The Imapct Crater 10.05.06
Posted by Ryan Byers on 10.06.2006
Angle is TNA, Sting is MIA, Joe is a BMF, and plenty of other things involving three-letter acronyms.
Jeremy Borash opens the show with James E. Cornette. Corny is yelling at a bunch of lower card guys about all of the big happenings in TNA. He says that, because so much is going on in the company, the loser of a match between the jobbers will be kicked out of the company. Um, ok. I don't see the logical connection there. Then Jim Mitchell walks in with Abyss, and he cuts a deal with Cornette. Abyss will get the first title shot after Bound from Glory if he can get the NWA Title belt away from Samoa Joe. Cornette makes the comment that Mitchell is the "sleaziest man he knows," which is highly appropriate if you've ever heard the Sinister Minister's shoot interviews.
Match Numero Uno: Frankie Kazarian & Matt Bentley vs. The Dudley Boys
Shane Douglas is on guest commentary, and the Naturals stand behind him looking absolutely worthless. Bentley and D-Von start, and Team 3-D is way over. D-Von gets his back elbow and a clothesline before slamming Bentley, which sets up a elbowdrop. That gets two. Maverick Matt follows up with some fists and gets the tag, but D-Von clotheslines both heels and brings in Bubba. He hits a vertical suplex and a couple of elbows before going for a cover. It doesn't work out. Kazarian is chopped in the corner as America's Most Wanted and Gail Kim come out of the fallopian tube to look on. Now things have broken down in the ring, allowing Bentley to whip Bubba in to a Kazarian bicycle kick. The James Gang appears out of the other tube as we go to a break. After the ads, Matt hits a dropkick on Bubba and makes a tag, leading to some Kazarian choking. The big man comes back with fists and hits his second vertical suplex of the match to set up the hot tag. Bentley is in as well, and he bumps around for D-Von, taking a back body drop and a side slam. Kazarian gets the lifting inverted DDT for two, and that sets up the backdrop suplex/neckbreaker combo. There's the 3-D and the win.
After the bell, Bubba gets on the stick and reiterates that they're starting at the bottom and working their way back up to the top. They mention that they don't have opponents for the pay per view and basically wind up challenging anybody in the world. Testify, says D-Von.
Match Thoughts: This wasn't an all-time classic, but it's better than anything that's been on Impact in weeks. I love Kazarian and Bentley because they're quite versatile. They can go out there and do a bunch of wacky spots with the X Division guys when they're asked to, but they can also put together decent formula tag team matches like this one. Also, the Dudleys hav been reinvigorated big time by their time in TNA, mainly because the people in Orlando will react to them like stars instead of sitting on their hands like fans were doing at the end of their WWE run. Overall, this was a competently worked, fun opener with some nice crowd responses. *3/4
Now Rhino gets a chance to cut a taped promo. He's on the streets of Detroit as a Jimmy Hart knockoff of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" plays in the background. Nothing of note is said.
After that, we go back to the ring, where Jim Mitchell and Abyss are standing. The Father calls out Samoa Joe, threatening to send Abyss after him to get the belt. Naturally Joe answers the call. Abyss gets in a chokeslam and actually gets the belt back. Jarrett runs in to grab it but makes the mistake of getting a little too confrontational with Abyss. That leads in to the big guy attacking Double J, even getting an assist from Joe. After Jarrett is dispatched, the monster goes after the Samoan one more time, but Joe catches him with a BIG powerslam and leaves with the belt. These segments actually are a good idea, as it's a way of putting Joe over people without having to have anybody do a clear cut job.
Christy Hemme tells us that somebody is getting fired later in the show. Sadly, I don't think it'll be her.
When we come back, Tenay and West throw to footage of LAX injuring AJ Styles in Mexico City. They confront him as he's cutting a promo with a ridiculously large trophy. The beatdown is actually nothing too spectacular, as it's just a bunch of men punching AJ repeatedly. I think I caught a glimpse of AAA Psicosis in there as one of the extras, though. It was somebody with horns, at least. This was one of the few things from LAX that has actually been disappointing.
Match Numero Dos: LAX vs. Tyler Black & Jeff Watson
Well, here's a quick opportunity for redemption. It's a mugging from the getgo, as Hernandez throws jobber one across the ring and then gives jobber two a belly to belly off of the ropes. Jobber one eats a Hama-Chan Cutter, jobber two gets the crucifix toss, and there's your three count. Once the carnage ends, Konnan gets the stick and promises that at the pay per view we'll see a level of violence that only LAX is capable of.
