The Impact Crater 04.03.08

Posted by Ryan Byers on 04.06.2008

In this column, I devote almost 500 words to a part of the show that lasted less than five seconds. Depending on how you look at it, that's either a new personal best or a new personal worst.

Welcome, one and all, to the Impact Crater for the April 3 edition of TNA's flagship show. I apologize that we're a little bit later than usual this week and if I seem a little bit less in to reviewing the program that I normally am, but the explanation for that is right here. With all of our housekeeping out of the way, let's head in to the continued march towards Lockdown.

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Team Cage/Team Tomko/Matt Morgan Interview Segment
Segment #2: LAX & The Murder City Machine Guns def. Jimmy Rave, Lance Hoyt, Chocolate Reign, & Rellik is Killer Spelled Backwards
Segment #3: Travis Tomko & AJ Styles def. Christian & Rhino by disqualification
Segment #4: Shark Boy def. Elix Skipper (Yeah, he's still alive.)
Segment #5: Traci Brooks def. Payton Banks
Segment #6: Kurt Angle/Scott Steiner Interview Segment
Segment #7: Sting def. James Storm

The Main Stuff

Angle Numero Uno: Morgan's Mess

Yes, this is the one week that TNA's title for their own show is funnier than anything that I could come up with . . . because, as we'll see in a second, this storyline was a bit of a mess.

Generally speaking, I've been fine with the company's angles headed in to their next pay per view. The so-called "pure sports build" of Kurt Angle versus Samoa Joe has worked well, albeit not nearly as well as it would have if Joe hadn't looked like such a loser in the prior months of their feud. Things have also been fairly competently handled for the company's War Games match, with a simple back and forth between the face and heel teams.

This week, things took a turn for the (slightly) worse, as TNA executive Matt Morgan appeared to be favoring the bad guys by allowing James Storm to join their team while giving the babyfaces no such concession. Fans were left to labor under this impression for the majority of the show, only for the big SWERVE~! to hit at the end of the episode, with Morgan revealing that he had planned to be the fifth man on Christian's team all along. This angle had its problems – as we'll get to in a bit – but it also had its positives. Frankly, I can't decide at this point which outweighed the other, so I'll just put them out there and leave the issue for you, the readers, to decide.

On the positive side of the scale, I have to say that the storyline simultaneously served two purposes and seemingly served them well. It not only gave the two teams more of a reason to hate each other headed in to the pay per view, but it ALSO gave the episode a self-contained storyline, something that you don't see in wrestling all too often these days. It was a fairly decent marriage of long-term and short-term booking, with fans being forced to wonder throughout the episode how Christian would react to this turn of events and with the heels now being given an additional motive for going after the good guys hard this coming Sunday. (Namely that they were outsmarted and want to use the War Games match to wipe some of that egg off of their faces.) On top of that, this puts Morgan in to a good position before he heads off to film the next seasons of American Gladiators. He's immediately in the main event mix in TNA and will not look out of place in it if he's portrayed well enough in War Games. The main event mix is exactly where he needs to be coming off his NBC exposure, as it will no doubt make him in to the biggest "mainstream" star on the entire show.

Then there are the problems with the angle. The biggest one I see is that, unless they handle this very delicately, the announce team, Jim Cornette, and various other personalities on the show are going to take a big hit in terms of their credibility. For the entire show, Mike Tenay, Don West, and Jim Cornette were going on and on about how horrible it was that Morgan, as a member of the nebulous group known as TNA management, was failing to be impartial. Well, guess what. He may have evened the odds by joining the babyface team, but that still does not qualify as being impartial. In fact, it's the exact opposite of being impartial. It's outright partial. Hopefully the company manages to handle the storyline in such a way that Tenay and company aren't huge Morgan cheerleaders after his turn, because otherwise they'll look incredibly hypocritical. That sort of thing can lead to problems down the road with an announce team, as the commentators play an integral role in getting across how important certain events in an angle are. If the lose all credibility (as Tony Schiavone did in WCW when he proclaimed everything to be the "Biggest _______ in the history of our sport!"), it becomes impossible for them to fill that role.

