TNA iMPACT Review - Thursday 5th March 2009

With it being the last iMPACT before Destination X I was expecting big things from TNA after being very impressed with their last outing.

Good Points

What side is Sting on?

TNA are pushing Sting well at the moment as he continues to play his cards close to his chest. Foley is trying to get him to leave the MEM but the MEM are doing their best to convince Sting that he needs to stay in the faction. I am intrigued to see what will happen following his match with Angle this Sunday.

Tag Team Scene hots up

After being on a run of victories and knocking people out of TNA Beer Money finally met their match in LAX as they had to get themselves disqualified in order to save their belts. Unhappy with what has been going on Team 3D finally had enough and have challenged Beer Money to a match at Destination X to shut them up once and for all which should be a great match.

Bad Points

How to kill Angle

Having Angle end the show by beaten up by Jarrett in a street fight and kicked out of the arena made no sense. Jarrett doesn’t have a match on the card but Angle is in the main event, if they wanted to build these two again they should have waited for after Destination X.

Stupid Police costumes

It is always cringe worthy when wrestling show’s pretend to bring the police in but TNA pushed the bar this week with the most ridiculous police costumes I have seen in my life.

Overall

Could have been so much better the only person that came out smelling of roses was Sting. Saying this though I am still hyped to see Sting vs. Angle this Sunday.

TNA Destination X Review

Last Sunday saw TNA putting on their monthly offering but this time not from the Impact zone but from the Scope in Norfolk Virginia. I can’t wait until all TNA PPV’s are done from arenas which aren’t the Impact zone as I think it makes the PPV’s that much more special. Having a PPV from the same venue as your produce TV just gives the show a TV feel and not something special or worth paying money for.

Now going in to this I didn’t think much of the card but it is normally the events where I don’t expect much of the card that I go home enjoying the most so I went in with some hope. So with some hope inside of me this is what I thought of how it all went down.

Opening Video

I thought this was a lot better than TNA’s previous efforts with a simple but effective video. With some of the crazy videos they have put together with random footage and even more random ideas this video looked brilliant. Speaking of videos though they need to improve their videos that they put together to promo individual matches. On these videos they need to cut back on the amount of voiceovers they use and let the footage and the audio from commentators to tell the stories.

Highspots

Highspots have a place on a pay per view card and I think a match with some nice highspots is a good way to kick off a card and TNA did this with the three way tag match. The match was well executed and it was good to see LAX getting the win to re-establish themselves in the tag team scene. However with highspot matches you have to be careful not to over do them and put them back to back which is what we had with Destination X as the three way tag team match followed by the X-Division title match. The matches were that similar that they both featured a release powerbomb which isn’t the most commonly used move.

SoCal Val

The match between Jay Lethal and Petey Williams was instantly forgettable but the match did great things to develop SoCal Val’s character as Jay Lethal’s girlfriend. Being a face character and the partner of a face character she is expected to behave and act in a certain way. What they did at Destination X was interesting though as when Jay Lethal was pushed off the top rope by Scott Steiner and was about to be pinned Val took it upon herself to pull the referee to stop him from making the count. I know good guy wrestlers have done acts like this before but I thought it was interesting for a face female valet to do this.

Eric Young the Superhero

As expected Eric Young made his metamorphosis in to a superhero during his bout tagging with Kaz against Rellik and Black Reign. Now it is good in wrestling for the fans to be able to predict some of the things that are going to happen as people will tune in to see if they were right but I think Eric Young has been poorly handled in this one. Eric Young has been on a huge push over the last year in TNA I thought it would have made more sense in the long run to use this match for Eric young to finally show some courage and stand up against the monsters not to be put in a stupid costume and to then hit the ring with limited or little effect. Now if he turned in to a super hero with a good costume and hit the ring and made a huge impact then it would have at least given him something big to build on.

Fish Market Madness

Ok I like a bit of comedy in a wrestling show but you have to be careful that comedy doesn’t turn to look stupid and cringe worthy which is what happened in this match. I don’t think Team 3D, Curry Man or Fish Boy came out of the match with any credibility left. The great thing with wrestling is that moments like these are soon forgotten in the minds of wrestling fans so this match won’t have any long lasting affects on the combatants.

Knockouts not a knockout this month

Now you know I usually rave about the women’s division but I didn’t think it was up to it’s usual high standard at Destination X. It may just be that my expectations have got too high now with the Knockouts division but I hope they continue to try and raise the bar and not have too many outings like this one.

Robert Roode / Booker T

For a match with so much build and storyline for it only to go ten minutes and for those to be the least intense ten minutes of a strap match I have ever seen is very poor. It wasn’t until after the match that the intensity happened and that was thanks to Traci Brooks selling the lashes she received and then by Sharmell making her comeback b strapping everyone insight from security to James Cornette. Roode and Booker need to take a leaf out of the books of these two women when it comes to intensity.

Rhino vs Cowboy James Storm – Who came up with the idea for Elevation X?

