The Impact Crater 07.26.07

Posted by Ryan Byers on 07.26.2007

Scott Steiner picks up right where he left off: Being awesome.

Welcome, one and all, to the Impact Crater. As always, I'm Ryan, and what follows is an in-depth look at all of the insanity that comprises TNA Impact. Last week the company kicked off its build for the fourth singles match between Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle, and, quite frankly, it sucked. We'll see if they can rebound here or whether the entire pay per view looks like a lost cause.

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Sting def. Bobby Roode in a No DQ Match
Segment #2: LAX def. The Murder City Machine Guns
Segment #3: Steiner Brothers/Dudley Boys/New Age Outlaws interview segment
Segment #4: AJ Styles def. Abyss in a No DQ Match

Angle Numero Uno: In to the Abyss

The main focus of this show actually wasn't the aforementioned Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle feud, much to my surprise. Instead, it was Christian and his cohorts (now including Bobby Roode on a full-time basis, apparently) taking on Abyss and Sting. We got two matches in this rivalry, with Roode taking on Sting and AJ Styles taking on Abyss, both no disqualification matches. Roode vs. Sting was fairly unimportant in terms of furthering the angle, as it was basically a clean win for Sting aside form a guest appearance by Eric Young, who prevented Roode from using a chair. I'm baffled as to why the Roode/Young feud is STILL continuing, but hopefully this is just the setup for Young rounding out the babyface team for a six man between the Coalition and Sting/Abyss as opposed to the setup for five more months of singles matches between the two of them. I like both of the Canadian boys, but enough is enough.

Where things really got interesting was the main event of Styles vs. Abyss. These two have been having good matches against each other for four years, so it was no surprise when this was entertaining prior to the run-ins starting. (Even if AJ is HORRIBLY miscast as a heel. At least stop doing the flips, dude. You're supposed to be booed.) After a few solid minutes of wrestling, Christian's entire posse hit the ring and did a hell of a beatdown on both Abyss and Sting. Abyss was pulled under the ring at one point and returned with his face and arms absolutely covered in blood. I really hope it was fake, because he should never, ever be asked to blade like he did in the original Coalition/Abyss beatdown again, and this was just as bad if not worse. His attacker was never revealed, though it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was Ricky Banderas' new character. After that, both the Stinger and Abyss were slammed in some glass and tacks.

Though some people might slam this for being too similar to the beatdown that started the whole feud, I think that it's exactly what the rivalry needed at this point. They were falling in to far too predictable a pattern of some combination of Sting and Abyss beating some combination of Christian's army on every pay per view, and this was a good opportunity to reenforce the fact that the good guys have a reason to continually fight the bad guys despite their dominance. It didn't have the same impact as the original angle, but it didn't need to, as the momentum from that segment hasn't entirely run out yet. So, as a whole, I have to give the company two big thumbs up for the work that they did on the Christian vs. Abyss storyline this week. I'm not entirely sure what matches they'll be giving us on the next PPV out of this feud, but I do think that they can get one more month of undercard stuff with Cage's flunkies before finally pulling the trigger on the big Christian vs. Abyss singles match.

Angle Numero Dos: Krazy about Kurt

With Abyss vs. Christian getting so much time this week, there was virtually no additional build for the Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle feud. Instead, there was a series of roughly four thirty-second vignettes involving Angle supposedly laying on a psychiatrist's couch and talking to his shrink. Though there were some humorous moments and the skits helped to put over Angle's new egomaniacal character, I don't recall him mentioning Samoa Joe even once. Normally I'd be all over the promotion for not capitalizing on every opportunity to get people to buy their pay per view based on the main event, but Abyss/Christian is such a big storyline for them right now that Angle and Joe needed to take a backseat for at least one week while the other story was fleshed out. So, though the skits weren't a great positive for the Joe/Angle feud, I certainly don't think that they hurt it either. Hopefully the next two editions of Impact are able to do some damage control after the atrocious start the build got off to last Thursday.

