The Impact Crater 02.15.06

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Kurt Angle and Scott Steiner confronted each other.
Segment #2: LAX MURDERED Shark Boy and Norman Smiley
Segment #3: Gail Kim defeated Jacqueline in an arm wrestling match. Petey Williams, Chris Harris, and James Storm brawled afterwards.
Segment #4 – #6: Samoa Joe defeated thirteen other wrestlers in a TNA Gauntlet match to win a title shot against Christian Cage at the next pay per view

Angle Numero Uno: Battle of the Broken Down

God, if we could have gotten Kurt Angle in his prime versus Scott Steiner in his prime, that would have been an awesome matchup. Instead, we’re getting Steiner fifteen years after his prime against Angle six years after his prime. However, Angle’s still got some gas in his tank, and Steiner can pull out a few surprisingly good performances when he’s pushed by somebody. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if the pay per view match that we get between the two winds up being somewhat decent. Unfortunately, the setup to that match isn’t going as well as it could be. The interaction between the two men on the mic was actually pretty good, but I can’t say that I’m a fan of Angle single handedly laying out Steiner, Christian, and Tomko during the opening interview segment. As TNA often does, they gave away too much too soon, lessening the reasons that fans would have to order the pay per view. Oh well, I should be used to that by now.

As an aside, I like the little cross hanging off of Steiner’s goatee.

Angle Numero Dos: Live and (gaunt)Let Live

Long time readers have heard me complain and complain and complain about the amount of actual wrestling that we see on Impact. In fact, half of the reason that I switched to the current format of this column was that doing play by play for two minute long matches was repetitive and, quite frankly, not worth the trouble. As a result, I was amazed when we actually got a match on this show that went twenty minutes. Granted, it took fourteen men being involved for the match to last twenty minutes, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I’m not going to revert to the old play-by-play format, but I will throw out some random observations about the goings on in the ring:

~ Billy Gunn needs to never stand next to Abyss again for as long as he lives. When a guy is supposed to be a “monster,” you really kill the illusion by having him in there with half of a midcard tag team and having that midcard tag team wrestler dwarf him.

~ Chris Sabin does not have a good track record in battle royales. He was in the reverse battle royale abomination for about twenty seconds, and he was the first guy eliminated here. No respect for the X Division Champion.

~ Was it really necessary to insert that Chris Daniels video package in to the middle of the match? Couldn’t hit have waited until next week?

~ Bobby Roode interacting with Sting just doesn’t look right. It’s like seeing the frontman of the local high school garage band doing a duet with Steven Tyler.

~ Where was Jerry Lynn? I know that he’s a part of the X Division and they’re theoretically off doing their own thing, but Lynn is one of the most over guys with the Impact Zone crowd. You’d think that TNA would want the pop that he could provide to a match this big.

~ The finish with Joe battling back against Scott Steiner and Travis/Tyson Tomko was very well executed. It’s the sort of thing that has been done a lot in battle royales over the course of history, but the three men involved were able to spin it in such a way that it came off as being somewhat fresh.

~ And how great was that muscle buster on Tomko? I don’t know if they still exist, but there was, at one point, a misguided anti-Joe contingent on the internet, and one of their big complaints was that he and his moveset wouldn’t look nearly as impressive if they were paired up against larger opponents. Of course, none of these people had actually seen Joe vs. Kobashi . . . but I digress. Here is your verifiable, national television proof that Joe can work with larger men. Take that, haters o’ Joe.

And, of course, the Samoan Submission Machine is your number one contender for the NWA Championship. I can’t say a heck of a lot about it because the angle wasn’t built much outside of giving Joe the shot, but at least it’s a somewhat fresh match. Anything is better than a rematch of the Heat main event that TNA put on top of their last pay per view.

Angle Numero Tres: Belting Pot? That’s so Absurd I Don’t Need a Joke.

So LAX versus the Dudley Boys is no longer LAX versus the Dudley Boys. It’s now a good old fashioned RACE WAR~! with the Latinos lining up to do battle with the Italians (and D-Von, who is Italian by association). I must say it was great to see Konnan back in the Impact Zone, and it looks like he’s lost some weight as a result of his surgeries. Hopefully that bodes well for his health. However, as good as it was to see Konnan back, I retched a little when I saw the return of Machete to TNA television. Yes, Machete. Hopefully this time around he sticks to pushing wheelchairs and stays out of the six sided ring.

Konnan’s back. Machete’s back. Five unnamed members of the “Latino nation” appeared at the pay per view. What random guest appearance could this feud have next? Hey, it’s Bobby Bacala from The Sopranos! You know that Vince Russo’s gotten pathetic when he’s started stealing ideas from Tommy Fiero’s MySpace. Bobby cut a hell of a promo, but I’m still not sure why he’s hanging out with the Dudley Boys or why TNA feels like it should be getting in bed with celebrities whose biggest fame is soon to be behind them.

And the Rest . . .

~ The “Elevation X” structure has been unveiled to fans, and Tenay and West were pushing it as an innovative concept in which one man will take a death defying plunge. So basically what we’re dealing with here is a scaffold match. How innovative is a concept that first came in to existence thirty years ago?

~ Chris Sabin is still doing the “dressing as an old man” gimmick. This sucked so badly two weeks ago that I can’t imagine somebody thought it would be a good idea to pull off again. The only possible explanation is that they’re punishing me.

~ The Paparazzi Championship Series has morphed in to Paparazzi Idol, and all of the X Division guys save for Sonjay Dutt and Jay Lethal appear to have escaped this brutal pro wrestling purgatory. These segments have lost some of their initial appeal, as they’re now about Dutt and Lethal acting like dorks as opposed to Nash acting like a dork. That’s a huge step down in quality, as Nash is far funnier than the other two.

~ Some people might see this as nitpicking, but why the hell did Jacqueline and Gail Kim have an arm wrestling match tonight? It was never explained. Would it have killed this company to spend ten seconds explaining that Kim felt it was necessary to avenge her loss at the pay per view? With no rhyme or reason for the contest, it just felt like a poorly designed backdrop for the men to further their angles. Sure, that’s what it was, but let’s at least attempt to keep up appearances.

~ Ron Killings’ segments aren’t just unfunny, now they’re blatantly racist and unfunny. Great, just great.

Overall

Not a bad little Impact this week. The longer match in the main event slot prevented the show from falling in to one of its normal trappings, namely having way too much going on. Instead, there were three large angles moved along, and everything else was either left off the show or relegated to only a few seconds. It’s this sort of booking that TNA needs to engage in on a more regular basis, as generally the programs are far too cluttered with hype for angles that aren’t going to convince a single human being to spend money on the promotion. I don’t know that there needs to be a twenty minute match on a weekly basis, but a singles or tag match that’s allowed to go ten minutes (that’s NOT including commercials) on every show could force Russo and company to eliminate this silly notion that every wrestler on the roster needs to be on every episode of Impact. Of course, the more I seem to hope for that sort of thing, the less it seems to happen, so maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and move along.