Quick note before we begin today’s scheduled musings… so, for the month of October, we are foregoing the weekly PPV Musings and when we return in November, it’ll be covering this year’s Bound For Glory PPV. Bound For Glory is TNA’s flagship PPV event, similar to a Wrestlemania or Starrcade… okay, that might be stretching it nowadays, but you get the general idea. Anyway, this’ll be the first Bound For Glory show that I’ve watched live since… ages. And given how good the TNA product has been this year, I’m sure they’ll be delivering a fine enough show for the ages… which is more than what I can say for today’s subject matter.
As a matter of fact, I had gone ahead and watched the TNA Victory Road show from a couple weeks ago and that was a great show, probably one of the better TNA outputs I’ve seen in this new era. The smart side of my brain suggests that I talk about this show before taking the break from musings to focus on the October marathon of reviews… but sadly, I’m not listening to the smart side of the brain today because soon afterwards, I jumped into the TNA archives to watch the Bound For Glory show from October 10, 2010.
Yes, the 10-10-10 edition of Bound For Glory. Otherwise known as Vincent “Big Vinny V” Verhei’s birthday… yeah, not quite a happy birthday for him, I’m sure.
For those who have followed this blog for who knows how long… first off, my condolences. But secondly, you’re no doubt aware of how much I don’t care for 2010-era TNA. This was the time when Hulk Hogan was signed with the company and we were trying to recreate the glory days of WCW, except with the guy responsible for writing the shitty days of WCW. Coincidentally, this guy also had a hand in the WWF Attitude Era train, but that train also had stars that people cared about and were more than willing to forgive a few bad ideas. Take that aspect away and you get WCW 2000… or TNA 2006-2012.
Anyway, this show is a thing that happened for some reason and I can’t even explain why anyone would want to watch this show. It’s dreadful. The whole thing was based on crowning a new TNA World Champion after the title was declared vacant due to bullshit I’d rather not revisit and also surrounding the identities of the mysterious “THEY” that Abyss had teased were coming… and then the world found out and was like…
So naturally, I didn’t watch the PPV back in the day because I wasn’t a total lost cause back in the day… except for whenever WWE programming was involved, which wasn’t any better at that time, either. But at the very least, WWE had a hot thing going in this fresh new Nexus faction before they completely shit the bed with those guys. TNA didn’t even have that much.
And so, here we are… fourteen years later and I’m watching this show to see what I missed out on and then wonder why I didn’t choose to dedicate this space to a TNA show that I actually DID enjoy. Anyway, my misery is your misery, so let’s get this shitshow over with.
TNA Tag-Team Champions Motor City Machine Guns defeated Generation ME (a.k.a. the very young Young Bucks) in the opening match to retain the titles. This being the opening match of a TNA show circa 2010 would’ve been a main event match on a random episode of AEW Rampage or something like that, but you know what? I’m not going to complain because this match got me in a good mood. It was a fun, fast-paced, and highly energetic match that was a good showcase of a top-tier tag team act holding their own against the young rising stars who would change the wrestling landscape in ten years time. However, as much as I enjoyed watching this match unfold when it did, I would end up hating it towards the end of the show because of how much false hope it gave me that maybe… just maybe… this show wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Maybe there’s more to this thing than just…
Oh wait, what’s next? Okay, then, never mind…
Tara (a.k.a. Lisa-Marie, a.k.a. Victoria) defeated TNA Knockouts Champion Angelina Love, Madison Rayne, and Velvet Sky in a four-way match where Tara rolled up Velvet with a handful of tights to win the title… also of note is Mickey James, who is the special referee and would get into a tussle with Madison Rayne afterwards, while the former champion Love is all but forgotten about… yeah, once upon a time, TNA was lauded for its incredible women’s wrestling and they had quite a few talented women under their belt. Gail Kim, Awesome Kong, zzz, among others… and then somewhere along the way, the product got worse and now the women were producing stuff that was no better than the lower dregs of the WWE Divas factory. Now while this match is nowhere near as bad as some of the worst women’s output to come out of TNA – this came after Jenna vs. Sharmell, but before Rebel vs. Shelley – it is still pretty bad. The four-way felt like jamming a bunch of women into one match so we can fulfill our Divas quota or something.
Ink Inc. (a tag team of tattooed guys) defeated Eric Young and Orlando Jordan in a thing that happened. Eric Young apparently had one head injury too many (in storyline, of course) and so that is fodder for COMEDY. To quote the birthday boy, “fuck you and fuck your show.” Needless to say, I didn’t care too much for this one. I don’t mind having a good laugh, but I wasn’t having a good laugh here. I was largely bored, annoyed and questioning life in general.
X-Division Champion Jay Lethal defeated Douglas Williams in a perfectly acceptable but totally unremarkable wrestling match to retain the title. Hey, at the very least, it was neither a shit show or a clown show, but it was also something that could’ve filled the void on a random episode of Impact. Lethal is then attacked by someone named Robbie E and his valet named Cookie, which is an act parody that once popular thing called Jersey Shore… you know, the one with Snooki. I have never watched a lick of Jersey Shore outside of maybe one or two adds that I thought looked stupid and never gave it another thought until wrestling decided to get inspired by that thing… because that Russo guy knows what’s hip with the young kids or something.
Rob Van Dam defeated Abyss in a Monster Ball match, which is basically just a hardcore match with weapons or extreme rules or whatever you want to call it… vintage ECW. Whatever. Anyway, this was a fun brawl with lots of weapons used and lots of shits and fucks beaten out of each other. As mentioned, Abyss was teasing the arrival of THEM and I didn’t think he’d lose here, but I guess RVD needed his win back after getting beat up by Abyss that resulted in RVD being stripped of his TNA World title and… wait, hold on. They strip RVD of the title because he suffered potentially career ending injuries at the hands of Abyss, only to get cleared and booked to wrestle at this PPV anyway? So why isn’t he defending that title in the main event instead of… aw shit, my brain broke thinking about this shit.
