Category: TNA Impact PPVs

21 Years Ago In TNA #04 – Testing My Patience (July 10th, 2002)

The fourth of five NWA-TNA Weekly PPVs available for free on Youtube is where I’m starting to feel a bit bored. It seems like they were dead set on selling someone the rights to a television show of sorts and when there were no offers, they opted to put the shows on PPV instead. The problem is that four “episodes” into this venture, this already feels like a bit of a sloth to get through; so much so that when it came time to sit down and do my weekly write-up for this blog, my mind drew a blank.

It’s actually pretty amazing that my only, real big takeaway is that The New Church – the new heel group headed by the Sinister Minister James Mitchell – has engaged in a feud with Jeff Jarrett – who is also a heel who keeps demanding a title shot that nobody in the NWA would grant him because they would rather have their reigning NWA World Champion defend the title against some Japanese wrestler nobody on this particular side of the globe has heard of. And for the people who are reading this expecting a full-blown recap, I hate to disappoint you folks, but I’m not really inclined to offer that.

Here’s the thing, right? These are not TV reports, reviews, recaps, or whatever the case may be. These are just quick things where I gather my thoughts on things that happen on the show that are worth mentioning. I mean I could go into great detail on the big X-Division eliminator match that saw Low-Ki earn himself a shot at AJ Styles’ title… but what can I say besides “it’s a great match with a lot of moves?” Because that’s all I’ve got.

So here are the notable bits… for whatever it’s worth…

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21 Years Ago In TNA #02 – Improvement On The Second Show (June 26th, 2002)

So last week, I revisited the very first NWA-TNA PPV and it was a thing that happened. The show may have opened with a recap of prior events, but I will not. You’ll just have to read my previously posted post from last week to catch yourselves up.

Anyway, we’re continuing onwards with the second-ever NWA-TNA weekly PPV, which you can watch on Youtube for free because Impact is such a loving company that’s willing to give stuff for free and hope it’s enough of a selling point to subscribe to their Impact Plus service. We’ll see if this, as well as the next three shows that are also available for us freeloaders, will do just that.

For the record, I have not seen this show in decades… as in, the last time I saw this show was when it first aired. So this is definitely going to be revisiting some forgotten realms… please don’t sue.

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21 Years Ago In TNA: The First NWA-TNA PPV (June 19th, 2002)

Hello, kids.

This week, famed wrestling journalist Bryan Alvarez and his long-suffering co-host, Big Vinny V, will begin their revisiting the early days of NWA-TNA for some reason or another. And to celebrate the occasion, I will also revisit the early days of NWA-TNA… because the first five PPVs are available on Youtube at no cost for all to see. Yes, the first five weekly PPVs are made available for masses to watch and entice them to subscribe to their Impact Plus subscription service.

Indeed.

So I have already written about this show years ago. In fact, the great majority of this post is just a copy-and-paste of that old post (originally posted March 27th, 2016). I’ve rewatched the show and decided that the post as it was originally written still holds up for the most part, though I had changed a couple things around and even expanded on some stuff here and there, so don’t think you’re just getting a lazy copy-and-paste. You’re getting lazy additions to go along with it.

This is going to be a weakly weekly thing for about a month or so and we’ll see if I’m enticed enough to continue this journey onwards or if I decide to throw in the towel. At worst, the five freebies are all I touch. At best, I might keep going until “Oh shit! It’s Vince Russo!” is a thing and that’s when I’ll drop out. Unlike Bryan and Vinny, I ain’t suffering this shit for the long haul… but is it really as bad as I remember it or as others have claimed?

Well, let’s find out…

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IMPACT Wrestling Hard To Kill 2023

Yes, we’ve used this banner three times before. And yes, if I watch next year’s Hard To Kill PPV, I will be using it again. Now that we got that out of the way… yes, I got around to watching Impact’s first 2023 PPV recently. It seemed like a bit of a tradition that we’re doing here, so may as well continue it for all it’s worth. I had heard some good things about the show and figured, “Why not?”

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TNA Sacrifice 2007

(2023 Update: Hey, kids. This was uploaded last year and published in a brutally incomplete format. Sorry, my bad. So I went back and fleshed this out to feel more “complete.”)

