The Impact Cracter 08.02.07

Thanks to GrappleWorks, a fine, fine man for providing that. I look forward to more of these in the future.

Anyway, one with the show . . .

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: The Dudley Boys def. Chris Harris & Eric Young
Segment #2: Bobby Roode tars and feathers Eric Young
Segment #3: Low Ki & Chris Daniels def. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt
Segment #4: Sting & Abyss def. Christian & AJ Styles in a ladder match with help from (sigh) Test
Segment #5: Kurt & Karen Angle Interview

Angle Numero Uno: Testing My Patience

This evening’s main event saw AJ Styles and Christian take on Sting and Abyss in a ladder match, with the stipulation being that the winner would get a contract for Hard Justice. If the heels got it, they could tear it up and never wrestle Abyss again. If the faces won, they could sign a match of their choosing for the pay per view. In addition to my standard complaint of “giving away a gimmick match on free TV with no build,” this was mind numbingly stupid right out of the gate. At the top of the hour, there was a segment in which the heels met with Jim Cornette and the match was announced. During this segment, Christian had to feign a fear of being in a ladder match. Yes, Christian Cage, who has probably been in more ladder matches than any other human being on the planet and who this company has in the past billed as being a ladder match expert had to pretend that he was somehow at a disadvantage in this situation. Brilliant stuff.

The match itself was fine. I don’t think that they made use of the ladder gimmick enough to justify booking this over a regular tag bout, but it wasn’t bad. Then we got ourselves a run-in. A run-in by the artist formerly known as Test, Mr. Andrew Martin. If you watched the show, the crowd reaction told you all that you need to know about how his run with this company will turn out. He ran down to the ring to assist the good guys after Tom Coe had interfered. Don West and Mike Tenay shat themselves, as they are prone to do. Meanwhile, the audience . . . the audience . . . well, the best way to put it is that they applauded politely. People were clapping and making a degree of noise, but it wasn’t the reaction that they would give to somebody they actually perceived as being a star. Hell, Abyss got a better pop during his entrance, and they see him every week. So, the crowd either didn’t recognize Test or flat out didn’t care. Neither is great for this company.

Frankly, I can’t imagine why the promotion bothered to make this acquisition. It means they’re spending money on another contract for a “big star” who will, in the long run, do absolutely nothing to justify what they’re paying him. Kurt Angle, who was a bona fide WWF superstar that received numerous title reigns and was perceived by fans as being one of the few “legit” tough guys in professional wrestling failed to move TNA’s buyrates or ratings in any significant manner. If that’s true, Test, who was given numerous attempts to get over as a top talent in the WWF and failed at every one, will do absolutely nothing for this company. If you’re going to sign somebody who won’t actually improve your business, why not just get some random indy geek who will no doubt sign at half of Test’s asking price?

Sometimes I swear this promotion is run by monkeys.

Angle Numero Dos: Bad Booking AND Bad Taste

This week’s WACKY SKITS WITH KURT~! featured the television debut of his wife Karen and his four year old daughter Kyra. The short version is that the Angle family walked around backstage for an hour, with Kurt insulting both Karen and Kyra at every turn. Then, in the final segment of the show, Karen cut a promo on her husband about how she was sick of him, stating that the marriage was over. Oh yeah, and that Samoa Joe guy showed up and smacked Kurt around for twenty seconds.

I find this angle to be ridiculous at best and patently offensive at worst. We’ll start with the ridiculous side. For the last two weeks of Impact, Samoa Joe was a persona non grata. His end of the Kurt Angle feud got no play whatsoever. Instead, we were given a series of comedic skits starring Angle himself, presumably as a way to get over his new egomaniacal heel character. I can understand Joe’s absence, because it was recently reported that he was married within the last week or so. However, with the company being fully aware that Joe was out for two weeks of television, this week’s episode should have been the forum in which to refocus on the tension between the champion and the challenger. Instead, this turned in to the Kurt and Karen Show. Yeah, Joe got his big mitts on Kurt for the final twenty seconds of Impact. However, if you watched any part of the show prior to that twenty seconds, it looked like the main event of Hard Justice was Kurt Angle vs. Karen Angle, not Kurt Angle vs. Samoa Joe. The sad thing is that, according to the spoilers, this soap opera is scheduled to continue next week, so we may once again be robbed of a solid build to an Angle/Joe match. TNA may never get this one right.

