The Impact Crater 12.07.06
Posted by Ryan Byers on 12.07.2006
It's gotten to the point where I'm literally counting the number of dumb things that Russo does per show. Join the fun!
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Impact Crater. After several weeks of having to put up with Vince Russo booking this show, I decided to use it to entertain myself. As such, tonight I will be attempting to see how many dumb things that Vince Russo can do in the forty-five minutes of television time that comprise Impact. It should be interesting to see what the final tally is.
Recap of Last Week's Show: Tyson/Travis Tomko and Abyss have a past, Sting and Jim Mitchell vie for Abyss' soul, and there's a big ole' Dusty finish in the main event.
Rhino is the ring to start off the show proper, and AJ Styles has made him angry. The War Machine calls out the Phenomenal One, but Chris Daniels comes out instead and tries to smooth over the situation between AJ and Rhino. Styles jumps Rhino from behind, resulting in Daniels and security trying to pull them apart.
NUMBER ONE: Booking AJ Styles and Rhino to do a pull-apart brawl only a couple of weeks after Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle concluded an angle in which they were doing pull-apart brawl after pull-apart brawl.
Eric Young is running stairs in a vinyl suit to lose weight for his upcoming bikini contest. The crowd seems not to care.
Match Numero Uno: Homicide vs. Petey Williams
Petey's new music is actually pretty fun. It inspires him to get a rana and a spinning heel kick after the opening bell, though Homicide cuts him off and gives him a flatliner in to the middle turnbuckle. Remind me to steal that one if I ever become a wrestler. (Which won't happen.) He follows that up with a powerbomb and a bridging t-bone for two and two for t-bone. A Diamond Cutter gets another nearfall for the Rottweiler, but Petey gets the better of things off the ropes and hits his slingshot lungblower. The side Russian legsweep follows, and it looks to set up the Destroyer. It's reversed, as is Homicide's attempt at a Cop Killa. It looks like Petey is going to go for the Destroyer again, but instead he opts to go for a sunset flip for the three count. LAX attempts to run interference afterwards, but AMW and Gail Kim save.
Match Thoughts: As has been par for the course lately, this match got approximately thirty seconds. However, it was just about the best thirty second match that you're going to find. Both men managed to get in their trademark stuff with a minimum of no selling, and nothing was noticeably blown. As much as I like the LAX tag team, sometimes I think that it's a darn shame that Homicide is not allowed to wrestle as a single more often on my TV. *
Billy Gunn is in a fake newsroom. He makes a sixth grade joke about protesting Bush. Then he tries to say "protestors" and says "prostitutes" by mistake. HAHAHAHAHAHA! He throws to BG James, who is with a room full of plants chanting "DX Sucks." They've got anti-Shawn and Hunter signs as well. James isn't wearing any pants.
NUMBER TWO: Continuing this stupid "war" that nobody cares about.
NUMBER THREE: Allowing Christy Hemme to remain employed while doing absolutely nothing of benefit for the company.
Jim Mitchell, Sting, and Christian cut dueling pre-taped promos. The jist of it is that Tomko has a past with Abyss, Abyss has personal demons, and Sting has an exorcism kit.
Eric Young continues to work out.
Kevin Nash, Alex Shelley, and Austin Aries are conducting psychological tests on the X Division. TNA has apparently signed CHIKARA star Rorschach, because Nash is showing the X guys ink blots. Nash's character is apparently gay now, as an ink blot reminds Shelley of the "time that [Nash] broke his heart." Kev further admits to Jay Lethal that he has a home on Fire Island. The best running gag of the skit is Low Ki, who states that he sees a "warrior" in every blot that he's shown. The payoff is Nash asking how any of the pictures resemble Jim Hellwig.
Eric Young talks to the generic blond and says nothing of note, aside from the fact that he now believes he needs to look like a woman so that he can defeat Traci at the pay per view.
NUMBER FOUR: Transforming Eric Young from a guy who was naturally funny and had a lot of charisma in to a dweeb who spouts of scripted material that is not nearly as great as the stuff that he was improving.
Match Numero Dos: Eric Young vs. Low Ki
Young runs down the ramp and starts doing push-ups on the floor, so Ki kicks the crap out of him before throwing him back in to the ring.
NUMBER FIVE: Letting Mark "Slick" Johnson referee matches in which he's bigger than the competitors.
It's more kicking on the inside from Ki, and there are some chops for good measure. Eric tries to come back with some rights, which look so lame compared to Low Ki's strikes. A kick to the back of Young's head ends that offensive flurry, and he gets another boot across the bridge of the nose. He tries to come back with the punches again and fails again, though he does get a discus forearm after avoiding the Tidal Crush. Young then does the Flair Flip of all things, and Traci Brooks is out to distract him. She flashes, which of course provides enough of an opening for Ki to dropkick him and hit the top rope double stomp, which ends the match.
Match Thoughts: This was an odd, odd clash of styles, with Low Ki's more realistic offense going up against the living cartoon character that is Eric Young. Everything Young did was exaggerated to the extreme, while Ki's moves appeared quite snug. If nothing else, it did show us a glimpse of the old Eric Young, namely the crazy bump machine that existed before the opening match comedy act came along. For the sake of Eric's health, I hope that he continues with the lame jokes as opposed to letting himself get thrown around haphazardly like he did here. 1/2*
Backstage, LAX challenges AMW to a flag match at turning point.
NUMBER SIX: Having Christy Hemme hype up the VKM segments before a commercial break, as though anybody is actually tuning in to watch them.
