The first hour of Impact was a complete waste. Complete. Waste.
The Steel Asylum joke of a match exemplifies it. TNA has rightly identified the X division as one of its best assets, calling it a spiritual successor to the WCW Cruiserweight division. I wouldn't argue against that. Even better that they open it up to guys like Samoa Joe and probably Suicide or Homicide who might not meet a particular weight requirement, but will still do crazy shit with the best of them. So what does TNA do? They take eight of their most exciting, HOMEGROWN stars, put them into a situation that for better or worse threatens/promises legitimate danger, which will always get people buzzing... and then end the damn thing with a DQ at four and a half minutes? Because Homicide hit everyone with a stick? Inside a STEEL CAGE?? Whaaaa? It's not a good sign when the first match of what you've heavily promoted as the new era gets a "This is bullshit" chant from the live crowd, unless you intend for that to happen to illustrate a point. This was just a waste of these eight guys. Apparently Hogan has been on damage control since the show, talking about how he was misled as to how the Steel Asylum structure worked - he thought there was some sort of legitimate door somewhere, not just the hole in the roof. If you get there, and it's really that bad, scrap the gimmick. I certainly would have preferred a normal 8-man X Division match than the crap with which they opened the most important show they've ever done. More than that, the DQ ending, apart from not making any sense, took all of the young guys that Hogan and Jarrett would go on to praise later, and not allow them to be showcased at all. Instead, it's used as a gimmick to bring Jeff Hardy back... a day before he gets indicted for a slew of drug charges. Also, climbing to the top of a cage and sitting there is not a big, impactful return. If there had been any significant heat between Hardy and Homicide at any other time in TNA history, it might work. Have Jeff hit Red. At least he's the champion. Instead, you bring him back, shove him on TV, and in a manner that would become a theme for the night, did nothing more than say "look who we have! This will be important soon! We promise!"
The ODB vs. Tara match was... fine... another thing for which TNA has been praised is the knockouts division, and the New Year's Eve tournament worked pretty well. They got a good showcase then. This was a Kelly Kelly match compared to that, but it was still serviceable until the end. I don't know if its production's fault, the camera guy's fault, Spike's fault or ODB and Tara's fault, but if you're going to do a tight-pulling rollup to the hard camera side, make sure the truck is ready to censor, or Spike has given you the OK not to censor. The cut they made was so awkward and amateurish that it lends to undercutting the legitimacy of Impact as a professional wrestling showcase. Also, they cut away from the three count. That's useless. Especially on a title match that you want to show was illegally won.
Flair's appearance was protected pretty well, but I think most people assumed he would end up there. Not sure why they put the camera on him at this point, and didn't let him just show up after the main event like he did, but I'm sure they had their reasons.
Does anyone in wrestling care about Bobby Lashley? Honestly? Somehow his two and a half year run in the WWE gave him a couple titles, but since he beat Vince McMahon for the second ECW title reign, I'm gonna go ahead and say that doesn't really count. I can't remember the guy ever picking up a microphone, which is fine if you've got a decent gimmick. He never did. It takes a long time to build a non-verbal unstoppable gimmick (see Goldberg in WCW), and Lashley never got that sort of build. Krystal as his mouthpiece is fine, but I suspect he's going to be frustrated with what he gets in TNA, and want to spend more time with Strikeforce anyway. He'll either quietly fade away, or get forced out in some sort of retirement match in the not-too-distant future.
After a couple clear nWo reunion teases (Eric Bischoff, Scott Hall & Sean Waltman), Hogan finally came out. I actually liked the promo he gave, especially since it broke from the idea that Nash had been pushing for months that this would be just "getting the band back together." I don't really know how much of it I believe - this is still Bischoff and Vince Russo we're talking about here. The nWo-style stable is the well they have gone back to time and time again. Russo's used it at least 3 times in TNA, right up to the Main Event Mafia thing from last year. I still hope that TNA might be very purposefully setting this up as similar to the original nWo invasion, come up to where Hogan's heel turn would be, and then take a left turn that no one could really predict, but after Hogan's TV time and Jeff Jarrett's promo last night, I think it's a lot more likely that we're heading toward a Hogan/Nash/Bischoff nWo vs. a Jarrett/Flair/Styles TNA showdown, likely with Kurt Angle in the middle of it. They've had Angle going back and forth between the Main Event Mafia guys and praising the young guys for months, so they've set up that uncertainty already. Either way, I fear we're going toward fresh faces with the same old black and white coat of paint.
