Before he feuded with people whose fathers were DEAD, Christian Cage was a guy that people liked, but WWE treated as a midcarder. So one day, he decides to leave WWE and ply his trade in TNA, where he’d eventually get a title match against reigning NWA World Champion Jeff Jarrett.
Took me a while, but I finally got to watch this show and… eh…
Let’s dive in…
The Naturals defeated Austin Aries and Roderick Strong in a fun opening tag-match. All four guys are really good and thus you have a good match that’s good for opening the show and setting the stage.
Jay Lethal defeated Petey Williams, Matt Bentley, and Alexy Shelley in a four-way match. Again, four talented guys who are capable of having a good match… went ahead and had a good match. Sadly, it’s about as good as the other match and thus quickly forgotten about afterwards.
BG James and Kip James (a.k.a. Road Dogg and Billy Gunn) defeated LAX (Homicide and some guy named Machete… not the one from the movies, sadly) in a thing that happened. I’m being kind here because I was largely bored with this one.
NWA Tag-Team Champions America’s Most Wanted defeated Sonjay Dutt & Chris Sabin in a perfectly acceptable tag team match to retain the titles. That’s all I’ve got to say. So far, this show isn’t exactly blowing me away.
Rhino defeated Abyss in a falls-count-anywhere match. First genuinely great match on the card and it was two big fuckers beating the fuck out of each other and breaking a bunch of stuff. Finish was Rhino goring Abyss through a stack of tables. Fun visual to end a nice bit of mayhem that woke the crowd up, at least.
X-Division champion Samoa Joe defeated Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles in a three-way match to retain the title and continue his big undefeated streak. I may be wrong, but this is the first time I’ve seen these three in action together. I know they had many matches in TNA over the title, but this is the first one I’ve seen of them. You know what? This was tremendous fun. Two smaller guys bouncing off the big monster dude who gave no fucks. Not gonna lie; I liked this one quite a bit. I’d like to see more of this down the line.
Team 3D defeated Team Canada (Robert Roode & Eric Young) in a thing that happened. I’m guessing this was the “cooldown” match of the card.
Christian Cage defeated NWA World Heavyweight Champion Jeff Jarrett in the usual bullshit TNA main event where eleventy-billion people do a run in, eleventy-billion refs get bumped, and because it’s a Jeff Jarrett match, let’s break a few guitars with my baby tonight to win Cage’s first World title. So I will say, right off the bat, they made the right call in having Cage win the match here. Because they needed to make this guy who willingly let his WWE contract lapse so he could jump to TNA mean something. They couldn’t just make this guy come across as a loser; that’s a WWE thing to do. And yes, when I heard the news that Christian won the title, that made me very happy because I almost didn’t think they’d pull the trigger.
Nowadays, Jeff Jarrett is a beloved veteran of the sport. Back in the days of TNA, he was the guy that everyone was sick of seeing on top. Jarrett had an iron grip on the NWA title and it got to the point where people were pretty sick and tired of seeing Jarrett involved in main event programs over the title. He was like the McSon-In-Law of TNA, except perhaps even worse off because even when he’d lose the title to someone, it was only a matter of time before he’d get that title back. And spoiler alert, Jarrett would eventually win the title back. So, as someone who has seen numerous TNA shows over the years and most of them with Jarrett on top, my joy in seeing Christian Cage being crowned NWA Champion is tempered with the eventuality that that reign isn’t going to last for very long.
So yeah, listen… I thought this show was alright. The 3-way was tremendous, the Christian Cage title win was a nice way to end the show, complete with all the fans coming in to celebrate (kinda scary thought, actually), but the rest of the show ended up being a blank. It wasn’t a bad show, it was mostly fine… but other than the two things I mentioned, I’m hardly going to remember the rest of it.
dtm666 