The Impact Crater 05.01.08

Posted by Ryan Byers on 05.04.2008

I am at last free of this wretched show.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to what in all likelihood will be the final edition of the Impact Crater. I'm Ryan Byers, and I'm leaving this website. Details can be found in my Sunday news report for May 4. I have yet to receive word on who will be taking over the Impact review slot from me. If for some reason that has not been finalized by this coming Thursday, I'll keep running with the column until such a time that a replacement has been found. However, I have a feeling that somebody will have stepped up by that point, in which case I will be bidding you all adieu.

With that said, let's head to Impact for May 1.

Quick & Dirty Results for May 1

Segment #1: The Murder City Machine Guns NC (Shark) Boys II (Curry) Men
Segment #2: Talia Madison/Angel Williams/Gail Kim/ODB Interview Segment
Segment #3: LAX def. Frankie Kazarian & Eric Young in a Deuces Wild Tag Team Tournament Match
Segment #4: LAX/Hector Guerrero Interview Segment
Segment #5: ODB & Gail Kim def. Angel Williams & Talia Madison in what was sadly not a Deuces Wild Tag Team Tournament Match
Segment #6: Eric Young & AJ Styles def. Jimmy Rave & Lance Hoyt in a Deuces Wild Tag Team Tournament Match
Segment #7: Cheerleader Melissa def. Daizee Haze
Segment #8: Samoa Joe & Kurt Angle def. Scott Steiner & Petey Williams
Segment #9: Jim Cornette announced the singles wrestlers competing in the Dueces Wild Tag Team Tournament

The Main Stuff

Angle Numero Uno: Wasn't the "Egotistical Eight" a Group of Spider-Man Villains?

The primary focus of this evening's show was the continued development of Deuces Wild, as we now know the identity of all of the individuals who will be participating in the tournament on the pay per view, both in terms of the eight singles wrestlers who will be thrown together in to wacky duos at random and the four "established" teams. I'd say that the field is a mixed bag, with some interesting combinations and some individuals who have no place in the tournament whatsoever. Let's take a look at each team/wrestler in succession, shall we?

AJ Styles & Eric Young

Errr . . . wait a second . . . weren't the tag teams involved in the initial phase of the tournament supposed to be established? If that's the case, why are Styles and Young, a duo that has never teamed before, in the opening bracket? Yes, in storyline terms, the idea was for Styles and Travis Tomko to be participating, only for Tomko to wind up "injured." However, I have a hard time understanding the company's rationale in taking a brand new tournament which they're trying to get over for the first time and playing fast and loose with the rules. That's the sort of thing which is fine on your third or fourth outing with a particular concept, but, the first couple of times that something like this tournament happens, you're much better suited to play it straight so that viewers have an opportunity to get a decent grasp on the concept before you start tinkering with it. With Tomko unavailable, it would have been a better move to scrap team AJ altogether and run with a different unit. Hell, Shark Boy and Curry Man were readily available.

Christian & Rhino

Again, I could have sworn that the first round of the tournament was supposed to have consisted of established teams. Though they've got both a storyline history and a real life history with one another, Rhino and Christian hardly count as established in the tag team ranks of any wrestling promotion. By my count, they had all of one match together in TNA prior to the beginning of this tournament, and I can't even recall them teaming together once in the WWF. (At least as a two man team . . . I'm sure they were involved in some six man tags with Edge at some point.) Again, you can't play this fast and loose with your rules the first time out if you want fans to take those rules seriously.

LAX

Okay, fine, I can deal with LAX in this sort of tournament, even though I have a feeling they'll just wind up as fodder for one of the "non-established" teams in the next round. However, the Hector Guerrero stuff after their match this past Thursday night really made me uncomfortable. It's bad enough that we had to watch over a year of WWE doing Eddy Guerrero-based storylines. Now TNA has the guy's older brother out there doing a bad Eddy impression while LAX hypes him up as some kind of surrogate Latino Heat. (And, before anybody starts the "He's Eddy's brother! Of course he's going to sound like him argument!" go back and watch some old Hector Guerrero promos from his days as a wrestler. He most definitely did not sound like that.) The whole thing reeks of trying to take advantage of the love that wrestling fans have for a deceased competitor, and it's disgusting. At least when WWE did it, the angle was somewhat timely. TNA's version isn't just in bad taste. It's in bad taste AND a knockoff of something that we've all seen before.