If I have one problem with the Angle skits, it's that elsewhere on the show the company did a sit-down interview with Dustin Rhodes in which he debuted a new "demented" character, and it played literally three seconds before they did the first Angle skit. Dustin's mental issues were supposed to make him seem frightening, dangerous, and like a man who could do some serious damage to Chris Harris. Then, without even a commercial break separating them, we see Kurt Angle at a "psychiatrist," presumably having mental issues of his own . . . but now they're comedic fodder. It made Dustin look like a joke as opposed to the credible threat that they were trying to make him out to be.

Angle Numero Tres: To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn . . .

Jesus, did the entire tag team division turn tonight? The Dudleys hinted at a heel turn last week, but they're definitely all-out bad guys after the mic work that they did tonight. Meanwhile, Scott Steiner is out talking about the injury and subsequent surgery that he dealt with in Puerto Rico, going in to full babyface mode. I can understand those two teams reversing roles, because the Steiner story of coming back from a life threatening injury really is better suited to a hero than a villain. However, in the same segment, we also had the New Age Outlaws hitting the ring. After feuding with the Bashams as good guys just last week, now they're assisting the heel Dudleys in a four-on-two mugging of Rick and Scott. To cap it all off, who made the save? LAX, who were heels as of last week but took on the heel Murder City Machine guns tonight. I don't understand why they felt the need to switch everybody simultaneously like this. It was a bit of a dumb move, but it was completely overshadowed by something that was AWESOME.

And, of course, I'm talking about the mic work between Scott Steiner and Bubba Dudley. The promos these two men were cutting on each other were the highlight of Impact prior to Scott's injury, and, now that he's back, they're once again the best things on the show. Big Poppa Pump absolutely put both of the Dudleys in their place and had the crowd chanting his name within in a matter of minutes, which is no small feat when you consider the fact that he's been a heel for his entire TNA run up to this point. He spoke very passionately about his injury and what he feels his team's place in the history of this business is . . . and then he revealed it. Yes, we're talking about the absolutely MASSIVE surgical scar that this man now has running across his back. This was built up very well, with Steiner coming to the ring in a shirt to hide it but ultimately uncovering the wound to a big reaction and a tight camera shot. Injuries like these are terrible things, but you may as well make the best of them when they happen, and TNA and the two tag teams certainly managed to do that here. Honestly, I can't put this over enough. I'm having trouble thinking of a better interview segment in the history of Impact.

And do you know why it was so good? It was good because, unlike many of the interviews that you see on professional wrestling TV days, this had its basis firmly in reality. This wasn't something that was whipped up by a hack television writer who got in to wrestling because he couldn't cut it on Sponge Bob Square Pants. This wasn't put together and forced on some kid who's two years in to the business and has never been given adequate training on how to work a crowd. This was a veteran of the industry taking a real life situation, taking emotions that he actually felt and words that he actually believed and spinning it in to a storyline. THAT is what professional wrestling had more of in its glory days, and that is what it needs more of today. Thumbs up to this segment, thumbs up to Bubba Dudley, and thumbs way up to Scott Steiner. I hope this feud lasts until the end of the year.

Overall

This show was exactly what I've been saying that Impact needs to be for months. They cut all of the bullshit. They didn't try to cram seventy-five men in to forty-five minutes of television. They took what they considered to be their two most important angles as of this week (Steiners/Dudleys and Christian/Abyss), and they gave those angles 90% of the TV time. The rest of the program was devoted to giving some of the other feuds smaller video packages . . . nothing that's going to turn them in to epic stories, but just enough to remind everybody that they exist so that they still mean something when they're heavily featured on TV next week. On top of that, everybody performed at the top of their game. Abyss and AJ had a fine free match, and everybody in the post-match beatdown played their roles to perfection. Kurt Angle made me chuckle a couple of times, which was fine for the position that he was in on this card. And, I know that I just spent a paragraph gushing about Scott Steiner and Bubba Dudley, but I can't stress enough how important it is in wrestling to have great promos like that. It's moments like these that sell fans on professional wrestling, not ridiculous reverse battle royales, stupid Macho Man rehash gimmicks, or outright insulting stories about men shooting their fathers in the back. I hope that everybody in TNA took note of how great this particular episode of Impact was, because it's exactly what they need in order to grow.

