TNA Genesis 2009 Review

TNA Genesis kicked off the 2009 Wrestling PPV season this past weekend with a card which featured what they were calling a triple main event. The preparation and the build for the event had been hampered by the festive season but TNA had to forget about all that and show us an insight in to what 2009 is going to be like for TNA.

Good Points

Angle vs. Jarrett

These two put on another brutal match which left both the other main event matches in the shade. The match had been well built over the past few months and it more than delivered. In a match in which Jarrett said he couldn’t lose he was beaten in the idle of the ring by the bully Angle who reclaimed some pride after losing to Jarrett in their first encounter.

Shelley vs Sabin

These two put on a match of the night effort. Everyone going in to the match was unsure of whether they would actually fight each other due to their tag team partnership or if they would have a trick up their sleeve but to theirs and creative teams credit they put on a superb match. The ending spoiled the match for me with Shelley getting the cheap win but I understand why creative team needed to do it to develop the storyline.

Bad Points

Missing in Action

There were some big changes to the card that had been advertised and pushed over the last few weeks. Christy Hemme was injured during training so her match against Kong was scrapped, Nash was in hospital so he was out of the six man tag and then to top it all off they decided to run a storyline in which Rhino was late getting to the building after being beaten up by MEM earlier in the day. All this meant that we had an unannounced six man tag to kick off the show and that Kip James was bizarrely added to the six man main event.

Ordering of the card

To have a six man tag match with no major champion or challenger as the final match of the night ahead of the actual title match and the feud with the biggest stars in Angle/Jarrett made no sense whatsoever. All they managed to do was downgrade the title, take away from Angle / Jarrett and show how weak the MEM / Frontline factions are as D’Von, Kip James and Scott Steiner should be nowhere near a main event.

Overall

The show exposed TNA’s weakness at the moment which is having too many guys at the top that shouldn’t be there. If you are going to push MEM and the Frontline storyline which I think they should then they need to use the top guns to do it and not have a match where AJ Styles is the only credible performer in there.

TNA iMPACT Review - 4th December 2008

After missing last week’s iMPACT I was looking forward to see what TNA were going to do with their last show before Final Resolution. With the biggest faction war in TNA history going on it was going to be interesting to see if it would be the Main Event Mafia or the Frontline getting the upper hand before the PPV.

Good Points

Jarrett / Angle feud

It’s great to see this feud continuing as it has some great emotion in it and is believable. The intensity of Angle’s and Jarrett’s confrontation in the iMPACT zone was immense and I for one hopes Angle beat Rhino so we get to see Angle vs. Jarrett 2.

Faction Wars

Finally the Frotnline have a name and look like a cohesive unit because when I last watched they were a mess. I think team 3D is a great addition to the faction I just hope that they don’t do the obvious and turn them heel having them double cross the Frontline.

Bad Points

Sarah Palin lookalike

The Sarah Palin lookalike was a terrible idea. We’ve moved on from the election and her segments were just awful. Having comedy segments like this just took us out of the intensity that the faction wars were building.

Abyss drinking with beer money

These segments took Abyss from an unstoppable monster to a pathetic bumbling idiot as he was lead in to drinking by Beer Money and then beaten up.

Overall

A solid episode of iMPACT which was got me excited for the PPV. It is very hard to promote a PPV which has an eight man tag for a main event but they did their best.