The Impact Crater 08.09.07: ANIVERSARIO EDITION~!

Welcome, one and all, to the Impact Crater. This isn’t just any Impact Crater, though. This is the Impact Crater that marks one year of yours truly recapping all things TNA for 411mania. To celebrate, in addition to reviewing the show and answering some e-mail from readers, I will also be counting down my top five best and worst moments from Impact over these past twelve months. That will be at the end of the column, but, before we get there, I’ve got another surprise.

Yes, thanks to John Meehan of MeeThinks fame, the Crater now comes with hyper kung fu logo action. Cool huh?

Anyway, on with the show.

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Jim Cornette/Christian Interview
Segment #2: Raven, James Storm, & Bobby Roode def. Frankie Kazarian, Chris Harris, & Rhino in a Clockwork Orange House of Fun Match
Segment #3: Billy Gunn & D-Von Dudley def. Homicide & Rick Steiner
Segment #4: Samoa Joe/Kurt Angle Interview

Angle Numero Uno: Angle Cries, Interest in PPV Dies

TNA continues to book its wrestling program as though it were a bad sitcom, this time with Kurt Angle having a mental breakdown over his wife threatening to leave him. Again, my mind is boggled that TNA would be doing an angle involving domestic spats given recent real world events, though we’ll hit that issue again in more detail when we get to this week’s reader feedback.

I have to ask the question of how this is supposed to inspire anybody to buy Hard Justice. The obvious response by supporters of the storyline would be that we’re supposed to buy the PPV to see exactly what will happen when Karen stands in Samoa Joe’s corner for the main event. Once again, this company has failed to learn from its own history and will be doomed to repeat it. If you look at the Angle/Joe series, it is unquestionable that the biggest business success of the whole lot was the first match. The PPV that it headlined was purchased by roughly 60,000 fans, while the shows featuring the later matches in the series all did in TNA’s normal range of 15,000 to 25,000 buys. Some may claim that the reduction was due to the novelty of a Joe vs. Angle match no longer being present. Of course, this argument ignores the fact that there have been numerous feuds throughout history in which rematches have drawn more paying viewers than the initial encounter. In my opinion, the real cause of the dropoff was the difference in the booking leading in to the first match when compared to the booking leading in to the later matches. The first match featured a build on Impact that a traditional, straight up storyline. Two men developed a rivalry over who was the better performer, they cut some promos, they had some brawls, and, bam, you’ve got the biggest PPV success in company’s history. The later matches featured a bunch of over the top soap opera stories, including seventy-five heel/face turns and Angle breaking the ankle of “Joe’s girlfriend.” The ensuing pay per views bombed.

So, when it comes time to book another Joe versus Angle match, what does TNA do? Do they go with the formula that made Joe/Angle I a big hit? No. They go with the formula that made all of the other matches in the feud average TNA PPV fare. I’m sure that a few people got some chuckles tonight, and I’m sure that I’ll get an e-mail or two that says “Hey, back off, Angle was HILARIOUS in these segments!” At the end of the day, though, TNA is hurting for money, and they seem to be using a strategy that is guaranteed to not turn around their fortunes.

Angle Numero Dos: You Know What Would be Innovative? Not Going Out of Your Way to be Innovative.

The main event of Hard Justice is now a match pitting Sting, Test, and Abyss against Tyson Tomko, AJ Styles, and Christian Cage. (I think that if the babyfaces win they should get last names.) Of course, the match will also have stipulations. Jim Cornette summed it up best when, in the opening promo, he stated that the match sounded like the “ramblings of a madman.” He was correct. Near as I can tell, the rules are that:

1.) The match will be in a cage.
2.) There will be barbed wire on top of the cage.
3.) The match will end by pinfall.
4.) However, a man cannot be pinned until he is bleeding.
5.) The man who wins the match gets a title match at the next PPV.

This seems to be what TNA specializes in. Matches with too many stips that encourage team members to fight amongst each other instead of against their opponents. I’d detail exactly why this is a bad idea, but I did it repeatedly in the build to Lockdown this year, so go check out any Imapct Crater from between March 11 and April 15 of this year if you really want the breakdown on that issue. The other problem with the match is that logic would dictate that the Christian versus Abyss feud ends with a singles match between the two. Yet TNA is throwing its big, violent gimmick match out there for a six man tag. Chances are good that they aren’t going to be able to come up with a stipulation for a one on one contest that will top it in terms of brutality. This means that the six man leading up to the epic singles encounter is being treated as more important than the epic singles encounter itself, which is completely backwards.

Of course, that was not the only idiocy revolving around gimmick matches that we got on this show. We also had the . . .

