The Impact Crater 06.21.07
Posted by Ryan Byers on 06.22.2007
It's Angle and Joe all over again . . . will TNA screw it up one more time for old times sake?
Welcome back to the Impact Crater. This time around we've got all of the fallout from Slammaversary, as TNA looks to kick off year number five on the right foot. Here goes.
Quick & Dirty Results
Segment #1: Jim Cornette/Kurt Angle Interview
Segment #2: James Storm & Bobby Roode def. Eric Young & Rhino
Segment #3: Chris Harris def. Raven
Segment #4: Abyss/Christian brawl
Segment #5: Samoa Joe def. Jay Lethal & Chris Sabin to win the X Division Championship
Angle Numero Uno: Angle/Joe, Take 2
Well, here we go again. When Kurt Angle first came to TNA, his first feud was against Samoa Joe. It was a bit of a dream match amongst internet fans TNA fans, and the first meeting between the two lead to TNA's highest pay per view buyrate in history, as roughly 60,000 people tuned in to watch their encounter. Then TNA screwed it all up, resulting in the next two pay per views featuring Angle/Joe matches doing in the 20,000 buy neighborhood, which is EXACTLY what TNA's PPVs do on a month-to-month basis no matter who's on top of them. So, in the course of about a month, they managed to take something that was special, something that people were willing to pay to see and completely destroy whatever it was that made it special.
When the angle was going on, I speculated a lot about what they did to destroy it, so I won't go down that road again. However, for whatever the reason, TNA now apparently thinks that the time is right to go back to the well with Angle versus Joe. This began on Sunday at the Slammaversary pay per view, with Stone Cold Kurt Angle giving Joe the kick to the gut/Olympic Slam combo as Joe asked for a handshake. Then Angle came out at the beginning of the Impact show this week and cut a little promo. Between the Olympic Slam on Sunday and Angle's promo tonight, it seems like the company has FINALLY decided to go ahead and make him an all-out heel. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Kurt Angle is at long last a bad guy. Personally, I'm happy to see this. As a fan, one of the most frustrating things about the prior Angle/Joe feud was that, from week to week, they couldn't seem to decide who the good guy was and who the bad guy was. In fact, they couldn't really seem to decide if there was an issue between the two men that made them hate each other or whether they were doing a "respect" feud over who was the better athlete. Now, with a clearly defined face and a clearly defined heel, TNA finally has the foundation laid to providing fans with a quality storyline in the traditional sense of the word. In all honesty, both men have played their roles well thusfar in establishing those face/heel roles. Angle's promo at the beginning of the show, though not on the level of his best WWF work, managed to get a very solid reaction from the Impact Zone crowd, and I can only imagine that it was equally effective as it relates to home viewers.
The match between the two will not take place at the next pay per view. Instead, as announced by Jim Cornette at the very top of the Impact show, the main event of Victory Road will be a "Match of Champions," featuring whoever the TNA Tag Champs are in a match against whoever the TNA Champion is and whoever the X Division Champion is. If one of the Tag Champs gets the pinfall, he wins the title of the guy he pins. If one of the singles champions gets the pinfall, he wins both tag belts and gets to pick a partner to hold them with. Oh yeah, and all three championships are going to be defended over the next three weeks on Impact, so if any of the current champs lose those matches, they get replaced on the PPV. This highlights two of my least favorite things about TNA. The first? Matches with TOO MANY RULES. I'd love it if, just once, this company would stop worrying about being "innovative" and just give us a one on one wrestling contest in which there's a simple story about one guy who wants to beat the crap out of another guy. Instead, we're stuck with gimmicks in which you have to pin a guy to get the right to hang a belt and then if you hang a belt you win the title but you better not get pinned because if you get pinned you have to spend time in a penalty box or the ever popular reverse battle royale that leads to a regular battle royale in which the order of elimination determines seeding in a tournament and also the last two guys in the battle royale have a singles match and the guys from the battle royale are in a tournament and the winner of the tournament faces the guy who won the singles match. There's a reason the Wrestlemania main event is usually one man facing one other man in a match with no gimmicks, and it's because that's historically proven to be the kind of match that draws the most money. TNA has yet to wrap its head around this. The second problem with this PPV main event is that, for the third or fourth month in a row, we won't actually know what's headlining the show until it's just about to happen. To have a successful PPV, you need a proper build, and, to have a proper build, you need time. Unfortunately, TNA hasn't seen fit to give itself that time.
And then, in the main event, Joe won a triple threat match to claim his third X Division Title and make himself Kurt Angle's partner in the aforementioned wacky PPV main event. The match was fine – nothing special – and it accomplished the goal that it needed to accomplish. If Joe is going to be taken seriously as a contender for the championship, he needs to be given some clean victories, something that he's been lacking for the last several months in this company. Lethal and Sabin are a decent place to start, and hopefully this trend will continue right up until his eventual title match with Kurt Angle.
