The Impact Crater 04.23.09

Posted by Ryan Byers on 04.24.2009

Forget Bobby Lashley, TNA is now the promotion with TREVOR MURDOCH~! The balance of power has shifted!

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the IMPACT CRATER~! My name is Ryan Byers, and some last-minute logistic issues prevented Randy Harrison from being able to do the Impact recap. As a result, Chris Lansdell had to step up to cover that spot, meaning he and his planned partner couldn't prepare your usual Brace for Impact. Rather than let the site languish without an alternative viewpoint on TNA's flagship program, yours truly decided to step off the sidelines to ensure that 411 keeps bringing the content.

For those of you who never knew my work or have forgotten it, what you're about to read is the format that I used to use in reviewing Impact for a little over a year of its existence. (The archives are here.) This isn't a column to read for a blow-by-blow of what happened on the show. It's a critique of what happened, so the people who get the most out of this are the ones who have some familiarity with the show's happenings. If you don't have the foggiest idea of what occurred on Impact, you're best served by reading Lansdell's straight-up recap and then coming back here.

Enough background. It's banner time.



Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Jeff Jarrett presented the TNA Championship Belt to Mick Foley
Segment #2: Bobby Roode & James Storm def. Jay Lethal & Consequences Creed in first round of the Dudley Boys' Invitational Tournament
Segment #3: Sojo Bolt def. Shantelle Taylor in a ladder match to be come the number one contender to the TNA Women's Title
Segment #4: The Beautiful People celebrated Angel Williams' title win
Segment #5: AJ Styles def. Kevin Nash by disqualification to retain the TNA Legends Title
Segment #6: Eric Young & Trevor Murdoch def. No Limit in the first round of the Dudley Boys' Invitational Tournament
Segment #7: Jeff Jarrett def. Scott Steiner in a No DQ match
Segment #8: Bobby Lashley stands there.

The Main Stuff

Angle Numero Uno: As the Foley Turns . . .

I haven't watched a heck of a lot of Impact since I stopped reviewing the show a little less than a year ago. In fact, aside from the odd women's segment that I've caught online in order to stay current with some of my favorites from SHIMMER, the only TNA that I have watched is the two episodes that I helped to review in Lansdell's Brace for Impact. With that said, the episodes that I have watched have been completely dominated by the Main Event Mafia and their feud with the TNA Frontline/Originals/Whatever They're Called This Week.

Tonight's episode, though, seemed to be a bit of a turning point for the company. The Main Event Mafia is still present – in name, at least – but the focus is shifting to a feud between Mick Foley and Jeff Jarrett as the two active wrestlers who also own fifty percent of the company each. The majority of this evening's program was built around turning Foley heel to get that storyline going. Some of what we got was rather good. Some of what we got was the standard TNA idiocy that I've been dealing with since I first set eyes on this show. With that said, let's go in depth . . .

The angle and the program kicked off with Cactus Jack and Double J in the ring for a presentation of Cactus' newly won championship belt. I found it a bit amusing that Jeff and the announcers were trying to put Foley's title win over as a major accomplishment when, according the reports of the show I read, he basically won the title by FALLING DOWN. If anything, gravity should be the champion. It did all of the work.

Yet, because forces of nature have not been accepted by the mainstream as professional wrestling champions (if they were, inertia would be due for a long title reign), Foley was declared champion and needed an opponent for the next pay per view. Jarrett decided that he was going to put that match together, and he announced what I believe is wrestling's first "Ultimate Sacrifice" match. Both JJ and the Micker did an awful job of explaining the stipulations to the crowd, as Jarrett did one of the three word explanations that TNA usually tries to give for its complex gimmick matches. Foley tried to go back and clarify things but actually made matters worse because he was stumbling over his words and seemingly losing his place throughout the promo, which is particularly sad given the man's rather public observations regarding the deterioration of his mental state ten years ago.