The Dudley Boys

It's a tag team tournament in TNA. You knew that these two had to be involved. As such, I don't have much to say about their inclusion, positive or a negative.

Billy Gunn & The Road Dogg

I'm lumping these two together not necessarily because they'll be on a team but rather because I don't have anything to say about one that I don't have to say about the other. Chances seem good that, even though the matches are supposed to be "randomly" selected, the former New Age Outlaws will wind up as either partners or opponents. I honestly would not have a problem with this if it were a year or even six months after their breakup, because at least then their involvement in the tournament wouldn't seem like such a desperate attempt to shoehorn the breakup feud on to TV in a month where there otherwise probably wouldn't be time for it.

James Storm & Bobby Roode

Again, I'm talking about these men together because I don't have much to say about one independently of the other. A month or two ago, I noted in this very column that Storm and Roode seem to team together all the time with nobody ever acknowledging it. Of course, it wasn't acknowledged because it in all likelihood wasn't by design. However, at least once a month, they'd wind up on the same side of the ring when the company decided to do the "let's cram two midcard singles feuds in to one midcard tag team match" gimmick. Funnier still is the fact that they seemed to win 90% of their matches, although they never got the title shot that would result from any other team having such an impressive record. Despite all of this, they were left out of the "established teams" bracket while Christian & Rhino and Eric Young & AJ Styles were perfectly acceptable entrants in that portion of the tournament. LAME.

Booker T.

Using Booker in this capacity makes sense. He's a fairly popular singles wrestler who, given that his feud with Bobby Roode just wrapped up, has nothing better to do. Since I'm talking about the Book, though, I may as well point out his idiotic comments about AJ Styles on this week's show, in which he made the Phenomenal One look like a geek by mistaking him for a fan. That's the very definition of burying (proper spelling rocks) a guy . . . and even worse is the fact that he buried the TNA Title by claiming that he had no clue who Styles was after AJ mentioned that he'd been champion on several occasions. Yes, folks, the TNA Title is so insignificant that you wouldn't recognize a former champion if you weren't employed by the company at the time of his reign. You heard it here first. In fact, you heard it from TNA themselves.

Sting

I can't believe that they've got Sting crammed in to a huge cluster like this. He's making significantly more money than just about everybody else on the roster, he busts his ass in the ring, and he's insanely over. If this is the case, why cheapen him by treating him like a midcard guy in a midcard angle? I know that some folks wouldn't be happy if the Stinger were just sitting at home on his butt while cashing big paychecks, but, let's face it . . . Sting's value at this point in his career isn't appearing on television week in and week out. He needs to fly in for a month's worth of TV building up one huge singles match, wrestle his singles match, and then get the hell out of dodge for the next three or four months. Using him as a special attraction could pop some PPV numbers and therefore justify has high salary. Using him like every other wrestler in the promotion will get the fans to react to him like every other wrestler in the promotion, and that typical reaction does not including paying to see him wrestle.

Matt Morgan

Eh. Like Booker, Morgan is at a point where he has nothing better to do. The only possible problem with putting him in to this sort of tournament is that the company is apparently trying to build him in to a major star despite the fact that he'll probably have to lose somewhere in here. However, even that isn't too bad when you consider the fact that there are all kinds of excuses built in to this tournament which could negate the damage of a loss, preferably Morgan either walking out on his randomly selected partner or disagreeing with him in such a way that said partner eats a pinfall.

Amazing Kong

And here we have it . . . the big "surprise" of the tournament, as the Amazing Kong finally crosses the line (teehee) and starts wrestling men. Frankly, I doubt this will work. Don't get me wrong, I love what Kong does in the ring and have for quite a while. However, the vast majority of her schtick is based on going in there and absolutely steamrolling smaller opponents. She's not going to be able to display the same kind of dominance she displayed over Gail Kim or Daizee Haze against Billy Gunn or Matt Morgan . . . at least not in any sort of believable manner. Thus, what the company needs to do is keep her in there against smaller guys who she can realistically beat the piss out of (James Storm and Christian come to mind) and eliminate her team early so that she's not put in to a position where she has to look weak against one of the bigger men on the roster. Looking weak in the men's division would certainly kill a lot of her mystique, which could in turn cripple the women's division. Given how fun that title picture has been for the majority of its existence, I'd appreciate it if that didn't happen.

