The Impact Crater 03.27.08

Posted by Ryan Byers on 03.29.2008

If "It's true, it's damn true!" became "It's real, it's damn real!", I guess "I'm ROBBIE!" will become "I am the individual known as Robert."

Welcome, one and all, to the Impact Crater. I'm sure you're all dying to read my thoughts on the most recent edition of TNA programming, but, before we get there, I have a bit of a programming note. Those of you who are fans of both this column and WWE will probably want to check out this coming Sunday's edition of my other regular 411 piece, The Custom Made News Report. Because Wrestlemania is this weekend and because the format of the Crater has proven somewhat popular, I've decided that I should run a special WRESTLEMANIA CRATER~! in the news column, breaking down the build to the big matches in the same style that you see here every week. It will be an interesting experiment if nothing else.

With that out of the way, let's dive headlong in to TNA.



Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Booker T./Bobby Roode Brawl
Segment #2: Johnny Devine def. Alex Shelley
Segment #3: Scott Steiner, Petey Williams, & Panther Claw def. LAX & Shelly Martinez
Segment #4: Karen Angle Interview Segment
Segment #5: Kurt Angle Training Segment
Segment #6: Booker T. def. Bobby Roode in a First Blood Match
Segment #7: Amazing Kong (c) def. ODB to retain the TNA Women's Title
Segment #8: Christian, Rhino, Kevin Nash, & Sting def. Travis Tomko, AJ Styles, & The Dudley Boys

The Main Stuff

Angle Numero Uno: Live and Let Go Live

Hey, did you know that this was the BIGGEST IMPACT IN HISTORY?! Did you know that it was the BIGGEST IMPACT IN HISTORY BECAUSE THEY WENT LIVE?! Did you know that even though this was the BIGGEST IMPACT IN HISTORY and even though they WENT LIVE that this still felt exactly like EVERY EPISODE OF IMPACT THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE?!

A few weeks ago, I gave my thoughts on the show going live in my aforementioned news report. I argued that it wouldn't affect the company's bottom line and that it wouldn't affect the quality of the show. Now that the first live Impact has come and gone, I stand by those arguments. Seriously, can somebody tell me one thing that this edition of the show delivered that was not delivered by every other edition of the show? The way I see it, there are only three potential candidates, and all of them fall flat.

The first is the "interactive" portion of the show, with fans being able to use the company website to pick the Amazing Kong's opponent as well as the stipulations for a Booker T. versus Bobby Roode match. Did this gimmick make the show more exciting in any way? No. Frankly, I don't see the big deal about watching a match selected by fans when all of the options are such that, no matter the result, what you're seeing is identical to something that the promotion would've booked anyway. Besides, these sorts of voting gimmicks have been used for at least fifteen years in professional wrestling. (Older fans will remember that, in the pre-internet world, promotions would do voting via telephone hotlines.) I can't recall one instance in this entire period of time in which an unknown participant for a match or an unknown gimmick for a match actually resulted in more people tuning in to watch said contest. And, to top it all off, being live isn't even necessary for doing this sort of gimmick. TNA easily could've announced the voting on its last episode before a new set of tapings and the run the match on the very next episode. There goes the first supposed draw of the live show.

The second is the "surprise" ending of the program, which featured James Storm hitting the ring and dropping Sting with a beer bottle. "Ryan," I'm sure several people will say, "if this show was taped, there would've been eeeeeevil spoilers out on the internet, and those eeeeeeevil spoilers would've prevented this moment from feeling special!" Look, I've got a newsflash for all of you who still get your panties in a bunch about spoilers in 2008. First of all, if you really hate them that badly, they're easy to avoid. You know all of the websites that you go to on which you see them? Don't go there anymore. Problem solved. Furthermore, if you think that they're bad for business, your argument is demonstrably false. More often than not, when a wrestling promotion has leaked news of upcoming events on a pre-taped show, the ratings for that show have gone up and not down. (The most famous example of this, of course, was Tony Schiavone giving away Mick Foley's WWF Title win.) Finally, I have to once again say that, if knowing that something happens in advance ruins your enjoyment of it, you're probably not that big of a fan of what you're watching in the first place. If you can't enjoy something for what it is without a surprise factor, you're watching for the surprise and not the product itself. Perhaps your life would be more fulfilling if you stopped watching wrestling and paid people to randomly jump out at you from behind furniture.