Match Thoughts: I'll say it. LAX = Greatest Squash Matches EVER. Hernandez almost reminds me of Scott Steiner due to the ease with which he tosses men around, and Homicide's "strong style thug" offense makes him a credible opponent even though he's a smaller man. I really hope these guys get a DVD after a few more months of working as a unit. I'd be the first one in line to buy it. 1/2*
"Who is leaving TNA?" Christy asks. It's still not her, unfortunately.
Match Numero Tres: Eric Young vs. Norman Smiley vs. Shark Boy vs. David Young vs. Elix Skipper in a gut check challenge
Mike Tenay does a better job of explaining why this is a "loser gets fired" match, stating that with all of the new faces in TNA that they need to clear some of the dead weight off of the roster. "Don't fire Eric!" chants the crowd. I'm inclined to agree. Everybody goes after Mr. Young when the bell rings, and then Smiley/Sharky get stereo schoolboys on the Diamonds in the Rough. Larry Zbyszko is now at ringside, and he distracts Eric Young. That results in Eric stealing the Legend's toupee, which gives Shark Boy an opportunity to go after the young Canadian. Showtime goes for his wheelbarrow neckbreaker, but Sharky reverses it. He goes for the Diamond Dust, but Young manages to block that. Eric is then sent in to the ropes, where Larry hits him with a golf club to enable the rollup by Shark Boy and the victory. Half of the crowd is still doing the "Don't Fire Eric!" chant, and the other half is too shocked to do anything.
Match Thoughts: This was too short to be anything in terms of a wrestling match. However, as angle, it was really effective. For whatever reason, the Impact Zone audience has, almost to a person, connected with Young, and he's done a phenomenal job of playing his character. This kid will probably never be a main eventer, but he's got the acting ability and the athletic ability to be a solid midcard guy for any company in the United States. Now let's see if he can carry Larry Zbyszko to a good match. 1/4*
Once everybody recovers from the shock of seeing Eric Young fired, Jeff Jarrett and Christian are interviewed backstage. They're being forced to team up in the main event. Jarrett does his usual rambling interview for a while until Xian tells him to shut up. He puts over the new timeslot and takes credit for the move. Cage winds up cutting a promo on Jeff instead of cutting a promo with him, which makes sense. It's nice to see that the two men aren't automatically BFF just because Christian turned. The continued existence of tension between them is much more realistic and has more intriguing storyline possibilities.
Match Numero Cuatro: Ron Killings & Christopher Daniels vs. Jeff Jarrett and Christian Cage
Jarrett and Daniels start, and it's your basic armbar/headlock sequence. Double J turns that in to some kneelifts in the corner, but Daniels flips out of the subsequent armbar and hits a leg lariat for one. Another kneelift gets a tag for Jarrett, but Christian is caught in a drop toe hold to allow Daniels to tag Killings. The faces hit a double armdrag and stereo elbowdrops. Then a slam from Daniels connects, and the two dance together before stomping on the Canuck. The tomfoolery allows Killings to take over with a Davey Boy Smith powerslam, and he decks Jarrett for good measure. Double J's distraction allows Christian to throw the Truth out of the ring, though, and here's our mid-main event commercial. As expected, the bad guys are working over Killings when we come back, as Xian takes him down with a back elbow before Jarrett tags himself in. There's a sitdown splash by JJ, which sets up the Jackie Fargo strut. Jarrett also hits a back elbow, but his is less effective. Killings fires back with what was supposed to be a stunner out of a suplex, but it was badly botched. Regardless, it sets up the hot tag, and Daniels is a tag-champ-a-fire. He STOs Christian and blue thunder bombs Jarrett before heading up to the top rope with Captain Charisma. The Angel tries a superplex, but Homicide appears on the ring apron and hits him with the slapjack. Christian looks to finish his man with the frog splash, but Jarrett runs in and steals the pin.
Match Thoughts: This was going along just fine until the botched move by Killings and Jarrett in the final seconds of the match. Really it looked like it was more Jarrett's fault than Killings', but I think we all know who will wind up taking the blame on "Planet Jarrett." That one move took the whole contest down a peg, because it was supposed to be the crucial turning point and wound up looking pathetic. Aside from that, I'll give it **. Nothing spectacular, but the actual wrestling on Impact has been the pits lately, so sadly rising to the level of mediocrity is an improvement.
After the match, more tension between Christian and Jarrett is teased, but Jeff calls out Samoa Joe again before anything can happen. Joe responds and misses a blind charge, allowing JJ to grab the belt. However, Christian ambushes the Nashvillian from behind and lands the Unprettier, claiming the belt for himself. Cue Rhino, who GORES Christian and runs him off to the back. Amid the confusion, Joe grabs the belt one more time and walks off with it. This wasn't as effective as the other Joe vs. The World segments, because here you had the Samoan winding up with the belt through dumb luck as opposed to anything that he actively did. However, the build in the angle has otherwise been good, so I'm not going to complain all that much.