Angle Numero Dos: Speaking of the Women's Division . . .

In my review of last week's show, I mentioned that I wasn't the biggest fan in the world of the "concept match" involving the women's division being presented on the upcoming Sacrifice pay per view. However, with a couple of exceptions, I have to say that the buildup they did for the match on tonight's episode was pretty fun.

It all began with an in-ring promo from Angel Williams and Talia Madison . . . or, more specifically, a promo from Angel Williams which was conducted while Talia Madison stood in the background. The segment actually got a fair amount of time, and, perhaps even more surprising, was the fact that it was GOOD. I'd never heard Williams talk for more than twenty seconds at a time, and it already appears that she's better on the mic than 80% of the women to ever set foot in professional wrestling. Madison and Williams wound up wrestling Gail Kim and ODB in tag team action, and, once again, the match was better than I expected. Since they came to TNA, Talia has looked outright awful, and Williams looked far worse than her reputation and training would have lead me to believe. Tonight, though, they were much better than they have been in the past. Madison still needs some work, but Williams was solid to the point that I now want to see her more frequently in singles matches.

I only had two relatively small issues with the women's segments this evening. First of all, during the course of their promo, the heel girls displayed photoshopped pictures of Gail Kim and ODB sans hair. (Prompting Don West to say that he didn't know they were that good with the "computers and cameras and things" . . . so apparently the storyline is that Madison and Williams actually photoshopped these pictures themselves instead of just hiring somebody to do it. Now there's a gimmick that wrestling needs: Sexy female computer tech junkies.) WWE has done something similar a few times in the past with hair matches, and it drives me nuts. Half of the appeal of a hair match is supposed to be tuning in to see exactly what the losing wrestler will look like bald. If you show fans the big payoff in advance, they'll be less likely to tune in for the match itself.

Also, we got a classic TNA moment after the match, as Gail Kim, ODB, and Roxxi LaVeaux all teamed up to smack around one of the heels. Yes, faces triple-teaming heels. That'll get some big cheers from the crowd.

Angle Numero Tres: Main Event?

Oh, did you know that there's a TNA Title match at the next pay per view? I've heard some rumors to that effect, but I didn't see much on this episode of Impact which would lead me to believe that such a match was taking place. I believe there was a tag team main event involving the three guys wrestling in that match and some other jobber, but nothing particularly exciting happened there. Oh well, at least we've got Deuces Wild!

And the Rest . . .

~ So the company wants to make Matt Morgan in to a major star and his first feud en route to this goal is with BILLY GUNN?! There are probably five or six fans in the Impact Zone who could make for a more entertaining rival.

~ The Terrordome is coming. Depending on how many wrestlers they cram in to it, this actually sounds like one of TNA's less idiotic gimmick matches. However, it would have been nice if they could come up with a name that made it sound like something other than a kiddie ride at Disneyworld.

~ Speaking of Billy Gunn, I'm pretty sure that he was wearing women's sunglasses tonight.

~ No austin arte this week. austin had to go. His home planet needed him. (austin died on the way back to his home planet.)

Overall

Well, at least I'm not going out on an episode that was atypical of the show's quality during my run on the site. This was bad. Really, horrifically bad. There was some decent in-ring stuff here and there, but the fact of the matter remains that this is a promotion which has no grasp on what has historically made professional wrestling companies in to juggernauts. Every time that a promotion has done anything other than average business, it's been a result of taking talented wrestlers, allowing them to develop compelling characters, and placing those characters in to storylines that speak to the modern audience. In the time that I've watched and reviewed it, TNA has never once even come close to attempting this. Instead, the focus has been taken away from the wrestlers in just about every way conceivable, instead going to wacky gimmick matches, tournaments with rules that take ten minutes to explain, and lame gimmicks that knock off twenty year old WWE wrestlers. TNA has the talent necessary to produce an awesome product. TNA has the television exposure with which to make that hypothetical awesome product mainstream. TNA has all of the tools necessary to be one of the most entertaining wrestling promotions in history. They just need to start using those tools according to the time-tested formulas that have always worked in this business.

When that happens, somebody please give me a call. Until then, I'm (finally) turning off Impact.