Sunday 20 April 2008

TNA iMPACT Review - Thursday 17th April 2008

After such a history making PPV that changed the direction of TNA I was excited to see what they were going to do on this week’s iMPACT, how were they going to bring in the new era?

Good Points

Samoa Joe


Although he didn’t wrestle this week on iMPACT he had some great promo time and talked like a champion. Would have liked to see him in the ring but a good start to his title reign none the less.

Unpredictability

This week’s iMPACT saw more title changes than Lockdown. Petey Williams was handed a shot at the X-Division title by Scott Steiner and cashed it in after Lethal’s match with Devine to win the belt. Then the tag titles were made vacant in a crazy chain of events which saw Kaz and Eric Young win the belts only to be stripped of them because Eric Young and Super Eric are two different people well according to Eric Young they are. This was the funniest and most interesting storyline of the night as Jim Cornette tried to get to the bottom of the situation.

Push for Matt Morgan

After months and months of just playing the role of bodyguard for Jim Cornette Matt Morgan is finally being given a push. Matt has the size and look to go far in the business but it will be interesting to see how he uses his push after interjecting himself in to the main event to set up a match with Booker T next week.

Forward Planning

On Raw and Smackdown we normally come in to the show not knowing what matches are going to be on the show unless you visit the website. I personally like it when I know what is going to happen next week and TNA have two awesome matches announced for next week. Next week we have Kurt Angle against Samoa Joe for the TNA heavyweight title and Matt Morgan in his first one on one match against Booker T.

Bad Points

Too much change


If you saw Lockdown, missed iMPACT this week and tuned in the next week you would be completely out of the loop in TNA. Wrestling programmes should be like any weekly series with something interesting happening on every show but not too much that you are out of the loop if you miss one show. TNA gave away too much for free with title changes and the announcement of the title rematch. Yes have big matches on TV shows but don’t make the fans who brought your PPV feel ripped off that they could have watched stuff like this for free. Unpredictability is good but there are other ways than title changes to achieve this.

Scott Steiner already dead and buried

Now I’m not Scott Steiner’s biggest fan but if you are going to have him in a main event of a PPV you have to push him and give him all the chances you can to build it. Instead of using this show to push Steiner as someone who could beat Joe they cut his in ring mic segment with Samoa Joe short so Kurt Angle could come down and get a rematch next week at Impact and after that Steiner was nowhere to be seen. Now all the fans are hyped for next week which will only leave Samoa Joe or Kurt Angle two or so weeks to build for Steiner.

Poor production

Again TNA’s production continues to let them down which makes them look second rate to WWE’s slick production. During a backstage interview with Cage and Rhino the camera was moving so much I thought I was going to get motion sickness. Then to top it off a lot of the backstage audio levels were all over the place. Come on guys these are basic things which aren’t that difficult to get right.

Overall

Well you can’t say that iMPACT was boring this week as it was packed top to bottom with exciting stuff. It kind of reminds me of WCW in a way when they gave so much away for free on Nitro with their TV shows being better than a lot of their PPV’s. TNA thouh are getting people talking and I don’t blame them from trying to keep that momentum going but thy need to find more creative ways of making an entertaining show.

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