Now, on to the offensive. Kurt Angle was, for all intents and purposes, portraying an abusive husband tonight. He verbally berated his wife and child every time they were on camera together and treated them like servants. A little over a month ago, Chris Benoit killed his wife and seven year old son. After this, reports surfaced that Nancy Benoit had alleged Chris abused her leading up to a divorce petition being filed in 2003. This was followed by numerous other reports of alleged threats and physical abuse in the Benoit household, both in 2003 and much more recently. Debra Williams, the ex-wife of wrestlers Steve Austin and Steve McMichael, made numerous media appearances stating that domestic violence was far too common in the married lives of professional wrestlers. And now, TNA’s decided to make an angle out of domestic abuse. Not just an angle, but an angle that is at least in part geared at getting young men to laugh at the “funny” insults that Kurt Angle is lobbing at his wife and young child. Granted, Kurt Angle never laid a hand on his family on television. (And, to the best of my knowledge, he’s never done it in real life either.) However, where verbal abuse and threats are made, physical abuse is often present as well, and TNA writers would have to be completely daft to not realize that would be the next place that viewers’ minds would jump.

In my time covering this show, TNA has made numerous decisions that are bad for business. They’ve booked several poor matches. They’ve had many gimmicks that resulted in me rolling my eyes. Yet they’ve never crossed the line and done something absolutely tasteless. However, that line was crossed tonight. By taking a serious social issue that recently lead to the death of a seven year old boy and a woman well respected in the wrestling industry – an issue that may have affected many other women and children connected to this business over the years – and trying to turn a profit from it, TNA has made one of the lowest moves a promotion has ever made. This is just as bad, if not worse, than pushing Bruiser Brody’s murderer as a babyface. This is just as bad, if not worse, than turning the Gulf War in to an angle. This is just as bad, if not worse, than Mohammad Hassan’s terror cell striking on the same day as a legitimate bombing in London. This is just as bad, if not worse, than the perpetual exploitation of Eddy Guerrero’s death. This, frankly, made me sick.

And the Rest . . .

~ Dustin Rhodes runs in on Chris Harris’ match. I honestly wonder if the company believes giving a feud fifteen seconds of TV time like this accomplishes more than not putting it on TV at all.

~ The Bobby Roode/Eric Young feud MUST CONTINUE. I did a little bit of research, and the feud began on the pre-show of the Genesis pay per view in 2006. That means if we can somehow stretch this out until November, they’ll have feuded for one solid year. So much for elevating guys.

~ Speaking of elevating guys, remember when everybody argued that Kevin Nash would make Sonjay Dutt and Jay Lethal in to big stars? Well, this was Lethal’s first match on Impact and six weeks and Dutt’s first match on Impact since May . . . and they were dominated by XXX. Big stars!

~ I like how the promo for the Abyss DVD hypes him up as a “living, breathing weapon of mass destruction” but that half of the clips shown are of Abyss being brutally beaten. Oh well, I suppose the actual voiceover sounds better than, “He gets his ass kicked a lot, but it’s really entertaining when it happens!”

Overall

Honestly, I’m not sure what to say about this show. It wasn’t good for all of the reasons stated above. However, the Karen Angle storyline left me with a feeling completely different than most bad TNA shows. It’s not the usual, “Well, TNA did something dumb again!” feeling in which I just laugh it off and move on within fifteen minutes of the end of Impact. This show made me angry at everybody who came up with the idea for the angle and everybody who approved of it. This show made me never want to give TNA another dollar of my money for as long as I live. Congrats, guys, you finally did it.

Reader Feedback

This one comes from Goob on the 411 Fan Forums, which is the home of my official fan club:

Hey, I liked your article for this week and I agree that that tag team promo was a highlight of the last few months’ worth of shows. Just wanted to tell you that the Sabin and Shelley are called the Motor City Machine Guns, not Murder City. Once again good job on the article.

Thanks for the compliment. On the team name, Sabin and Shelley actually use “Murder City Machine Guys” in other promotions. I prefer it, so that’s what I went with in the column.

Readers are now actually sending me warnings in advance of bad shows. This came from Luke within hours of the Impact spoilers hitting the internet:

I feel for you as a TNA fan for the next few weeks. I won’t ruin every aspect for you by revealing the spoiler in case you haven’t seen it, but I think I can mention a couple of things to get you prepared if that’s the case.