Finally, people are going to try to tell me that the live show was special because, without it, we wouldn't have gotten the CONTROVERSY of Robbie Highlander showing up in the TNA audience. I will agree that this would not have happened if the show were taped. WWE probably would've found out about the event in advance and probably would've found some way to put the kibosh on it. However, I'm at a loss as to why anybody actually cares about this entire fiasco. It's not as though Robbie Highlander was Lex Luger popping up on the first episode of Nitro. He isn't a major star jumping ship because his contract with the WWF lapsed. He's a guy who is lucky to be booked on Heat most weeks who came to the Impact Zone to watch one of his friends work. He didn't want to draw attention to himself, and he certainly wasn't trying to send a message. I don't know why this should matter any more than any other d-level celebrity showing up in the Impact crowd, aside from the fact that the boneheads in TNA have now probably cost a man his job just so they could stir up some CONTROVERSY that will be forgotten about within a few weeks.

So, yeah, going live meant nothing. If you don't agree with my assessment, you just have to look at the numbers, because the rating for this program came in at a 1.0. That's a shame in a way because, aside from my general frustration with people hyping this up as though it were anything more than a normal episode of Impact, I enjoyed the show. For example . . .

Angle Numero Dos: Training Wheels Off

This week's training session with Kurt Angle wasn't quite as good as last week's, mainly because Kurt was in there with guys that he had to allow to shine for a little bit as opposed to guys that he could just destroy. It's a minor difference, but it's an important one. The latter allows for both Angle and Joe to look like unbeatable monsters headed in to their cage match, with fans then (at least in theory), paying to see which of the two dominant wrestlers can triumph over the other. The former shows that one of the two unbeatable men may have a crack in his armor, which, if played up too strongly, can make the result of the main event seem to be too big of a foregone conclusion for anybody to care about. Of course, if you must portray one party as having a weakness, it should definitely be the heel, as was the case here. However, I did think that this bit of the segment was somewhat inconsistent with the rest of the setup for the match, which has had a very "MMA" feel to it as opposed to relying on traditional professional wrestling style elements.

That's a minor quibble, though. Overall, this was fine and accomplished what it needed to do. The Joe interview segment about his training made for a nice counterpoint, and I was glad to see it after fearing that TNA would keep him off of television altogether, which could hurt fan interest in the title bout. Hell, you even had the other major babyfaces on the roster putting over the big Samoan's training regimen, which both added legitimacy to Joe and provided a nice segue in to the main event. Speaking of segues . . .

Angle Numero Tres: Matthew Broderick is Not in This WarGames

I just segued by about talking about segues. How cool is that?

Anyway, the continued push towards the War Games match at Lockdown also gets a thumbs up this week. At first I was a little annoyed that the company was apparently giving away the match (minus the cage) in the main event of this week's show, but the aforementioned James Storm run-in gave me new hope. This would seemingly set up the Cowboy being added to the heel team as a fifth man, and it also gives the Stinger a personal rival to gun for when the match gets underway.

Frankly, I hope that they go all the way with a Sting/Storm rivalry. As one of my readers (the great Eddie Chicago) recently pointed out in response to another one of my columns, TNA really has yet to use Sting to give anybody a meaningful rub, and the Cowboy is as good of a candidate for that position as any. James Storm has been fried gold ever since America's Most Wanted broke up, clearly eclipsing his partner who everybody thought would be the big singles star of the two. His performances in the ring have been awesome. The work he's done with his character has been awesome. Granted, the guy has been booked in some pathetic storylines (Beer Drinking Title, anyone?), but he has almost always added touches to those angles which make the segments worthwhile in spite of themselves. If he just adds a little more of a serious edge to his character, he could become a legitimate World Title contender in the company by the end of this year. Granted, he doesn't have the "marquee value" of some of the other guys in the hunt for the TNA championship, but, given that the "names" don't seem to draw any better than Joe Indy, you may as well give a few fresh faces a shot. At the very least, they won't do any worse than their predecessors.

And the Rest . . .

~ Interesting to see ODB winning the fan voting for the Women's Title match.. I know that I've read a few of her detractors claiming that she's not nearly as popular outside of the Impact Zone as she is in it, but this would seemingly destroy that theory. (Assuming, of course, that the voting wasn't rigged.)

~ Speaking of the women, TNA is really hurting the credibility of their so-called serious division by putting Shelly Martinez in the ring on a weekly basis. She makes Maria Kanellis look like Lou Thesz.

~ Hey, what happened to the geek from Survivor? You'd think that Dudley Boy beatdown would've gone somewhere by now.