Hey, here they are again. Billy Gunn compares The Marine to Ernest Saves Christmas. Wow, an Ernest reference in 2006, how cutting edge. He throws to BG, who is supposedly in a movie theater where the film is playing. There's one man there, and he's asleep ten minutes in to the picture. Wait . . I thought that their beef was with DX, not John Cena.
NUMBER SEVEN: Changing rivals in mid-stream.
Jim Cornette is in the ring when we come back to the Impact Zone, and he signs that flag match we heard about earlier. Before he can say anything else, he gets interrupted by Christian Cage and Travis/Tyson Tomko. Xian says that Cornette is trying to keep LAX from exercising their First Amendment Rights, which proves that he has no clue how the First Amendment works.
NUMBER EIGHT: Booking everybody in the company to be completely ignorant of the highest law of these United States.
Christian says that Cornette has forgotten about TNA hiring policies. Corny apparently did a "background check" on Tomko. He did a background check on Christian. However, Cage wants to know if James E. Ever did a background check on Abyss.
NUMBER NINE: Telling Christian to ask Jim Cornette whether Cornette had performed a background check as a part of hiring Abyss . . . despite the fact that Abyss was in the company YEARS before Cornette.
Christian says that Abyss did something horrible in his past.
NUMBER TEN: Running an angle with suspicious parallels to the Katie Vick debacle.
However, before Xian can reveal what went on, Abyss interrupts and attacks the bad guys. Eventually the numbers game catches up with him, though Sting makes the save. The Stinger looks for a handshake after they successfully run off Cage & 'Ko, but he gets a Black Hole Slam instead.
NUMBER ELEVEN: A vignette for the Flock airs. They're "coming soon" even though they debuted a month ago.
Jeremy Borash runs down the pay per view card. It is:
- Chris Daniels vs. Chris Sabin with Jerry Lynn at the pay per view.
- The Beginning of Kevin Nash's "Paparazzi Championship Series," whatever that is.
NUMBER TWELVE: Expecting me to buy a pay per view to watch a match whose participants and stipulations are not explained.
- The Voodoo Kin Mafia will appear.
NUMBER THIRTEEN: Hyping the Voodoo Kin Mafia for a pay per view without making it clear what they'll be doing that I can't just see them do on free TV.
- Sting vs. Abyss vs. Christian.
Once Jeremy is done, we go to a GREAT set of dueling interviews by Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe. They discuss their past match and their upcoming match. Angle puts over Joe huge, saying that nobody has made him bleed like that before. Meanwhile, Joe comes to terms with the fact that he is no longer the top dog that everybody is gunning for. Angle states that Joe nearly paralyzed him in their last match and that, no matter what, this will be his last match with Samoa Joe.
NUMBER FOURTEEN: Blatantly lying like that.
Match Numero Tres: Christian vs. Rhino vs. Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle vs. Sting vs. Abyss in a six way match
We're halfway through with the introductions when AJ Styles jumps Rhino and they brawl all the way in to a commercial break. When we come back, they pick up where they left off with the last three entrances.
NUMBER FIFTEEN: Not just going ahead and doing the entrances during the break when you've got a limited amount of time to begin with.
Angle starts with Christian, and this is apparently a five way match now that Rhino has eloped to the locker room with AJ Styles. Angle and Xian run the ropes, and I feel like I'm back on Smackdown. Oh, by the way . . .
NUMBER SIXTEEN: Running a match involving your six (arguably) biggest stars in the ring at the same time and not hyping it up at any point prior to the show that it is on.
Kurt dominates and hits the overhead belly to belly before applying the chinlock. Yes, a rest hold two minutes in to a match in which three men are standing on the apron doing nothing other than waiting to be tagged in. So much for Angle getting my wrestler of the year vote. The chinlock is still going on after the break, and Tenay officially announces AJ Styles vs. Rhino for the pay per view. Christian tags out to Abyss at this point, and the big man gets the Shock Treatment on Angle for two. Joe breaks up the pinfall and powerslams Abyss, allowing Xian to hit Joe with an inverted DDT. Sting gets one of his own on Cage and then clotheslines Abyss out of the ring. They brawl on the floor as Xian goes up top but gets cut off by a Joe enzuguri. Tomko runs in behind the referee's back and kicks Joe in the gut to break up the move. Now Angle's back, and he tosses Christian out of the ring before helping Joe to his feet. Then, out of nowhere, Angle turns on Joe, hits the Olympic Slam, and gets the three count.
Match Thoughts: The flurry of the spots at the end of this one was fun and well executed, but the opening moments with Angle were pretty horrible. Barring some sort of catastrophe in which everybody is horribly injured, there's no reason to have a lengthy rest hold in a match with five men, especially when it's within the first half of the match. I have to say, though, for something that was supposedly important and involved all of TNA's top stars, this came off as remarkably pedestrian. *3/4 I also should note that, when I first heard about this match, I was ready to go off on a major rant about how stupid it is for TNA to give away the first match involving Sting and Angle away on free TV. However, the company did the smart thing and didn't have the two look at each other, let alone touch, so it wasn't nearly as dumb as it could have been.
Overall
Well, we wound up with sixteen stupid things in the span of forty-five minutes, an average of one stupid thing every three minutes. The strange thing is that, despite that figure, this was probably one of the least offensive shows of the Russo regime. It seemed like they halved the number of wrestlers on the program, which was great given the tendency of Impact to feel entirely overbooked. Add to that some in-ring action that was decent albeit short in terms of bell-to-bell time and a great couple of interviews from Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle and you've got a show that I really can't complain about all that much. My thumb is solidly in the middle, awaiting that one day when it can be extended upwards.
