The Impact Crater 02.28.08

Posted by Ryan Byers on 03.01.2008

Yes, I delayed the column just so I'd be able to write something on Leap Day once during my 411 tenure.

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Booker T. interview segment
Segment #2: Scott Steiner & Petey Williams def. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt
Segment #3: Curry Man & Shark Boy def. The Dudley Boys by fatass forfeit
Segment #4: Curry Man & Shark Boy def. Chocolate Reign & Rellik is Killer Spelled Backwards
Segment #5: Bobby Roode interview segment
Segment #6: James Storm def. Eric Young in a ladder match
Segment #7: Amazing Kong def. Angel Williams
Segment #8: Kurt Angle def. Kevin Nash

The Main Stuff

Angle Numero Uno: Love, Anglican Style

And the "love triangle" between Kurt Angle, Karen Angle, and AJ Styles continues. I put "love triangle in "quotation marks" because, as I noted last week, we've "seen this five thousand times before." I will be amazed if this results in anything other than the Angle Alliance coming together as a cohesive unit and beating the hell out of their opponents at the next pay per view. At the very least, AJ Styles and Kurt Angle are going to wind up feuding with Karen turning on AJ.

However, I'll go ahead and assume for the sake of discussion that this ISN'T just going to be a huge swerve. If that is actually the case, and they are actually building to an eventual Kurt/AJ feud with Angle's wife standing firmly in the corner of the Phenomenal One, this may be the single greatest feud in TNA history. Though the bickering of the Angles and AJ Styles acting like a complete doofus used to be horribly obnoxious, the fact of the matter is that their roles have been tweaked every so slightly over the last couple of weeks to the point that they're actually somewhat intriguing as characters. Kurt, instead of being a goofball, is now the intensely driven competitor who may be a little too driven for his own good given what it's doing to his personal life. AJ, though simple, has a heart of gold and a persona people just have to get behind. Karen, though she may be a complete bitch, is slowly having her ice cold heart melted by the childlike Styles. People used to write me all the time when I was ripping on the debut of Jay Lethal's "Black Machismo" character, trying to defend it on the grounds that it was "great character development." That wasn't character development, ladies and gentlemen. That was giving a guy one-note schtick that failed to be funny after the first month. What's going on in this angle is true character development, as events that happen in the storyline cause the characters to change and grow as human beings.

Of course, I reiterate that this is all IF the whole angle isn't just a massive swerve . . . which is a pretty big "if" given the history of both the promotion's booking and the past products of its writing crew.

Angle Numero Dos: Money in the Banks

I thought that the storyline involving Booker T. and Bobby Roode was hurt quite a bit over the past couple of week's by Roode's absence. Granted, Book cut some pretty good promos in that period of time, but the fact of the matter is that things just weren't the same without him having somebody to play off of in a more direct manner. Well, Roode made his big return this week, and it was glorious. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that his promo and his promo alone restored this rivalry to its former status as the most consistently awesome feud going in TNA today. Roode has gone from being an individual that I found painfully boring to being everything that is great about pompous heels, particularly when he hit the line this evening about punching Booker just like he had punched his wife. If these two were wrestling on a pay per view card in which it was guaranteed that the rest of the show would be fairly decent, I would pay to see it. Unfortunately, they're wrestling on a TNA show, which means that there's a 50/50 chance that the booking decisions on the PPV will anger me to the point that I want to throw a hammer through the wall. Otherwise, I'd be all over watching the Roode/Booker blowoff.

The only thing that caught me a little bit off guard tonight in this storyline was the re-emergence of Traci Brooks as a foil for Payton Banks. With the way their pay per view match was booked, I could've sworn that the issue between the two was settled and that they were both going to move on to their own individual angles. I won't complain too much, though, as it allows the company to do a mixed tag team match that will be worlds better than Roode and Rain against Booker and Sharmell ever would have been.

Angle Numero Tres: Go Hard or Go Home

One of my TNA pet peeves was on full display tonight, namely the big gimmick match that isn't actually a big gimmick match. I'm talking, of course, about the James Storm versus Eric Young encounter. I'm not going to point out the idiocy of having a wrestling match for a drinking title. Larry has that market cornered. Instead, I'm going to rant about something just a little bit different.

I know that some people hate it when I compare TNA programming to WWE programming, because they want their Total Nonstop Action to be as far removed from Vince and Company as possible. However, there is a reason that I compare WWE to TNA, and that reason is simple. Though their product may have its flaws, WWE has a business model that is a proven success, while TNA has a business model that is middling at best. One of the reasons that WWE does an infinitely superior job of selling pay per views and popping big television ratings when they have to is that they do a far better job of keeping certain things special. When you're watching a WWE show and you hear the words "Hell in a Cell" or "Elimination Chamber," you can say with ninety percent certainty that you're going to get a match in which the company pulls out all of the stops to produce the most exciting bit of wrestling that they can given the competitors. In TNA, no gimmick match has this level of significance.