After all that, it's actually Bobby Roode who gets to close the show, telling us that he will unveil the winner of his manager search next week. I've got five bucks on Traci Brooks.
Overall
This was worlds better than last week's show, which did a decent job of establishing new feuds for the new pay per view but wound up trying to do too much too quickly and trying to do it all at the same time. This week, the pace slowed down considerably, which was definitely a change for the better. The company has also found a focus, which they lacked for several months. Anybody who watched this should would come out of it knowing exactly what the major program in the company was – namely Joe vs. Jarrett. Of course, that's not the match that they're going to have on the next pay per view event, but I've always been of the mind that if you're going to do monthly PPVs you need to have some a-shows and some b-shows, with the a-show main events being heavily promoted even though a b-show is coming up sooner. Here we've got Bound for Glory as the b-show, while the program that finally gives us Joe's title shot will be the a-show. Nothing wrong with that.
And, just because I've got some extra time to kill this evening, it's time to bring back READER FEEDBACK! First up is Giuliano from Germany:
Hey, I enjoy your TNA report but maybe you could add some pictures/screencaps of the happenings in there?
Glad you enjoy the review. Pictures aren't a bad idea, but I don't have the technology necessary to do that right now. If I had it for some other reason I might use it, and if I actually got paid to review the show I might invest in it, but sadly I don't see it being worth the cash when I'd only use it for this one purpose. There's also the issue of time. 411 wants the report up within 30 to 60 minutes of the end of the show, and it usually takes me at least 30 minutes after with proofreading and the like. I don't know exactly how much longer it would take to add screencaps, but time might prohibit it as well.
Semi-regular Joey Nic now tunes in with some very random questions, though at least the first set relates to TNA:
I guess you heard about Kurt Angle going to TNA, you didn't comment on the subject in you
Impact rant but last time you wrote me you said that TNA probably wouldn't sign him until Sting's deal runs out and you thought that TNA would be best for him with the light schedule. I think getting Kurt now makes TNA the number two promotion in the country officially, your thoughts? Also, now that he's there how do you think TNA will use him?
You're right, I didn't think they'd pick him up until Sting was gone. Quite frankly, I don't know how they're going to afford this one unless Panda is willing to take a loss on his contract, at least in the short term.
As far as my thoughts on signing him are concerned, I'm part of the camp that doesn't think TNA should have done it. It is a great business move for them to be sure, but this is a man who WWE fired because he refused to recognize that he had a problem and that problem lead to a very high likelihood of him dying in one of their rings. Yes, you can argue that signing ultimately was Angle's own personal choice. However, if I personally had the opportunity to hire a man with a drug problem and I knew that the job I was hiring him for would only lead to his drug problem getting worse, I wouldn't do it. It's exploiting a man who can't think clearly for himself because his mind is too clouded by other things. It's really pretty disgusting.
I don't know how TNA will use them. When they first brought in Sting I figured that they'd do it smart and have him appear periodically as a special attraction, mostly on pay per view. However, they put him out there on almost every episode of Impact to the point that he became just another guy on the roster and nothing was special about him. If they've learned anything from the Sting deal, Kurt won't be out there every week doing his schtick. They need to use him for epic PPV matches and maybe one angle on free TV per month to set up those matches. In terms of who we're going to see him up against, I think it depends on how long his contract is (which is something I haven't seen posted anywhere yet.) I think that they need to an Angle/Sting match sooner rather than later, just because they're the two biggest "names" on the roster. Normally I'd want a several months long build to something like that, but you can't do it because Sting's contract is expiring at the end of the year. An encounter with Joe seems highly likely as well, since it's the one that the entire internet is clamboring for. Angle and Christian are also good friends, so I imagine that they'd like to work together.
Next question is: What do you think is the more impressive accomplishment, Bruno Sammartino holding the world title for almost eight years or Ric Flair winning it sixteen times. I'd go with Bruno holding it for almost eight years(not because he's Italian, my kind of people) because guys are lucky to hold the world title for eight months and Triple-H will pass Ric Flair in another five years.
I'm actually going with Flair on this one. I don't think the sheer number of titles that he held was all that important, but the fact that his sixteen reigns were spread out over such a long period of time shows that he was able to appeal to wrestling fans in several different eras. Doing that takes a bit more talent than having an eight year run in an area and a time when the business didn't progress that much.