The other problem with the angle is that it came off as a swerve just for the sake of having a swerve instead of being the result of a more well thought out angle. Over my months and years writing for this site, I've gotten in to several arguments with people who have told me that pro wrestling needs to be surprising. "You've got to shock people to get them to tune in," they say. That's not really the case, because, if you look at history, the best live gates, television ratings, and pay per view buyrates always happen when you tell fans in a roundabout way that something is going to happen and then deliver it to them. Yes, it's nice to from time to time interject a tinge of doubt, but, for the most part, a fan should be able to accurately predict how a major angle is going to end. Thus, the best turns are those that people see foreshadowed for several weeks or months in advance (see: Batista, Dave). They had the potential to do that with Morgan but, for whatever reason, decided not to. Then again, the story of TNA seems to be the company not entirely living up to its potential, so I don't know why I should be surprised.

Angle Numero Dos: Pardon the Interruption

The rivalry between Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle was also continued this evening, though there wasn't much added. We got a few more words from the Olympic gold medalist and another vignette of Joe training with some MMA fighters. Both segments were fine, even if they didn't exactly cover any new ground. Yet, the primary focus in the title scene tonight wasn't on Kurt Angle OR Samoa Joe. For some reason, it was on Scott Steiner. Yes, the Big Bad Booty Daddy decided that he was going to take the title shot he earned in December's insufferable loser-gets-fired battle royale and "cash it in." (Could we make this sound like a bigger knockoff of Money in the Bank?) He'll be "cashing in," the shot, against the winner of the Angle/Joe match. This announcement was made during a fairly lengthy in-ring confrontation between Angle and Steiner, and I can't say that I was a fan of the execution.

Long-time readers will know why. TNA has done this sort of thing before. For some reason, they like to give up on building up their next PPV main event a week or two before the pay per view and focus on the feud that will be coming up afterwards. I know there are some folks out there who disagree with me, but I still think that this is stupid. The promotion has a finite amount of television time, and it all needs to be geared towards getting fans to buy some product that the company is selling. The product that they're trying to sell most heavily now is Lockdown, so why is all of this finite amount of television time not being geared towards pushing Lockdown? Ten or so minutes were wasted on Steiner here when they could have just as easily been devoted to making fans care more about the match that they'll actually have an opportunity to buy nine days down the road.

And, if Steiner is the next guy in line for a title shot, why hasn't he been getting any sort of push over the course of the last few months? Why hasn't he been in there picking off other top guys in order to make him look credible? Why has he done nothing but act out creepy S&M fantasies with Petey Williams? Scott Steiner hasn't been booked like a World Champion despite the fact that he's going to receive an opportunity to be one, which just goes to show how little long term planning there is in this promotion.

Angle Numero Tres: From the Nitpicking Department . . .

People yell at me all the time for supposedly overanalyzing angles. In reality, I just watch the show and write down whatever pops in to my head as I'm watching it and in the half hour or so thereafter. Yes, it usually winds up being a lot more than most people think about when they watch wrestling. However, what many of you don't realize is that I actually show a degree of RESTRAINT when writing this column. As an example, I give to you this account of what ran through my head as it relates to a single spot that took place in the Murder City Machine Guns & LAX vs. Rave/Hoyt/Rellik/Reign match:

Simply put, this is a spot that I will never forget. The Machine Guns had just finished doing a very over the top, very contrived looking double team sequence on Jimmy Rave. There were superkicks involved. (But, then again, there are always superkicks involved when you're talking about Sabin and Shelley.) The Monsters then cut them off and proceeded to hit the most bizarre looking double team move in history. Reign picked a Machine Gun up and handed him to Rellik, after which Reign let go of the Machine Gun only to grab him in a slightly different position a second later. Reign tossed the Machine Gun up in the air ever so slightly, and Rellik turned 90 degrees, bounced the Machine Gun off of the top rope, turned 180 degrees, and slammed the Machine Gun face first in to the mat. It was HILARIOUS, because Rellik and Reign wound up working together in taking seven steps to accomplish something that Reign could have done on his own in one simple movement. I honestly couldn't tell if the two were trying to keep up with the Machine Guns' style of wrestling and doing a very bad job of it or if they were trying to make fun of the Machine Guns' style of wrestling and doing a very good job of it. Either way, I laughed more at this than I've laughed at any intentional humor on Impact in months.