Why? It's because a.) TNA overdoes gimmick matches in general and b.) TNA does too many BAD gimmick matches. If a WWE pay per view show or even an episode of Raw is set to feature a ladder match, you can rest assured that it will be going between fifteen and twenty minutes and that it will be one of the primary focuses of the program. What happens when we get a ladder match on Impact? It doesn't even run eight minutes, a good chunk of it gets taken away by a commercial, and it's not even portrayed as being the fifth most important thing on the show. TNA needs to start thinking about the long term consequences of handling their business in this way. Let's say that, for whatever reason, the promotion decides that they're going to promote a big ladder match for the pay per view after next. (Pretend for a second that the April show isn't Lockdown.) If a casual wrestling fan watched tonight's card and then heard that there was going to be a ladder match on an upcoming pay per view, do you know what he'd probably say? I have a feeling that his response would be something to the effect of, "Well, I saw a TNA ladder match once, and it wasn't that great. It was really short, and it didn't seem like that big of a deal." This is the exact opposite of the response that a wrestling promotion is supposed to be going for. If TNA feels that they absolutely must give away a gimmick match on free TV, they should be going out of their way to make sure that their viewers feel like the gimmick match was the greatest thing that they've ever seen. That way, they'll be more likely to tune in when the same gimmick match is pulled out further down the road.

It's like the subject line says: Go hard or go home.

And the Rest . . .

~ I know that he wasn't actually pinned tonight, but I'm still not all that happy with Jay Lethal coming out on the losing end of his tag team match . . . or ANY match at this point, for that matter. As I mentioned when he beat the Dudleys on the last PPV, follow-up on his mega-push is crucial, and he'll quickly become "just another guy" if he doesn't start racking up some meaningful wins.

~ God, that tag match with the masked comedy guys against the monsters was putrid. Every couple of weeks we get one segment which reminds me of the old one hour Impacts. You know, the shows in which every match seemed to have three different angles crammed in to it. This. Must. Stop.

~ Boo to the three way Women's Title match being booked for the pay per view. Once again, this company runs through angles like Yokozuna ran through chicken wings.

Overall

At this point, watching TNA is like having a family member who is struggling with an addiction or other compulsive behavioral problem. After a very rough period, they'll do something that you interpret as small sign of improvement. You applaud them for this improvement, and you hope against hope that this small betterment is part of a long-term recovery. However, there's another side of you, a more cynical side, that is filled with an impending sense of dread. You know that, no matter how good things may look at the moment, it is almost certain that eventually all of your joy will be washed away by a sea of disappointment. That's exactly how I feel watching Impact. Some of the Kurt/Karen/AJ skits may be good when watched in isolation, but part of me knows where it's heading. Booker/Roode may rule, but I'm well aware that at any second a huge monkey wrench could be thrown in to the works. TNA has an addiction. Their addiction is lousy booking. My only hope is that, this time, they'll make it past the third stage of their twelve step program. They've got the potential to do so, and they're making some progress towards turning the corner. Now all we need is consistency.

Impact Crater Dance Party



Reader Feedback

I've been slow to get to feedback recently, and I apologize for that. I'll be wading through some of the backlog in coming weeks. I figured I would begin this process with Guest #7036, since his question seems to have been asked with increasing frequency over the last several weeks:

Ryan, why do you insist on calling the wrestlers by names other than what the company does? I mean, Chocolate Reign and A Prick Named Bob are funny (and in the latter case, he actually HAS been called that on air), but Tomko is not referred to as Travis in TNA, Mesias is not known as Ricky Banderas, and Team 3D are not using the Dudley Boys name. I know it's petty, but it just seems to serve no function other than to prove the writer is "too cool for school." And it definitely isn't an attempt to make the characters more recognizable to new or uninformed fans. If someone is reading this column, they know exactly what they're in for.

I don't really insist on calling wrestlers anything, and it's not an effort to prove that I'm too cool for school. (Though I AM too cool for school, and don't you forget it.) I just use whatever name pops in to my head first, regardless of what a guy has been called in the past or what he is currently being called. I have yet to figure out an exact pattern behind why my brain chooses to permanently associate certain names with certain wrestlers, though the general trend seems to be that, if a guy changes his name but keeps playing the same exact character, I have difficulty calling him by anything other than the name he was using when I first became familiar with his character. Thus, for example, "Kip James" is always "Billy Gunn" in my mind. However, when there is both a name change AND a major character overhaul, I have a much easier time remembering to use the current name. Thus, for example, I always refer to Impact's voodoo queen as "Roxxi LaVeaux" despite the fact that I watched her wrestle for quite some time as "Nikki Roxx" prior to her joining the TNA roster.

And, for something a little bit . . . ummm . . . different, check out this e-mail that I got from austin. Usually if I get a letter that I want to run here and it contains a few errors in the spelling and grammar departments, I'll clean them up. I couldn't do that here, though, as I had too hard of a time trying to figure out what the poor guy was saying in the first place:

hey man ive watch u rite this impact carter 4 like a cupple moths now an i don like wut u have 2 say bout tna i mean all u do is bas it an u never say nun of the good things about tna like the grate wreslin action they have which is way better than wwe imean tna doesnt limit wut there wrestlers can do in the ring like vince mcman does an plus tna has sum legends of wresling like kevin nash kip james bg james an more i think u should stfu an stop writin ur bias colums cuz u r a hater who just wans 2 take tna down 4 no good reason i don get y 441mania puts up wit u r bias carp

Wow. Just wow. I can't follow that, so I'm not even going to try. Good night.