As of right now, I'm approaching this renewed Angle/Joe feud with cautious optimism. Like I said, some of the key elements they need are there, namely Angle solidifying himself as the bad guy and Joe winning matches to be taken seriously. Hopefully those things continue for the foreseeable future . . . and hopefully neither of them get overshadowed by the wacky, "innovative" match that TNA just has to put on top of Victory Road.
Jesus, I haven't spent that much time on a single angle in a while.
Angle Numero Dos: The Canuck & The Kentuckian
Elsewhere on the show, Chris Harris beat Raven, only to have Christian pop up on the video screen seconds later and call out Harris for spearing him off of a ladder in the closing moments of the King of the Mountain match . . . so it looks like that'll be another Victory Road bout. Personally, I've got mixed feelings on this one. First of all, it's great to see Christian working in the upper midcard instead of the main event, because that's where he belongs. Christian as a World Champion just didn't feel right. His promos seemed very forced, and it was hard to take him seriously as a dominating physical presence, even when he had the "muscle" of AJ Styles and Tom Coe backing him up. Feuding with younger guys like Harris and Abyss is a better fit for the man. He doesn't have to be taken nearly as seriously as he would have to be in the title picture, and he can still show off his excellence in the ring and periodic flashes of brilliance on the mic. Plus, if he's in the midcard, he's got more leeway to work humor in to his time on the stick, and we all know that Christian can be a funny, funny man. However, on the other hand, I can't help but feel that they're moving on from the Harris/Storm feud without really resolving it. They had two matches with each guy getting a win and a third match that ended in a draw. The last two matches were freaking awesome and left fans clamoring for more. So where's number four? Where's the tiebreaker between these two bitter rivals? Sure, they could probably do it down the road, but it seems a bit anti-climatic to not put it at the most logical point for the blowoff . . . i.e. now.
Meanwhile, the Abyss vs. Team Christian feud also continues, as the Monster tried to get his hands on Mr. Cage but was cut off by Styles and Coe. Last week I said that this feud had a ton of potential, and everything still seems to be on course for it to be an awesome part of this summer in professional wrestling. I just hope that Styles vs. Abyss is next on the checklist, because those two always have excellent matches against one another.
Angle Numero Tres: Rhino's Hissy Fit
After being pinned by James Storm in the opener, Rhino got beer poured in his mouth and flipped out, tossing around all of the Impact Zone's furniture and scaring the crap out of poor Don West. If I had to picture it in my mind, the real life-situation that lead to Rhino's termination from WWE would look something like this. (For those who have forgotten, he was let go after punching a hotel flower pot.) It's not been made clear why he did this yet or where it's leading, but I'm mainly writing about it because it could be either phenomenally awesome or ridiculously pathetic. It could be great if Rhino came out next week and cut a promo about how he'd forgotten who he was, about how he had been humiliated too many times now, and bout how he was going to be rededicating himself to being a BMF. It could be hilariously bad if Rhino came out next week and cut a promo about how tasting beer made him remember how his alcoholic father used to molest him and then started crying prior to Jim Cornette hitting the ring and making the War Machine show him on the doll where he was touched.
I'm hoping for the latter option, because "serious" Rhino hasn't done anything for me for a while now.
And the Rest . . .
~ Raven looked a lot better this week than he has in the past several months. I don't think he's quite fit enough to be in the ring on a regular basis, but I'm happy to see that he's been successful in shedding some of those pounds. Plus it looks like Raven versus Frankie Kazarian will be replacing the New Age Outlaws versus the Bashams as the undercard feud that pops up every couple of weeks. I can live with that.
~ Jim Mitchell did another video package hyping his new monster (who I believe is Ricky Banderas). This made me remember how awesome Jim Mitchell can be on the stick when he's not doing stupid BS like explaining Abyss's mother shooting Abyss' father in the back or going on dates with Sting.
~ Next Week: Angle vs. Rhino vs. Christian. Eh, could be better, could be worse.
Overall
Thumbs solidly in the middle for this episode of Impact. No pun intended, but the company is at a bit of a turning point right now as they get ready to launch in to their big summer programs. As noted throughout the body of the review, they laid the foundation for a lot of stuff that the potential to be quite good. Angle versus Joe is off to a fine start, and the Abyss storyline continues to build steam, though neither is yet to the level of being awesome, compelling television. Of course, some of TNA's normal ineptness is still lingering in the background, including the matches with far too many rules and Jay freaking Lethal's Macho Man schtick. Really, though, there was nothing hate-inspiring about this week's program, and I'm interested in seeing how things play out.
We'll start the process of seeing how they play out next week. Until then, keep an eye on the blog, where I recently reviewed SHIMMER Volume 6.