TNA Sacrifice 2007 is a rather interesting show with some bit of backstory and in order to understand the significance of this show as well as my wanting to check it out, we need to bring up a bit of history beforehand.

The company known today as Impact Wrestling began life in 2002 as NWA-TNA and it was, at the time, the flagship promotion of the then-fledging National Wrestling Alliance. Once the major name in professional wrestling, it was relegated to an afterthought once World Championship Wrestling (formerly Jim Crockett Promotions before being bought out by Turner) seceded the NWA in 93 and pretty much buried after Shane Douglas tossed his newly won NWA title to the ground in ’94. And while it got some exposure on WWF television and especially on some UFC shows with Dan Severn as NWA champion, the brand pretty much floundered.

The Jarretts – Jeff and Jerry – were looking to start a new promotion and decided to pursue a partnership with the NWA that would feature the World and Tag-team titles on their new program. So from its conception in 2002, TNA was a member – perhaps its most notable member – of the National Wrestling Alliance before parting ways in 2004. Despite no longer being a member, TNA were still able to use the NWA titles for a couple more years.

In 2007, on the morning of the day in which TNA would air their Sacrifice PPV, then-NWA president (I Don’t Remember And Really, It Doesn’t Matter) decided to sever all ties with TNA, citing TNA’s refusal to have the NWA World and Tag-team champions defend the titles in other NWA promotions… which is funny because TNA was the only thing that gave NWA any semblance of national exposure and nobody cared about them in any event. And as a result, NWA had stripped reigning World champion Christian Cage and reigning Tag champions the Dudley Boyz of their titles, with the World title being the contested in a multi-person tournament called Reclaiming The Gold, which included a number of notable independent stars including Bryan Danielson, and the man who would eventually win the title, future WWE General Manager “Scrap Iron” Adam Pearce.

Meanwhile, TNA was business as usual; as far as they were concerned, Christian Cage was still the World Champion and the Dudleyz (now Team 3D) were still the tag champs. They just weren’t going to use the NWA branding, even though they still possessed the physical NWA belts. However, a couple nights later, TNA would subsequent introduce new TNA championship belts and we proceed to go along on our merry way.

Well, sort of…

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TNA Destination X 2005

Well, we did Against All Odds 2005, which is a show that I have on commercial DVD… and coincidentally enough, I also have Destination X, which was the following month’s PPV offering from Total NonStop Action TNA Impact Zone Wrestling. So, it seems only fair that we give that one a shot and then maybe next week, we’ll go watch some random WWE show from the same year because sure, why not?
Much like the previous show, this is a 2-disc set where they basically split the PPV into two discs and there’s very little in terms of worthwhile special features.

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TNA Against All Odds 2005

So, we’re doing something different… or at least, something that could’ve been done ages ago if there was any sense. We’re looking at a TNA PPV from 2005, but rather than look at a show from the Impact PLUS service, it’s a VINTAGE TNA Home Video on DVD release from around that time.

It’s Against All Odds 2005 – featuring the main event of NWA World Champion Jeff Jarrett defending the title against Kevin Nash of all people. Oh boy, I’m excited.
(Turns out that I already did this show three years ago… fuck it, we’re going to do it again today, but if you want the original rant for comparison, there you go.)

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TNA Turning Point 2004

The second ever monthly TNA PPV is known for two things; it’s the last TNA appearance of Macho Man Randy Savage, who would fuck off soon afterwards… and I really can’t blame him, really. And the other thing is for showing footage of that one time TNA wrestlers went over to visit some WWE guys who were shooting a commercial for an upcoming PPV at Universal Studios, which is where TNA was holding all their shows at that point.

Just to get it out of the way, they teased the airing of the footage by having a couple guys do bad impersonations of Vince McMahon and Triple H trying to stop TNA from airing said footage and being total fools of. This was making light of the fact that WWE actually did have a problem with TNA possibly showing this footage on their programming. And once they showed the footage, almost all the WWE guys’ faces were blurred out so you couldn’t tell them apart unless you paid attention to their tattoos. It all came across as really lame – about as lame as any time you saw AEW take a cheap shot at WWE these days.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s check out the rest of this Turning Point PPV.

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