Last time you wrote me you said that you couldn't stand the Heyman version of ECW and like WWE's version much better, again I should apologize for being an asshole to you for not liking the original, but I am from Philly and we don't like people talking bad about our sports. So my question is, what about the original ECW did you not like and what do you think is the worst wrestling organization you ever watched? I have an XPW tape, four Women's Extreme Wrestling DVDs, and two backyard wrestling tapes, so I've seen MUCH worse.
I will say that there were some good things to come out of the original ECW . . . the things that people usual give props to ECW for - introducing Benoit/Eddy/Jericho/Malenko to the US, introducing lucha to the US, etc. However, beyond that, I think ECW was incredibly overrated. It is true that the guys I just listed were great professional wrestlers and had great matches. However, they were BY FAR the minority of the promotion. Nobody else was nearly as good, but I had to put up with fans telling me about how awesome Tommy Dreamer was, how great of a wrestler Justin Credible happened to be, and how huge of a legend the Sandman would be in ten years. All of those guys were decent but not the phenoms they were built up to be by the company's rabid fanbase.
On top of that, I've never been a fan of "hardcore" wrestling. It takes a lot less talent and athletic ability than working a pure match. Weapons are just a way to get cheap pops from fans, but the pops aren't any greater than the ones you could get if you just learned how to build a match up properly. The other problem is that there's only so far you can go with hardcore. After a while, people get desensitized to the violence and start craving more and more and more. By the time ECW was over, tables weren't special enough anymore so they had to move up to flaming tables. How long would it have been before the flaming table was overused and they had to bust out a gimmick that was even more extreme and therefore presented even more of a threat to the well being of their talent? Even if they could find that gimmick, would networks have allowed it to air? If they couldn't have found the gimmick, fans probably wouldn't have been accepting and would have walked away. That's one of my big problems with the old ECW product. It gave people everything, which set them up for disappointment down the road, which meant that the entire business model would've collapsed on itself after a limited number of years.
You're right, though, ECW was not the worst wrestling promotion of all time. I've also seen XPW, and it was horrid. I can't think of one redeeming quality that the company had except for the occassional appearances of good lucha guys like Halloween or Damien 666. Early CZW was probably even worse than XPW, though at least CZW has changed things up over the last few years and now features actual quality wrestling over grown men slicing each other up with weedwackers and light tubes. If you want to see a really lousy promotion that ISN'T focused on deathmatch wrestling, go to eBay sometime and search for the "ICW" shows that were promoted by a guy named Mean Marc Ash. I reviewed one of them a while ago right here
I heard a rumor(God I hope that's all it is) that WWE is wants to bring in Scot Hall and Kevin Nash to due a N W O vs DX feud. This would have been a money making feud ten years ago but WWE botched is five years ago. I think you might have addressed this question on Fact or Fiction but I don't remember.
I didn't hit this on Fact or Fiction. Last I heard, this was nothing more than a rumor, though Nash has been trying to get back in to WWE. I see no value in having him or Hall in the ring in the year 2006, unless it was for one match and one match only. WWE doesn't have a history of booking guys for one-time appearances, so I don't know why they'd start now.
My last question is about DVD's, WWE is coming out with some new releases in November with a history of the AWA, Roddy Piper, Brian Pillman, and they have the history of the world title already out. I'm definitely going to get the AWA one because the AWA is my favorite dead promotion now that good old ECW is back, the history of the WWE title from what I've heard is only good if you want to see the matches from the 70's and everything else has already been on DVD, so if I could just buy the DVD with the 70's matches I'd get it but I'm probably not going to. So it's down to Pillman and Piper, which one do you recommend? Piper was one of the greatest heels of all time in my opinion and his DVD is going to have rare Portland matches on it, but I love workrate and Pillman's Loose Cannon gimmick was one of the best heel acts in recent memory so I might get Pillman's DVD.
The Piper DVD vs. Pillman DVD choice is a hard one indeed. If Pillman was a pure "workrate" guy it would be a lot harder. However, he was a good wrestler AND a good promo, so I would think that his set could beat Piper's in terms of full-on entertainment value. Then again, so much of what makes a good DVD comes from production choices by WWE that it's hard to say without watching both of them. Also, though I haven't seen a full listing of extras for the Piper DVD, most of his best mic work was already chronicled on a Coliseum Video release many years back - Roddy Piper's Greatest Hits. I'd try to find a copy of that on eBay if you just want to see the best of his promos. I don't know that I'd go out of my way to see any Roddy Piper match, except maybe Piper vs. Hart at WMVII or the Piper vs. Valentine dog collar match, which is already out on a different WWE DVD.
And that does it for this week, kids. Take care of yourselves and each other.
