Congratulations, TNA. It took you a little while, but you finally believe in Joe Hendry.
Welcome to the rest of us.
Truth be told, I did not intend on watching this show because I was largely busy that weekend, but I did make a point to catch the replay if the above happened and sure enough, that’s what we got. And so here we are. I also plan on doing musings for the Bound For Glory show from months ago, but that’s for later down the road. Right now, we’ve got this show… which also featured some involvement from NXT talent thanks to the recent TNA/WWE deal that sees a talent exchange between both groups. Now if you were to tell me fifteen years ago that TNA and WWE would not only be on good terms with each other, but go so far as to have some limited form of talent exchange, I’d call you nuts. In fact, I still think this is nuts. Still, good on TNA. This is a good thing for them, along with the move to Sportsnet 360 up in Canada, which gives them slightly more visibility (as well as priority, since TNA being owned by Anthem – a Canadian company – makes them defacto CANADIAN CONTENT that must be showcased.)
Anyway, besides the above, there’s a whole lot of show to cover here, so let’s dive in.
X-Division Champion MOOSE defeated Ace Austin to retain the title in a solid opening match. There was some interference from MOOSE’s System cohorts that Ace briefly fought off, but in the end, MOOSE proved to be the better man and continues to come across as a tremendous star. It’s worth noting that MOOSE has a new title belt that goes unmentioned by the announcers and if I hadn’t been paying attention, I wouldn’t have noticed, either. So thanks for that, guys.
So the System people start beating up on Ace until Eric Young and Steve Maclin come in for the save, which leads us right into our next match that sees Young and Maclin defeat System members Eddie Edwards and Brian Myers in a perfectly fine tag match that saw the TNA veterans victorious.
TNA Knockouts Tag Team Champions Spitfire (Dani Luna and Jodi Threat) defeated Ash & Heather-by-Elegance to retain the tag titles in a perfectly acceptable little tag match. Wasn’t too into this one if I’m being honest here, but all four women did their best to put on an entertaining little match and that’s all you could really ask for.
Tessa Blanchard – fresh off her exile from mainstream pro wrestling for five years due to various shenanigans that we won’t get into here – defeated Jordynne Grace in what would turn out to be Grace’s final TNA match before testing the waters of free agency and possibly prepped for a WWE or NXT run sooner than later. Whatever you want to say about Blanchard’s shady backstage reputation or whatever the case may be, you can’t deny that she’s a hell of a talent and both women put on an absolute “boomer” of a match… see, because BOOM is louder than BANG… yeah, so this was fucking tremendous. An excellent pro wrestling match and certainly one of the better women’s matches I’ve seen in recent memory, at least, I could think of no better way for Grace to end her run in TNA than with this fine piece of work. These two work well together and hopefully, with the new WWE/TNA deal in place, a follow-up match might come around sooner than later.
Mike Santana defeated Josh Alexander in an I Quit match – a stipulation that was apparently added at the last minute. Again, this is another match that serves as a swan song for a departing wrestler. In this case, Josh ends up not only quitting the match (after Mike bound the guy and threatened to bash his brains in with steel steps), but also quit TNA. Nothing apparently came of this on TV, but Josh is also done with TNA and is probably going to be testing the free agency waters for a bit before… I don’t know where he goes from here. Maybe we’ll know by the time this gets posted. In any event, this was another tremendously fun brawl. Probably would’ve been the best match on the card if not for the Blanchard/Grace match that came before – and part of me feels following that match with this one took a little bit of the sting off, what with having back-to-back matches featuring departing talent losing their last matches, but otherwise, this was a fine brawl. If nothing else, it further cements Mike Santana as a potential big star with the crowd firmly behind him. For a guy who people only saw as a tag guy in AEW, the dude has stepped up his game tremendously during his TNA run and I genuinely believe – there’s that word again – that there is a potential TNA title run in his future. Hopefully, someone gets the message and gives this man the proper push he deserves.
TNA Tag Team Champions The Hardyz defeated The Rascals to retain the titles. Also making an appearance are NXT Tag Champions Nathan Fraser and his masked dude whose name I forget. They do a stupid thing by sitting at ringside and then get splashed for their troubles before being ejected from the building. And this leads to the NXT Tag titles being defended on Impact. We’ll get to that once I post the Impact musings later on, but for now, this is another Hardyz match; playing all the old hits while the younger guys have to slow down so as to not make the old guys look bad. Hey, credit where it’s due; the Hardyz are more focused here than they ever were in AEW and Jeff seems to have his head on straight – which is a huge accomplishment given his past transgressions – but at the end of the day, it’s two old guys trying but not quite able to keep up with the faster, young guys. It’s not embarrassingly bad yet, but it is noticeable. Maybe they’ll get a chance to work with some NXT talent who will no doubt work the slower, more methodical WWE style that will suit the Hardyz just fine in their medium ages.
TNA Knockouts Champion Masha Slammovich defeated Rosemary in the Clockwork House Of Oranges Match or whatever it’s called. It’s basically a no-DQ, falls count anywhere hardcore match where a bunch of weapons are used before Masha hit Rosemary with her top rope piledriver through a bunch of stacked chairs for the win. Hey, look. A match where someone hits someone else with a dangerous looking piledriver and it actually wins the match. Gee whiz, what a fucking concept. Hey, it was a fun little hardcore match highlighted by a couple brutal spots towards the end, but enough about that because here comes some chick from NXT (Cora Jade, I believe her name was… don’t look at me, I don’t watch NXT) and I guess that’s Masha’s next challenger… I mean, sure, why not? I would’ve preferred Roxanne Perez since she’s the only woman I know of on NXT, but whatever, this is fine too and does emphasize that NXT/TNA crossover appeal.
None of that matters now because we get to our main event, which saw Joe Hendry…
Yes, yes, of course…
Joe Hendry defeated TNA World Champion Nic Nemeth…
God fucking dammit, Joe! Stop appearing, already!!
Joe Hendry finally won the TNA World title he should have won months ago and now everyone with a functioning brain believes in Joe Hendry. The match itself isn’t a barn-burner, but then you get to the tail end where Ryan Nemeth is about to run interference on behalf of his brother when JBL comes out and lariats the fuck out of that Hollywood hack. Hendry hits his move, but Nemeth kicks out. Nemeth hits his move, but Hendry kicks out. And then finally, Hendry hits his move again for the pin and the title. Everyone goes home happy.
You see, TNA? How hard was that?
Hey, you know what? This was a pretty good show. All the matches were pretty good with a couple really excellent showings, some NXT involvement was teased because we’ve got to make the most of that, and most importantly of all, Joe Hendry finally got his World title win and everyone can now believe. At the end of the day, I got my money’s worth out of this show and I would recommend giving this a watch whenever you want a nice, easy three hours of wrestling with a happy ending to close out the show.
Unless you’re a Dolph Ziggler fan… then you’re SOL… and you know what that means…
On that note…
dtm666 