I was not looking forward to this match on the card and it lived up to my low expectations. Normally the thing you can look forward to in these type of matches his a big bump at the end and after some time spent balancing above the ring James Storm finally climbed down as low as he could before he was finally pushed off by Rhino for an unexciting bump.

Does a six man work as a main event?

I for one am not a fan of having tag matches or six ways which aren’t for titles as main events. These type of matches have been used as main events for many TNA events and I don’t think many of them have worked. To get people to buy a PPV you need a strong main event which has a clear storyline and one person people want to see win and one they want to see lose. Now you knew Samoa Joe was going to get the win as they needed to push him for his title shot but to give him a great push they needed to have him pin Kurt Angle to put the thought in the fans mind that he can beat Angle. It made no sense for him to beat Tomko especially with what they could be planning to do with Tomko as this ending just made him look like the weakest link and not a possible future headline star.

Overall

There were no standout moments or standout matches that will live long in the memory. The show was well produced from a TV point of view but now they have that looking good they need to work on the content.

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.

TNA Impact Review - Thursday 21st February 2008

TNA proved to this week on Impact that consistency is not their strong point when it comes to booking and creative direction of their shows.

Last week I praised TNA for the unpredictable nature of their show but this week unpredictability proved to be their downfall. Unpredictability only works when it makes sense in the storyline and for the individual characters. When we have swerves and character turns they only work and make sense if there is some build up to it. 

This week Impact kicked off with Kip James turning on BJ James and Bob Armstrong and costing them their chance of winning the tag titles from Styles and Tomko. There was no build up to this and no back story to it, the only thing TNA could do to make sense of it was to give Kip James promo time after the match but this incoherent ramble of a promo did nothing to build this storyline or to explain his actions to the fans.

This aside TNA are starting to push the right talent and about time to. AJ Styles has got a good storyline which may eventually lead to an AJ / Angle feud which would be awesome and would free up Tomko to work with Christian. Booker T was booked in the main event against Angle which may have made no sense but it is good to see Booker being booked in the main event even if it is only on Impact and they used it well to build up his PPV match with Robert Roode. Then finally we had the continuing push of Black Machismo Jay Lethal who again got a good amount of TV time for an in ring segment developing his relationship with Val and building up his character.

It was good to see that the Dudley Boys have moved on to other feuds away from the X-Division championship as I for one can’t wait to see the return of the high flying X-Division style of matches we have come accustom to.

TNA  are trying to make their shows feel different to WWE shows with the handycam style footage of happenings that go on outside the venue like this week it was Karen Angle and AJ Styles on their supposed honeymoon. I’m not too sure if I like this as I am so use to the WWE style of filming outside happenings but I do like to see companies trying to be different and original.

All in all a good show and we now have some more confirmed matches for Destination X with Petey Williams winning a shot at the X-Division title and the Booker T vs. Robert Roode match. This is one area that TNA has to improve on as it needs to get it’s PPV matches and feuds announced and set in stone as early as possible to build a great PPV that people are interested in.

TNA Impact Review - Thursday 14th February 2008

In all the hoopla surrounding No Way Out I forgot to give you my opinion on last week’s Impact. The weekly wrestling shows which are just before or just after a PPV are usually the best and this episode didn’t fail to disappoint.

The one thing that TNA did well through the two hour show was to give the show an unpredictability factor. The WWE recently asked fans attending live shows to fill out some surveys and the thing that fans mentioned the most was how they liked it when things happen which were unpredictable and that seemed spontaneous.

Throughout the show we had moments of craziness backstage with Kurt trying to sort out his ceremony to renew his wedding vows, Booker T waiting for Bobby Roode to turn up so he could continue their feud and Christian Cage getting knocked out backstage. This was matched by some great in ring segments including Samoa Joe’s contract signing and Kurt Angle’s interference to help his Angle Alliance. Nothing however could top the last segment of the show with Kurt and Karen’s ceremony to renew their wedding vows.

Now wrestling fans across the globe usually hate segments like these that turn wrestling more in to a soap opera and don’t concentrate on the wrestling side of things but I think segments like these are great and really help get the casual TV viewer interested. Yes it may have been cringe worthy, yes the priest must have been the worst actor in the world and yes the storyline is not in the slightest bit believable but it creates a spectacle. If they did things like this every week on the TV shows then they would be highly frustrating but when used correctly they can help make a show entertaining and create some memorable moments. Like in the WWE many of the memorable Raw moments don’t involve any wrestling like Steve Austin and the Beer Truck which everyone remembers.

The thing TNA needs to work on is how to keep the storyline ideas going whilst incorporating matches which fit with the non wrestling segments and to not have too many storylines in one show as I felt the Eric Young segments were unneeded and just took away from everything else which was going on. The one other thing I hate is when promotions put on the same matches that were on their PPV the week after on TV. Yes you need to continue storylines but to put them in another match straight away I feel takes away from their PPV match as they are normally not up to the same standard.

So overall the positives out way the negatives and I thought it was a great show to transition us from Against All odds and get us on the road to Destination X.