In any event, Ultimate Sacrifice is basically a four way match with the champion defending his belt and the other three guys having to put something on the line in order to participate. I personally think that this should lead to an angle in which a heel tries to get in to the match by giving up something that would be completely meaningless to him, sort of like what greedy Catholic children do during Lent. ("No, Alex Shelly, you CANNOT get in to the Ultimate Sacrifice match by giving up broccoli.") Of course, none of Foley's opponents for the match were actually announced, which leads me to believe that one of my least favorite TNA plot devices is going to be employed: Booking a multi-man match as the main event of your pay per view and then progressively announcing the participants so that you don't have a full lineup until the show before the PPV. I simply do not see how that can be an effective promotional tool. The entire concept behind professional wrestling is putting together a match and then, in the weeks leading up to that match, convincing people that they absolutely must see it. I do not know how that can be done when the audience does not even know what the match is.

Of course, Foley couldn't help but get a little bit of revenge, as he booked Jarrett in a "Cactus Jack Smack Attack" as tonight's main event. What is a Cactus Jack Smack Attack, you ask? Good question! It wasn't explained at any point during the show, though in the end it turned out to be nothing more than your garden variety late 90's hardcore match. (Albeit one that lead to guest color commentator Foley referencing Mr. Pogo . . . not a name that I thought I would hear on American wrestling television at any point in my life.)

So, the opening Jarrett/Foley promo came to an end, and it was clear that they were at some point building to a match between the two men. Whether they would lock it up in a singles battle or whether Jarrett would be one of the men in the Ultimate Sacrifice match was not entirely clear. However, it was obvious that this is going to be the primary feud in the company over the next couple of months.

Not quite as clear was which man was going to be the face and which man was going to be the heel. That became abundantly clear, though, as the show progressed. First of all, the announcers were trying to subtly play up Foley's reaction to being booked in to a championship match as an overreaction. Additionally, we got several brief segments throughout the show in which TNA cameras followed the new champion across the country. If you didn't think that Foley was going heel after the opening segment, these definitely drove the point home, as the former ECW star displayed in these skits that he is the most obnoxious man on the planet. Not only did we have Foley carrying his belt around everywhere like a colossal mark, but we also saw him making fun of a blind woman.

By the end of the show, we had the official Foley heel turn, as he popped Jarrett with a chair moments after Double J finished off Scott Steiner in their painfully boring Smack Attack match. Bobby Lashley then stood there.

So, what's the final verdict on the buildup of the Foley/Jarrett feud? It's not that bad, but it leaves something to be desired. First of all, I have to say that I loved the fact that the beginning stages of the Foley turn were done subtly. He was mildly annoyed with Jarrett for putting him in to the Ultimate Sacrifice match, albeit only to the point at which a turn seemed like a possibility instead of a lock. Then, throughout the show, the skits with Foley made him seem shallow, self-absorbed, and self-deluded, although not in the same manner that an established heel character would be. The man began to slowly grate on your nerves more and more throughout the body of the show until finally he committed the one act that was designed to get you to boo him more than any other. Therefore, in some ways, this was a very well mapped out turn.

Yet, it was lacking one major regard: Pacing. The preceding paragraph is what I consider to be a fair summary of the events of the Foley turn. Go back and read it again, though, and consider the fact that this all took place over the course of TWO HOURS. Maybe I'm just a bit too old school for my own good, but that is the sort of storyline that shouldn't be crammed in to two months, let alone two hours. Sometimes things are much more effective if you let them simmer over an extended period of time as opposed to doing them all in one shot for a quick rating, and this was one such storyline.

Of course, the angle will mainly be remembered for how the company follows up on it, and I probably won't be around to see that, so . . .

Angle Numero Dos: Dudley Tournament > Dupp Cupp

One of the other ongoing stories throughout the show was beginning of the Dudley Boys' Invitational Tournament, which Bubba and D-Von claimed that they were hosting in order to reinvigorate tag team wrestling. Generally speaking, I think this is a solid concept, as devoting a substantial amount of TV time each week to tag matches and the build to a bout with a Dudleys has the potential to keep the tag division strong in TNA and to elevate whoever ultimately meets the Duds for their straps.

With that being said, unfortunately the matches held in the tournament tonight weren't quite as good in execution as the tournament concept is on paper. Beer Money took on Jay Lethal and Consequences Creed, and to say that it was an off night for Lethal would be an understatement. He looked sloppy throughout, taking a poor fall on a James Storm bulldog and then screwing up a suicide dive. (Fortunately, the camera angle allowed us to miss the worst part of that.) The other laughable part of the match was the announce team trying to put Lethal and Creed over as a young, upcoming team, which is a hard pill to swallow given that we have now seen Jay Lethal in the company for four years in virtually the exact same position on the card. That's not the sign of somebody who is an up and comer. That's the sign of somebody whose career has stalled out and will not be getting any better.