The knockouts tag team title match was pretty good. Hamada and Sarita are both nuts, so keeping them on opposite sides of the ring is a great way to guarantee fun matches. The titles were a good idea in theory, but I just don't think there are enough consistent, formed female teams to keep them going in a meaningful way. Sarita and Taylor Wilde are fine since they were the first champions, but beyond that, the only other regular women's tag team is the Beautiful People, and let's be honest, none of them have contracts because they can wrestle really well.
Val Venis? Really? Did Hogan bring the entire Australia tour with him? If so, where's Ken Anderson? He's the only one I give a damn about.
I've heard that Dixie Carter is really high on Hernandez and Matt Morgan. Hernandez I can take or leave, but I've grown to really like Matt Morgan. His program with Angle last year did him WONDERS, and once he settled into having a personality (something he never had a chance to develop in his short WWE stint), he handled it pretty well. All that said, I don't think either guy needs more building as a powerhouse. Crushing Raven and Stevie Richards - two guys TNA might want to have credibility sometime down the line - doesn't really do any good. Waste of 30 seconds.
At what point did Orlando Jordan become a special invited guest? Honestly, I kind of forgot the guy existed. Although, if they can do for him what TNA did for Elijah Burke (aka make him almost interesting), maybe it'll be good.
After Desmond Wolfe's heavy debut push against Angle, I don't think they know what to do with him. They've teased him and Daniels in some sort of program, sort of ancillary to Daniels's program with AJ Styles, but it never really went anywhere. It should. That'd be fun. The Dinero win actually might give him a little bit of build, but I don't know if TNA will have the time to do anything with it, given everything else they're giving precedent too.
Hogan against Jarrett is interesting, considering their match at the end of Hogan's WCW run. Apparently this was intended to have both guys coming off as faces, but of the two of them, Hogan clearly got more heat. At this point in Jarrett's career, having been pretty open about what TNA means to him as founder, it would be hard to put anyone opposite Jarrett and have them out-face him in the eyes of TNA fans. Jarrett's just got that spot reserved at this point, though I'm not sure it's something he would have earned had he not started the company.
Samoa Joe vs. Abyss seemed to be an odd pairing. I know Joe was supposed to be a "last-minute replacement" because Rhino was laid out in the back, but I don't think either one has a solid spot in the roster hierarchy right now, so a win over the other doesn't really mean anything. Joe comes out looking strong against a larger opponent, I guess, which is probably as much as you could ask for a result of this match.
More Jeff Hardy, Shannon Moore, and... the Nasty Boys? Trashing 3D's locker room? OK... I guess...
AJ vs. Angle was, for lack of a better word, phenomenal. Styles is one of the few people that I would love for the WWE to steal away from TNA. He's a superstar in waiting, and the last couple months (strangely enough, since after Sting's involvement and AJ won the TNA title), he's been sort of treading water. The series with Daniels and Joe was good, but I think with better writing it could have been stretched longer for greater impact. AJ and Angle are always going to put on a show, and they didn't disappoint here. Flair's appearance, had it been the only one on the show, would have been a lot more interesting, but as they booked it, he kind of just looked lost. Wandered out, watched what was going on for a few seconds, and wandered away again.
The overrun was purposefully ambiguous, but not in any sort of unpredictable way. Mick Foley finally gets into Hogan's office, and the nWo beats him up, as they'd clearly been doing to people all night. The fact that Bischoff told Foley he'd have to fight for his job is worrisome, because it means we might have to see Foley try to run around a ring again. It's not pretty at this point. Hogan comes in to end the show, and looks at what happened... aaaand blackout. I bet if the cameras had stayed on for one or two more minutes, like Tenay had said they were going to, Hogan would have said something that gave away his allegiances. But they didn't stay on! Cliffhanger! Imagine that.
Overall, I was unimpressed. TNA has a knack to throw out one great match a night, because they have enough crazy talented people on the roster that they could throw darts at the roster and come up with a great pairing every time. Tonight, that was AJ and Angle, but even that awesome match has been seen a hundred times since Angle came to TNA. The rest of the show seemed a lot less important than they made it out to be, mainly because a lot of the people who debuted - and there were a ton - didn't actually do anything. Of everyone who debuted on Monday - Jeff Hardy, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, Sean Morley, Flair, Hogan, the Nasty Boys and Orlando Jordan - none of them actually got in the ring and wrestled. I feel like they would have been better off to have all this happen on a regular, prerecorded Impact, and then let the internet buzz for a week about what all those guys are going to do, and put that show up live against RAW. Stuff might actually happen then.
Of course, since the Impact results for next week are already up, we can already see that none of the people on that list wrestle next week either. Morley gets the closest, cause he at least has a physical altercation in the ring. But no match.
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