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…
We’ve got a 30-minute Ironman rubber match between Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle. Three matches in three months. That’s the only reason why I’m watching tolerating this show. My only hope is that it’s better than the last one.
Turning Point 2006 was the final TNA PPV of the year and featured the (not) long-awaited (enough) rematch between Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe, which was pretty much the hottest thing they had going at the time. Kurt Angle, of course, gave Samoa Joe his first real defeat (that wasn’t a 3-way loss where someone else took the fall) and kicked off a career renaissance of sorts. Conventional wisdom would suggest holding off the rematch for later down the road, but sometimes, wrestling promotions rarely follow conventional wisdom. And I don’t say that as a knock on Vince Russo, who was hired back by TNA earlier that year. WWE has been guilty of the same thing as well over the years.
Anyway, it’s Joe vs. Angle II. Something they could’ve held off a couple months until their next big tentpole event, but I guess TNA felt threatened by that ECW PPV taking place the same month with a week’s worth of build. I wonder how that show turned out.
So… this was going to be the musings for the Bound For Glory show that took place a couple weeks ago… but TNA doesn’t believe in Joe Hendry and thus I changed my mind.
Instead, we’re looking at WWE’s October PPV offering, Bad Blood 2024, which is the first time that we’ve had a Bad Blood PPV event since 2004, which was headlined by a horrible HBK/McSon-In-Law cell match. This show is bookended by an opening Cell match between CM Punk and Drew McIntyre and the main event tag-team match that saw Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns teaming up against that Solo guy and other Fatu guy… and the Rock shows up after to steal everyone’s thunder and remind us that he exists.
I don’t typically watch the WWE PLEs that aren’t the major shows. The last one I saw was Backlash and that’s about as far as I went. The shows were great, but nothing really grabbed me. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a strictly WWE problem, as even other wrestling shows have trouble producing content that interests me… or in one case, fail to provide a satisfying pay off to months of viewership and re-investment in a promotion that has let me down on so many occasions… but I digress. Let’s get into this Bad Blood show and see if it’s worth it.
Well… after a long time coming, we’re finally getting the long-teased Desmond Wolfe vs. Lloyd Boner match.
Yes, Grand Slam from a much emptier Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York featured Bryan Danielson defending his World title against Nigel McGuiness, who made a surprise appearance at the All In Gauntlet match and is now a World Title contender despite not having wrestled in over a decade or so. Also, Darby Allin puts his World title shot on the line in a match against Jon Moxley for… some reason, and finally, Tony Khan gets a new neckbrace.
That last one is a lie, but we’re using the old meme banner for Dynamite, even though I actually thought that this was a great Dynamite show.
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.
Haven’t had enough Kurt Angle, have ya?
Well, here’s more anyway… actually a bit of a bonus musings as we kill two birds with one show – the now-defunct UK-based WhatCulture Pro Wrestling promotion, which later became DEFIANT Wrestling, which later became defunct, held a show in 2016 called Refuse To Lose, which featured some silliness, yes, but its main event – which you can watch online for free – is the legendary match between Olympic Gold Medal Hero KURT ANGLE and Local Hero JOE HENDRY.
Yes, that match exists… and you can watch it for free here.
But what about the rest of the show?
Well… that’s another story entirely…
For our final day of Kurt Angle Appreciation Week brought about by national tragedy 23 years ago, we’re looking at TNA Hard Justice 2007. Otherwise known as the show where they just gave Kurt Angle ALL the gold.
But yes, the main event for this match sees reigning X-Division and Tag-Team champion Samoa Joe putting his belts on the line against reigning TNA World Heavyweight Champion (and also IWGP Champion… kinda) Kurt Angle in a Winners Take All title bout. Which means everything else beneath that main event means nothing and while my brain tells me that I should just stick with the main event and skip the rest, I feel compelled to watch the whole thing because it’s…
Aw, fuck it. I should have listened to my brain.
Diving into 2006… yeah, this was another sour year and since this is the road to Wrestlemania and this is a Smackdown PPV, that means Eddie-sploitation is in full swing. But hey, the main event is Kurt Angle defending his Big Gold Belt against… THE UNDERTAKER!
Should be a fun time if nothing else…
It’s 9/11. Let’s do something patriotic for the occasion… by reviewing a WWF PPV that took place two weeks after the United States endured tragedy and travesty.
Continuing our week of Kurt Angle spotlight shows, we’ll be touching on WWF Unforgiven 2001, knee deep in the much-maligned Invasion angle, with reigning WWF Champion Stone Cold Steve Austin (still pretty much a heel at this point) defending his title against the patriotic All-American hero and Olympic Gold Medal winner with a broken fricking neck, Kurt Angle… and also other stuff too.
Anyway, let’s jump in and be all patriotic and stuff… even I’m not American.
dtm666 