker room broke it up when the two wrestlers only had a few steps backstage. Here’s another drinking game involving the broadcast team that was spotlighted in this match. How many times can Josh Mathews say the word “bedlam”?
X Division Ladder Match: Last week we got Ultimate X, this week we got a ladder match for a green “X” on a chain. I almost want to see DJ Z wear that thing like Flava Flav wears giant clocks. What made the X Division guys look even more same-y, aside from the North Carolina guys, everyone else decided to wear what Rockstar Spud wears and they all had similar black pants. Eli Drake might have hit it on the head when he called them jumping jabrones who do sunset planchas. That’s a shame given the talent in the division. Everett is exceptionally athletic, Lee is exceptionally talented, DJ Z can mean something, and Spud should be above of all of this. Instead, TNA just blends them all together in pointless spot fests on at least a biweekly basis.
Sienna vs. Gail Kim vs. Jade vs. Marti Bell: This is similar to the X Division match in that we’re just lumping all of the division together in one under-promoted match. Why aren’t they promoting Knockouts Title matches anymore? This also was a bit too short and the ending was underwhelming. Sienna’s finisher has a cool name but it could just as easily be dubbed the “Run and Push”.
Be the first to comment