And, if Rellik and Reign were trying to do a "Machine Gun" style spot, I've got a bit of advice for both of them: Don't do it ever again. It's not just a matter of the move looking ridiculous. Let's face reality here . . . you're freaking Johnny Stamobli and Dustin Rhodes. Chances are good that, if a fan likes either of you, they don't like you because you do flashy moves. Chances are good that, if a fan doesn't like you, he or she has seen you wrestle for several years, formed that opinion a while ago, and won't be changing it in the near future. Next time, just save yourself the effort and punch the freakin' Machine Gun in the face instead. He'll still go down, you'll still get the same reaction, and it'll look a lot better than the alternative.

And the Rest . . .

~ Apparently the guy who designed the NASH t-shirt also did the attire for Team Cage. Good to see that he's still getting work.

~ What the HELL was Jeremy Borash wearing tonight? That jacket made Jeff Jarrett's bright orange jeans look like an Armani suit.

~ Maybe I was hearing things, but I could've sworn that there was an "ROH" chant just prior to the commercial break in the middle of the eight man tag.

~ So the women are going to be having a reverse cage match at Lockdown in which they have to climb from the floor IN to the ring. What is the deal with this promotion's sick obsession with doing things backwards? (Wow, there's a loaded question.) I expect this contest to be an absolute mess, mainly because it's hard for a production crew to shoot a match taking place entirely in the ringside area when the studio is set up for cameras to most effectively capture action in the ring. Oh well, at least it's a chance to give a win to somebody who's normally outside of the title picture, thereby possibly building up a new contender.

~ After a return that sort of made him appear to be something special, Sting is now once again "just another guy." What bring back somebody who is supposedly such a high profile wrestler just to make him in to a Christian flunkie?

Overall

This episode of Impact was just there. I mentioned last week that the company has done a good job of raining my interest level in Lockdown above the level at which my interest normally sits for a TNA pay per view. This week's show didn't do anything to increase that level of interest, but it also did not do anything to decrease that level of interest. That's unfortunate to a certain degree, as, if I'm remembering my ratings correctly, it had more eyeballs on it than any other installment of the show which has aired post-Destination X. Oh well, I guess you can't win them all.

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. A couple of weeks ago, 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 so 2day i wat 2 talk bout an idea i vhave an have had 4 a wile u c wen i look at tna i c that all tbeh best or most of the bes wrestlers in the tan r a lil bit on the older side so heres wut i think i think tna shoudl put in a rule that sez that 2 b the world thcampion u have 2 b at lesat 40 yrs old i meen think bout 4 a secon an it makes perfect since. scott steiner is 1 of the best wreslters in tnaa nd hes prolly over 40 same 4 kevin nash an rick stiner an bg james an an baclk rain an rellik an kip james an sting an jeff jarrett an kurt angle i mean there all over 40 an there all the best guys in tna wrestling so I think that they hsould b the guys fiting 4 the title bc i kno i only wanna c the bes guys in there 4 the title. I kno that there r sum guys out there who r young an good i mean theres like samoe joe an aj styels an all those sguys an there good an all but there not as good as the older guys yet but thell get there sum day an then wen they r 40 they can b tna champ. neway thats my idea 2 make the new rule 4 tna I think it uwould make the title matches more exciting bc ud only half the best wrestlers in title matches.

That was Austin!

Yes, it sure was. I hope that all of you enjoyed this week's Crater. I will be back at some indeterminate point in the future to talk about next week's show. Until then, be sure to head over to the MySpace to get a bulletin notification every time I post new content here on 411mania.