Overall

This was, for the second week in a row, a fairly decent episode of Impact by the (admittedly low) standards that they've set for themselves. Everything that they did for the two major matches on the pay per view made at least some degree of sense, and they continued to provide two different "flavors" of professional wrestling product for lack of a better word. Joe versus Angle is there for those folks who prefer to have their wrestling delivered to them as though it were a pure athletic contest, and the War Games match is there for those who would rather have heated blood rivalries and over the top levels of violence. Diversity is the spice of life, and it's also the spice that is allowing TNA to hold my interest more than at any other point in the last year or so.

This is Austin!
by Austin Arte

(Ryan's note: Many of you have already come to know and love Austin Arte, a young gentlemen who captured Crater readers' hearts and minds when he first e-mailed me about a month ago. Last week, I offered him a regular spot in this column in which he could let us in on his . . . umm . . . unique take on professional wrestling. If you're so inclined, you can e-mail him at [e-mail].)

ok lol well heres the 1st tis is austin collum i hope every1 lies it an that u like the name of it its sapposed 2 b like the chant this is awesum that wreslin fans do accept instead of awesum its austin witch is my name withc sounds like awesum kinda. neway i kno that I sed I didnt like ryan byers or ryan bias all that much wen i wrte 2 him the 1st tim but hes gotted better since then i mean 2 wks ago he sed that i showed him sumthing an I think I reall did i mean ever sicen i showed up hes been a lot less bais 2 tna i mean he even sed he liked the last show an i bet thats all cuz of me pointin out that tna has the bes wreslig in the world 2 him. neway bc wrestlmaina is comin up i wunted 2 rite bout how I think lockdown is gunn b better than wresltemania. Ok here goes wrestlmania is gunna b borin the big fite on wrestlmania isnt even a wresltin fite its big show against sum boxer in a boxn math o boy y do i care. if i want 2 watch boxin ill watch a boxin show not a wrestlin show an aguess wut i wont watch a boxni show bc boxin is boring and this math wit flody maywather or floyd fairyweather like i call him is gunna b borin 2. there no stupid boxing on locdkown theres just gunna b great rasslin action from ppl like th egreat wrestling legends kurt angle bg james kip james kevin nash christian cage an losts more. plus if u like exciting matches wit lots of gusy in them an lots of weapons well guess wut leathl lockdown is gunna b way better than money in the bant. i mean vince mcman puts all these limits on wut hsi wrestlers can do in the ring cuz hes afaid of 1 of them gettin hurt but tna doesnt put nelimts on wut there wresltes can do if sumbody wants 2 fall off the top of the lthal lockdown an thru like 3 tables tna will elt them do it bc they kno that fans r all wantin excitment then if in wwe sumbody asked 2 do the sane thing vince mcman would be all like well no u cant do that its 2 dangers just like he wouldnt let kurt angle do his 450 splash or just like h wouldnt let tomko hit ppl as hard as tomko htis ppl in tna plus at lockdown ur not gunna have ne stupdi celebrtiys i eman who cares bout raven simon shes on disney channel an dinsey channet is 4 lil kids if ur a real man like me u wont care bout the dinsey channel girls an u wont waist ur $$$$$$ on wrestlngmania ull save it 4 locdown were all the tru fans r gunna b watchn sum of the greathest wrestlin in the world tna 4 lyfe!!!!!!!!!!

To the (Feed)Back!

Greg P. rants about my rants . . .

So let me get this straight . . . you disliked the way they were booking Angle until now when they decided to give him an MMA style edge again?

I'll never understand the IWC and they're verbal pummeling of Angle's run as a heel in TNA. TNA had no choice but to turn him heel in the wake of his debut "shine" dying down. Fans got bored of the badass shtick after a while. I did too. I like funny stupid Angle cause it was entertaining to me. When Austin went heel and joined with Vince and started acting like a complete idiot, It was some of funniest stuff to date they'd done. It brings depth to his character, I mean anyone can be a badass right? What makes Angle so special? Eventually that gets boring and TNA saw that. How is it their fault?

For the Christian and Rhino back story, YES, it was nice that they actually followed through with an old storyline that was brought up again to legitimize the heat between the two. But honestly man, It's fucking pro wrestling! Nothing is supposed to be logical. It's like an action movie. Half the shit you see Bruce Willis do in Die Hard would never happen it real life. It's entertainment. We call wrestling a male soap opera? When was the last time Melrose Place or 24 ever followed logic? Those shows were/are ridiculously all over the place. Wrestling fans have a short memory, we forget shit quick. Only the people that keep fucking tabs on every single freakin' event in wrestling history (people with no fucking life like that snot-rag Jarrod Chesterfield or whoever the fuck he is that writes for your site) can reach back and lambaste some booker for forgetting about some back story. Vince and Stone Cold joined up for absolutely no reason whatsoever. That was never explained!!! Why does everyone else get a free pass on this?