Kevin Nash, Sting and D’Angelo Dinero defeated Samoa Joe and Jeff Jarrett in a 3-on-2 Handicap Match that was supposed to be a six-man with Hogan teaming with Joe and Jarrett, but he had to bail due to “back surgery” or whatever. Oddly enough, Samoa Joe did not give Hogan the ass tearing he gave Scott Hall when he no-showed a PPV once upon a time. I guess it didn’t work for Hogan. Anyway, the story goes that Nash and Sting suspect Hogan and Bischoff of fowl play, but nobody believes them because Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff are very trustworthy individuals who would NEVER resort to underhanded tactics to take control of a wrestling company. I mean, PERISH THE THOUGHT.
So of course, later that night, Nash and Sting were proven correct all along because they have functioning brains. But they’re the “heels” in this story because they’re not Team Hogan or something like that. Nowadays, Team Hogan would be a heel faction unless you’re WWE Creative, but what do I know? Anyway, this was fucking stupid. Nash, Sting, and Pope won the match because Jarrett turned his back on Joe, who was largely being booked as a loser because, you know…
And then people wonder why I hated this fucking show back in the day. Hell, I often go back and read my old posts – especially the stuff that never got posted for reasons – and I often wondered how in the hell I kept watching wrestling during that time. Granted, I watch WWE because I was getting free PPVs as a birthday gift, but the TNA stuff? Fuck that noise.
Unfortunately, there’s still the rest of this show to finish off.
Team 3D (the Dudley Boyz) announce their retirement as a team, but not before asking for one last match with the Motor City Machine Guns for the tag titles. I’m guessing that match happens and Bubba turns on Devon to begin his Bully Ray run or something… my recollection of these things are kinda fuzzy because I wasn’t really paying attention. Then again, when you’ve seen how bad these shows were, could you really blame me?
Extreme Violence 2.0 (the team of ECW Originals Tommy Dreamer, Raven, Rhino, Sabu, and Stevie Richards) defeated the team of Fourtune (the Horsemen knock-off team of AJ Styles, Beer Money, Kazarian, Matt Morgan) in a Lethal Lockdown match, which is essentially the TNA equivalent of a Wargames match, except with a single ring instead of the usual two-ring format. Well, at least, they didn’t pull out the old WCW triple-decker cage and called it Russo’s Revenge Redux or some stupid shit like that. Anyway, the finish saw old, past-his-prime Tommy Dreamer pin young rising star AJ Styles because that’s the way TNA did things. Push the guys who were old and dilapidated at the expense of guys who could take this company into the next decade. Then again, given the benefit of hindsight considering Tommy Dreamer is still with TNA today while AJ Styles is making good money in WWE, maybe it wasn’t such a stupid booking decision… no, I take it back. It was stupid. There’s no defending this shit. And the match itself was kinda lame. For a match with a group called EXTREME VIOLENCE, you’d figure things would be a bit more EXTREME than what was on display here. But as it turned out, the ECW Zombie was more extreme than this match was.
Jeff Hardy defeated Mr. Anderson and Kurt Angle in a triple threat match to win the vacant TNA World Title with an assist from THEM, which turned out to be – try to act surprised for this one, kids – Abyss, Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff, and Jeff Jarrett. BAH GAWD, KING! THOSE SONS OF BITCHES WERE IN CAHOOTS THIS WHOLE TIME! PASS ME THE BARBECUE SAUCE, KING! So yes, Jeff Hardy – who was one of TNA’s most popular babyfaces despite his numerous real-life issues – was turned heel and made to join the newest retread of the nWo gimmick that has been beaten to death harder than the Montreal Screwjob. RVD then comes out to try and talk some sense to Jeff, but Jeff lays him out to end the show. This would, of course, lead to Jeff Hardy getting his own customized Divas title belt to replace the usual TNA title belt and we’d be stuck with that thing for a while before Hardy drops the belt to Sting in early-2011. And then Hardy would have his rematch at Victory Road 2011 and, well… I wrote about that show more times than I prefer to count. All I will say is that I’m glad that Jeff Hardy is in a better place nowadays… for however long that lasts.
See, this is where I’m baffled by why they didn’t just have RVD defend the title against Jeff Hardy in the main event. So you could do the big screwjob finish and give Hardy some real heat behind him by having him accept THEIR aid in winning the title from RVD. Mind you, turning Jeff heel was still stupid, but at least him screwing RVD out of the title would’ve made a little more sense. Instead, we got this 3-way for a vacant title that, while good, made no sense considering the guy who was stripped of the title also wrestled a match. There is a very good chance I’m giving this show WAY more thought than it deserves, but… gee, I don’t know. I like my swerves to make some semblance of sense. This made no sense. And it was stupid.
And that’s why you have a page called LOLTNA.
Bound For Glory 2010 is a show that had a few good working bits; that opening tag match was probably the best thing on the show (never a good sign for a three hour plus PPV event), but you could find occasional decent nuggets here. So while it wasn’t a total wash, I wouldn’t exactly call it a good show, as there was more pointless moments than I’d care to count and the biggest angle leading to the big reveal felt like a complete letdown… like, really, dude? We’re redoing the nWo thing, again… but now we’re calling it Immortal because it’s a Hogan faction or something and… yeah… no… doesn’t work for me, brother. That whole deal was the drizzling shits. I clearly didn’t miss much by skipping out.
That does it for the PPVs musings. See you in November for Bound For Glory 2024… or maybe tomorrow for something else that pops up on this blog.
Would be nice.
dtm666 