TNA Impact Review - Thursday 6th March 2008

I was expecting big things this week from Impact as it was there last TV show before Destination X. However as usual what I watched was a bit of a mixed bag with some good and bad points.

Tomko

The show opened strong with a good Angle Alliance promo which continued to paint Tomko as an outsider with in the Alliance and getting ready to leave Angle’s group. Then later in the show they built him with a victory over Samoa Joe which is no small thing. Tomko is getting pushed to the moon at the moment, it will be interesting to see what he does when he is given more higher profile single matches.

Robert Roode

Robert is doing a great job getting heat from the fans as he got one of the loudest reactions of the night when the fans booed him out of the building. The only problem then came when he had a pull apart with Booker T as for two people that supposedly hate each other it was one of the least intense pull aparts I have seen in some time.

Too many parodies and mimics

Now I find Jay Lethal’s mimicking of Randy Savage funny and entertaining but the reason it works is that it is different to what everyone else is doing. Now Sharkboy is doing a parody of the Stone Cold character I find myself getting annoyed by both of them. On a weekly TV show you are trying to attract casual non wrestling fans to tune in to your show so you want to give them an entertaining yet easy to understand programme. Even some of mimics may be lost of wrestling fans who have only just got in to wrestling so I think TNA needs to start being a bit more creative.

Production

Again I’m still seeing shots with other cameras in shot. Worse than this I am seeing some of the most non fluid camera movements. First off the vision mixer shouldn’t pick a shot until its ready and then when the cameraman is live they need to learn not to panic and jerk the shot all over the place.

Are we excited or ready for the PPV?

I didn’t think Impact did enough to get us excited about Destination X. The unclear ending the Angle vs. Cage match and the fact the show went off air during mid action I don’t think gave us a clear stand out memory to get us pumped for the weekend. There was too much focus on matches which shouldn’t have been the top highlighted matches. More time should have been given to develop the X-Division title match, Rhino vs. James Storm and Booker T vs. Roode instead of focusing on the women’s title match, the Fish Street Market fight and the monsters tag match.