Show opens with a memorial graphic of Joe Koff, former Ring Of Honor head during the Sinclair years. I know nothing about the guy other than he was a well-liked dude. Thoughts and prayers to his friends and family.
In the opening match, PCO defeated Rhino in a hardcore match to retain both his belts – because even though the Lutte Internationale title isn’t an official TNA title, we’re defending it like a TNA title. I thought that I was watching Impact, not Dynamite. This is followed by a promo from Nic Nemeth hyping up his match against Matt Cardona… oh great, just what we need; a rehashing of the Dolph Ziggler/Zack Ryder rivalry from a decade ago.
Speaking of old WWE gimmicks, Ash By Elegance – the former Dana Brooke – made short work of some NXT girl whose name I don’t recall, but Xia Brookside comes along to keep Ash from doing anything questionable. This is followed by a pretty good match between Speedball Bailey and some dude who is quickly disposed of by Bailey to retain his X-Division title.
Main event sees Nic Nemeth retaining his TNA title over Matt Cardona… no Z True Island Story success to be found here, but this was a pretty good match. You look at the match they had at one of the old WWE PPVs from 2011 compared to this and they’re night and day.
Oh and Kazarian puts on a ref shirt to announce that he’ll be the special ref for the Nemeth/Hendry title match at Bound For Glory. Isn’t it enough we have the specter of John Layfield hovering over this title match already? Do we really need another heel ref to color this thing even further?
I’m at a point where I’m not really feeling the build up for Bound For Glory. There’s some good stuff here and there – I’m liking Mike Santana’s war on the System, going through each one before getting to Moose – but it seems like there’s a lack of anticipation in this show that’s supposed to be the biggest show of the TNA calendar. I wouldn’t necessarily call this Impact a bad show; it remains an easy two hours of wrestling for me to watch, but as a show building up to a PPV… it’s not exactly hitting that sweet spot.
dtm666 