Our other first round tournament match saw No Limit wrestling Eric Young and the debuting Trevor Murdoch . . . and what a meaningless debut for Murdoch it was. The company didn't even pretend he was a big deal, instead giving him a sub-indy level name ("Jethro Holladay") and making sure that the first time he was mentioned on TV his tag team partner Eric Young had no clue who he was. You couldn't make the guy out to be less of star if you tried. He did wind up looking serviceable in the ring, but the relatively green No Limit team is hardly who you want a guy up against if you want him to have an awe-inspiring first match.

With all of that said, I guess the bottom line of the Dudley Boys' Invitational Tournament is this: It has the opportunity to really elevate a young tag team, but absolutely nothing that happened on tonight's show will be a part of that process.

Angle Numero Tres: It's All Relative to the Size of Your Steeple

I'll probably catch all kinds of flack for saying this, but my absolute favorite segment of the evening was the Beautiful People's celebration of Angel Williams' title win at Lockdown. Angel and Talia aren't the greatest wrestlers in the world and also were not the best promos before they landed in their current roles. However, everything that I have seen of the two since the Beautiful People formed has been GOLD. Though they're not the most polished performers on the mic, the duo has managed to get their act down to a tee, exuding a charisma which you normally only see when the character is an aspect of the person playing it "turned up to eleven" as Mick Foley might say.

Of course, another reason that I enjoyed the segment is that I've always felt that celebrations of championship victories are a fine mechanism for putting over the fact that title wins mean something. It worked two purposes in this case, as the title got some much-needed credibility AND the Beautiful People managed to get an extra bit of heel heat by bringing out half-naked men to dance for the Orlando crowd. After all, what is going to get a room full of wrestling fans booing more than a group of attractive young male strippers who might force the homophobes in the audience to confront the part of their subconscious which gets aroused by such things?

Also of note in this segment was the WICKED bruise Angel was sporting on her chin as a result of her Lockdown match. She tried to cover it up the best she could with makeup, which was a mistake in by book. If you've got a legitimate injury which looks that nasty, you may as well try to get some mileage out of it on television.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Holla.

And the Rest . . .

~ Maybe I'm blowing things out of proportion, but I found the handling of the budding feud between Sharmell and Kevin Nash's valet (whoever she is) to be quite sexist. The two of them were standing in a room together and began arguing out of literally nowhere. The explanation seemed to be that they are women and that women do this sort of thing. Wow, welcome back to the 1950's.

~ I'm not an iPhone addict, but kudos to TNA for trying to ride a pop culture wave by producing a game for the ubiquitous device. It shows that, in some ways, they've got their pulse on what's popular in the non-wrestling world a bit more than WWE does.

~ Blown spot of the week goes to Sojo Bolt, who was scripted to knock out Shantelle Taylor with brass knuckles, only to put the knux on BACKWARDS. Yes, she somehow botched a brass knux spot. I loved her as Josie, but it appears that Sojo has much to learn about being a heel.

~ Christopher Daniels cut a promo. I wish I could tell you what he was saying. However, I could not focus, as I was distracted by the fact that he is now apparently going out of his way to look like Rob Halford. Poor fashion choices all around, Chris.

Overall

When I watched Impact on a regular basis, the show made me angry. Literally angry. There were so many poor booking choices which flew so blatantly in the face of everything logical that I couldn't help but get worked up and rant and rave for pages about how horrific the show was. Fortunately, that is not what happened tonight. However, the episode of Impact which aired this evening is still far from what I could call a good show. Certain storylines showed a bit of promise, though even when they appeared to be good in theory, something didn't quite translate to execution. Mick Foley as a heel is something which has not been done in wrestling for a sustained period time in quite a while, so that might provide for some compelling television in the coming weeks. Yet, at the same time, we have a pay per view show coming up which is already promising one borderline-convoluted gimmick match . . . so will the focus of the build be Mick's strong mick work and Jarrett's drive, or will it be the wackier aspects of TNA that we have all come to know and hate? This was largely a setup show, so it is hard to evaluate just how the company is doing based on it and it alone. That question will be left to the loyal viewers among you to answer over the next several weeks . . .