Eight years ago, Total Nonstop Action held its first weekly PPV show, featuring human dicks, gauntlet battle royals for the NWA World title, country singers doing songs, and the epic feud between Jeff Jarrett and elderly statesman Bob Armstrong. How far we’ve gone since then? Now we’re feuding over WWE Hall of Fame rings while the TNA titles are mere afterthoughts. Amazing.
Kurt Angle defeated Kazaria… er, I mean.. KAZ. Yes, because Kazarian isn’t a cool enough sounding name. Who made that call and why were they allowed to live? Hey, I’ll say something nice since I rarely do so with these Impact shows. this was a great opening match, with Kazarian (fuck off, I’m not calling him KAZ unless he becomes a TAZ ripoff) keeping up every step with Angle before falling to the Ankle Lock. Great start.
TNA X-Division Champion Douglas Williams defeated Brian Kendrick to retain the title. Hey, what do you know? This was also pretty damn good. Not quite as good as the last match, but that’s okay. This was fine as well.
TNA Knockouts Champion Madison Rayne defeated Roxxi to retain the title. Roxxi got busted open at one point after Rayne whacked her with a mic and good god, that was really unsettling. But hey, it was a good match. Not great, but good.
Jesse Neal defeated Bubba Ray in a grudge match. From my brief understanding, Jesse Neal was a graduate of Team 3D’s Wrestling School (yes, they actually have a wrestling school and no, I don’t know the name… but it shouldn’t be a surprise) and Brother Ray feels betrayed that Neal would stray from the teachers’ wise consuls. Okay, I can deal with that. Neal winning was a nice surprise… and I say that because this is TNA, where we put over the old guys and bury the young guys, but they flipped the usual expectation and did the right thing. Match wasn’t too bad, either.
Matt Morgan defeated Hernandez via DQ when Hernandez tossed the ref… lame finish to a lame match… well, it had to end sometime, right?
Abyss defeated Desmond Wolfe in a Monster’s Ball hardcore match. So last month, Abyss won Chelsea for thirty days and over the past few weeks, what began as a somewhat reluctant partnership became a reluctant… something, something. Abyss will probably win this one because he has the power of the ring… or something. This was garbage, but this was vaguely fun garbage as any hardcore match should be, so… yeah, thumbs up, I suppose.
Jay Lethal defeated AJ Styles (w/ Ric Flair) in another great match in a string of them. Not much to add here.
Mr. Anderson and Jeff Hardy (a.k.a. Asshole and Druggie) defeated Beer Money in an otherwise perfectly acceptable tag-team wrestling match… and I will go ahead and leave it at that.
TNA World Heavyweight Champion Rob Van Dam defeated Sting to retain the title. And nothing of value was remembered.
Yeah, so this started off on a hot note and then slowly descended into meddling mediocrity. For me, the first half is TNA at its absolute best, while the rest of the show is just… meh. Oh well.
By the way, Dixie, TOMMY DREAMER is going to change TNA forever? Please.
Later…
dtm666 