Just warning you, so that you can have a moment to think about the worst scenario and then probably be slightly less annoyed when it’s revealed.

And who would have thought that this would be the LEAST offensive part of the Impact tapings?

Frequent writer John R. chimes in with the following:

In response to your column about the face/heel lines in TNA, I think they need to do a better job of defining the heels in the company. I don’t think they should have Angle appearing in comedy skits if they want to keep him as the big bad guy in TNA. Wrestling is always at its best when they have the face chasing the heel, especially when that heel looks unbeatable.

Speaking of which, I hope they can book this match between Joe and Angle effectively for Hard Justice so that both guys won’t lose credibility even if they lose the titles so that some deserving teams (XXX MCMG and LAX) can get them.

I agree with the majority of what you’ve said here. I don’t think that comedy needs to be completely removed from the main event mix, but it’s pretty clear when you look at the history of wrestling that there’s never been a successful show headlined by a feud based entirely on wacky skits and crazy inside jokes. Unfortunately, TNA has been going a little bit overboard with the goofy Kurt Angle schtick this month, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it bites them when the Hard Justice buyrates come out. Fortunately, they *have* managed to avoid doing anything to screw up the Steiners vs. Dudleys feud. Honestly, that may be the most consistently entertaining angle that TNA has done since moving to Spike TV, and I have no problem with it continuing for as long as humanly possible. Sadly, it didn’t even get a mention on this week’s show.

As far as distributing the titles after the Angle/Joe match is concerned, TNA will be in a pretty tight spot. They do need to get all but the TNA Championship (and possibly the fake IWGP Championship) off of the winner, but they need to do it in such a way that their top guy isn’t doing a ton of jobs back to back. As lame as this sounds, I would actually suggest that the winner be stripped of the X Title, perhaps putting it up in a tournament in which Daniels gets a bye to the finals a the number one contender. If Joe is the winner, he could select a wrestler in need of a rub (perhaps Kazarian) as a tag partner, with a nice teacher/student storyline being used to create a new star.

We’ll let Ariel wrap things up:

I have been reading your “impact crater” reports for a while and I think you have found a great avenue for reviewing the show. I like most of your comments specially since you are a TNA fan and not just someone who just singed up to review the show, a great job on all accounts.

I hope this time they have another great match and no interference from no one please. Joe will need to sign with TNA because what greater honor is their than to hold ALL of one companies belts! That is of course unless he looses and they can’t be that dumb?!? Unless they want us to wait to BFG which would be too long. Let me know what you think and thanks again for the great work.

I’m glad that you enjoy the column. I’m not going to go in depth on my feelings of the heel/face booking in the prior Joe/Angle feud, because I discussed it at length when the angle was taking place. If you’d like, you can check the Impact Crater archives for my detailed thoughts. However, I’ll go ahead and print this in the column just for the sake of giving opposing viewpoints equal time.

As far as Joe and his contractual situation is concerned, I think that it will have a good deal of bearing on the outcome of the main event at Hard Justice. If he re-signs, he virtually has to win the match. If he’s going to be part of the company for an extended period of time and does not win the TNA Title, he’ll have been shown up by Kurt Angle far too many times and will have missed out on the World Title far too many times to be considered a legitimate contender. If he decides not to re-sign, I can see one of two things happening. The first is the company putting all of the belts on him in order to placate him and entice him in to re-signing. The second is the company refusing to put any additional titles on him for fear that he’ll leave the company in the middle of a reign. Honestly, we’re just going to have to wait until the PPV takes place to see how this one shakes out.

BIG NEWS!

Okay, so it might to be big news to anybody but me, but I have a couple of notes that may be of interest to anybody who likes my stuff here on 411:

1.) For the next three weeks, I will be doing fill-in work on the popular Fink’s Payload. If you want to see me critique readers’ fantasy booking instead of TNA’s actual booking for a change, this is your chance.

2.) As many of you are aware, I have recently started writing the Sunday news reports for the site. I will have a very big piece on TNA this coming Sunday. There have been numerous rumors of new talent being approached by the promotion. I will not only run down who has been talked about, but I also plan on providing my opinion of who should be signed, who should be left alone, and who should be picked up instead of TNA’s more questionable choices. You’ll be able to find that column here late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

3.) Next week will mark the Impact Crater’s ONE YEAR ANIVERSARIO~! In addition to the normal review, I plan on running down my top five favorite and least favorite Impact moments in twelve months of reviewing the show.