And what is with this long explanation about the Sharmell stuff? Are you fucking kidding me? Sharmell was the one that got punched in the face . . . why wouldn't she be booked against her foes at the next PPV. She stayed off TV to sell the punch and Traci Brooks took her place because she still had heat with Roode and Banks. And besides Sharmell's revenge was whipping the shit out of Banks and Roode at the PPV anyway! And weren't you people the first one's to say you were getting sick and tired of Traci being involved in a long drawn out feud with Roode. You all always want to have your cake and eat it too! Your never fucking satisfied, I swear to Christ.

A few quick points in response to this one:

1.) Yes, I prefer MMAngle over Komedy Kurt.

2.) There is no evidence that the "shine" went off of Kurt Angle. Yeah, there was a dropoff in buyrates after his first match,

3.) The Austin comedy stuff in 2001 WAS funny. However, it was terrible for business. It was during this period that all of the sky high TV and PPV numbers from the Attitude Era plummeted.

4.) I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with your paragraph about the Rhino/Christian angle. I gave TNA credit for doing something that you claim they didn't necessarily have to do. I complimented them. Why are you angry at me for complimenting them? Shouldn't you go off on this tangent when I lambaste them for NOT remembering their history?

5.) The WWF did explain Austin and McMahon aligning. The story was that the WWF Title meant more than anything in the world to Austin and that he was becoming increasingly paranoid about his ability to keep it. Thus, he decided that he needed backup. This was the same reason that he joined the Alliance later in the year.

6.) The entire Booker/Roode angle has been premised on the idea that men should not be hitting women. Jim Cornette has vehemently stated this on numerous occasions. Then he books a match in which Sharmell is almost certain to be hit by a man. That's the main inconsistency I have a problem with in the storyline.

7.) Don't swear to Christ this close to Easter.

Chiming in with some slightly more calm thoughts is J_Blake:

Just a few thoughts to run by you concerning TNA.

It seems like TNA will spend a few weeks building someone up just to job them out against the newest pet project (see Boy, Shark and Man, Curry for recent reference.) Why build someone just to job them out? It seems to me TNA would benefit from using local jobbers the was WWE does when they are building someone as either an unstoppable monster or a star-in-the-making.

Surely TNA could use local/FIP wrestlers for enhancement talent, and wouldn't have to pay them as much per appearance as one of the contract boys. It keeps the TNA talent looking strong, and hey, maybe they find a future star amongst the jobbers.

Second, I hate the whole Eric Young/Super Eric angle, but as long as they are going the comedy route, I have an idea. Who is EY's running mate right now? Kaz, who recently fueded with someone else with a split personality angle, Dustin Rhodes/Black Reign. I think it would be fun if TNA went back to that dropped angle and paired Dustin Rhodes with Eric Young as faces, while at the same time having Super Eric fueding with Black Reign. While this is going on, Kaz and Rellik would be the confused onlookers/respective tag partners. I have no idea how this angle resolves itself, but it could be fun. What do you think?

I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that the company should use more local guys as enhancement talent. As I've mentioned several times in this column, to truly have a wrestler turned in to a superstar, you need to have him winning on a consistent basis, which is difficult when the only guys on the roster are those that you see as having some level of upward mobility. (This has resulted in Jay Lethal in particular losing several matches that he has had no right losing.) The odd thing is that TNA actually used to use Florida indy guys as jobbers pretty regularly. I can remember Buck Quartermain, Mikey Batts, Jerrelle Clark, Lex Lovett, and even Kenny King of WWE Tough Enough fame all being semi-regular enhancement guys for the promotion. They were all pretty good at it, too. I have no clue why the company stopped doing this, though I would assume that they considered it a worthwhile cost-cutting measure.

As far as your proposed angle is concerned, I can see some decent comedy coming out of it. However, there's already so much comedy in TNA that I don't really want to see them adding any more. In a universe without every other Impact being supposedly guffaw-inducing, I'd give it a thumbs up, though.

And that'll do it for this week. As I mentioned earlier, you're definitely going to want to check out the Sunday news report if you're a fan of this column, and you may as well head over to my MySpace and add me as a friend so that you can receive a bulletin notification when I post that or any other new content to 411.