Reader Feedback

WCWFJoJo writes:

Roode didn't lose to Jarrett, he beat him.

I believe that this one line e-mail was in response to an offhand comment that I made last week about Roode needing to head in to a feud that he can win after doing so many jobs to the likes of Eric Young and Jarrett. After receiving the message, I looked things up, and, sure enough, this fellow was correct. (Though I'm still trying to figure out who JoJo is and why he wants to "F" him.) Really, though, this highlights one of the problems that TNA has had since the beginning. They ignore their own history. If somebody like Bobby Roode beats somebody like Jeff Jarrett, that should be a huge moment in Roode's career, one that elevates him and puts him on a level higher than he was before. However, that's not what happened. Instead the feud was completely ignored after it ended, shrouded in obscurity to the point that a guy who reviews the show every week couldn't even remember who the victor was. This is not the first time that this has happened in TNA, and it probably won't be the last.

First-time writer Elton F. says:

I appreciate your take on the bad booking of Angle/Joe lately (especially running all-night comedy segments and making a juvenile feud out of what was once the biggest Badass vs. Badass angles in recent memory), but what's the big deal of drawing face/heel lines? I don't see it as bad that TNA didn't tell fans who to cheer and who to boo the first time around. Listening to the "This is awesome" chants at the opening bell, I'd say they didn't mind one bit. Like you alluded to in your column, a feud can keep its steam while relying solely on the premise of "the heat of competition." We live in an era where "heels" get cheered, "faces" can get booed out of the building, and fans end up cheering more for the match itself (and thier own personal biases) than whatever management tells them to cheer for.

By the way, thanks for filling us in on Nikki Roxx. I wonder if she'd be good enough to carry Christy Hemme to a good women's match...

Thanks for reading, and keep up the good work.

Glad that you enjoy in the column. As far as the heel/face role in the Angle/Joe feud is concerned, I'm still of the mindset that clear cut good guys and clear cut bad guys are important in professional wrestling. Yes, the Impact Zone crowd reacts well to both men. However, you have to keep in mind that the Impact Zone is roughly 500 fans out of several hundred thousand. They're also (at least in large part) people who show up to watch the TNA product on a weekly basis. You can't just book your promotion around its 500 most diehard fans on the planet. You need to make sure that it's accessible to as wide of an audience as possible, and that's why ultimately the live fan's reactions only matter to the extent that you don't want your crowd sounding dead on TV. They're not representative of the vast majority of people watching the product, nor should they be catered to.

To more directly address the question of whether faces and heels are still important in this day and age, let me say this: I am not aware of one pay per view in history which has drawn well in which the main event did not feature a clearly defined babyface and a clearly defined heel. (Aside from the very rare face vs. face match.) Historically, they've always been present in order to make a major show work. Yes, the ACTIONS that are acceptable for heels and faces to perform over time have changed, such as Steve Austin being a face despite the fact that he was far more aggressive than traditional "good guys." However, in the overwhelming majority of matches that draw well, there is always one man that the promotion promotes as the guy you should cheer and one man that the promotion promotes as the guy you should boo. That's what I mean by having well defined heels and faces, not necessarily that every face has to be a clean cut, Bob Backlund-esque nerd in 2007 while every heel has to run around twisting his thin mustache and laughing manically.

We'll head to Nikki Roxx last but certainly not least. As I mentioned in the column, she's a good wrestler. However, I honestly can't predict what she'll be able to do with Hemme. I've only seen Nikki work one match against a relatively inexperienced competitor (Lorelei Lee on SHIMMER Volume 6), and it wasn't all that great. On the other hand, a match with Hemme on a TNA show would most likely be shorter, and Hemme has done a lot of wrestling in Mexico and various indy groups since leaving WWE, so she may have improved. However, I can honestly say that a match between Roxx and any of the other ladies in TNA (Gail Kim, Traci Brooks, or Jackie Moore) could be just as good as if not better than the stuff that Kim and Moore have recently been doing against one another.

And that does it for another edition of the Crater. I'll be back with more Impact next week, and this Sunday I'll be checking in with the Custom Made News.