Angle Numero Tres: Clockwork Orange House of Dumb

We got two matches on tonight’s show, and the better of the two was the Clockwork Orange House of Fun Match that pitted Raven, James Storm, and Bobby Roode against Rhino, Frankie Kazarian, and Chris Harris. For those of you keep track at home, that’s two sets of PPV opponents (Frankie/Raven and Rhino/Storm) on opposing teams with two random men (Roode/Harris) thrown in for good measure. This match was aggravating on many levels.

First and foremost, why was it even taking place? Why were these three teams of completely unrelated men formed, and why were they fighting each other in a gimmick match, let alone any match? This was never explained. I’ve already written several times about the problems with giving gimmick matches away with no buildup, so I’m not going to go too far in depth on that one. However, you would think that SOMEBODY would decide that this match needed SOME backstory. Even ten seconds of Mike Tenay on commentary saying that Raven had challenged Kazarian to find two men and fight it out with him would have been better than no explanation whatsoever, which is what we were given.

The other big problem is, now that we’ve seen a big gimmick match, we’re expected to be interested in seeing Rhino vs. Storm and Raven vs. Kazarian again. In the case of Rhino vs. Storm, they’ll be doing another variation of the hardcore match on the pay per view. We’ve already seen them in a hardcore match, though. What is there to make us want to see it again? In the case of Raven vs. Kazarian, unless there is a stipulation that won’t be announced until the PPV itself, we’ll be seeing them go at it in a straight up singles match. Essentially, that means the Raven/Kazarian feud is going backwards, with the first meeting in the bloody gimmick match and the second match being held under traditional rules. Who is going to want to see a regular bout when they’ve already seen something that is more exciting and involved a table spot, blood, and weapons?

Finally, the match that we received on Impact ended with Bobby Roode pinning Chris Harris. I have no clue why this took place. Especially when you only have a one hour program, the point of every segment on the show – particularly the last show before a pay per view – should be getting everybody to tune in to PPV. You do this through building up feuds that people want to see blown off. Roode pinning Harris clean doesn’t do anything to further a feud for the PPV. They’re not wrestling each other on Sunday, and there’s not even any indication that one will be getting involved in the match of the other. Granted, there was a quick spot in the match that saw Storm running away from his PPV opponent Rhino, but I’m betting that a good number of viewers completely forgot about that since it wasn’t the finish.

Oh, and Raven’s balding head has reached new levels of ugly. He looked like Phil Hickerson tonight. It’s time to get the Larry Zybszko endorsed hair transplant.

Angle Numero Cuatro: Wakka Wakka Wakka Wakka Wakka Wakka

Last but not least, let’s talk about Adam “Pac-Man” Jones! The man’s name has been all over pro wrestling websites for the last two weeks, but this is actually the first time that I’ve bothered to write about him since I figured I would reserve judgment until we saw some of TNA’s use of the man. I’m not going to get on my high horse like some people and proclaim that TNA shouldn’t do business with him because of his shady past. The fact of the matter is that Mike Tyson bit a man’s ear off and was accused of rape before making his appearances in the WWF, and that wound up creating huge business for Vince McMahon, so Jones’ troubles won’t automatically lead to bad news for TNA. However, if his appearances do nothing for business and the company throws a large amount of money at him, you can rest assured that I’ll be right there to complain as long and as loud as I ever have.

As far as tonight’s Jones involvement is concerned, I thought that it was well done. All we saw was a video package of the man standing in a ring and talk about how he has been misunderstood and mistreated. Frankly, it was a very well put together package that made this man look like a star even if you’d never heard of him before. It was the kind of thing that TNA has needed to do to introduce characters for quite some time now. My only gripe is that maybe the company should have held off his debut until the next pay per view, because that would’ve given them a chance to create a bit more buzz about his first appearance. Really, though, the mainstream media had started talking about this deal well in advance of tonight’s Impact, so it’s not as though the hardcore sports fans that TNA is trying to attract with this publicity stunt haven’t already heard what the plan is.

All in all, Pac-Man week one is a thumbs up.

And the Rest . . .

~ Hey, it’s Matt Morgan! As much as I want to be an egomaniac and claim that this is all due to my TNA Scouting Report, the show was taped before I wrote it. Oh well.

~ An ad for Summerslam during the show announced Booker T. vs. Triple H before WWE actually did. Whoops.

~ Dustin Rhodes has promised that his “Black Reign” will begin soon. I’d better start saving up reign/rain puns for future columns.

~ Good to see that Homicide, the most over man in tonight’s tag match was the one who wound up eating the pinfall. Somebody is getting plenty of use out of the WCW Playbook that they bought at Jim Herd’s garage sale.

Overall

I can’t lie. This show was pretty bad. I didn’t feel as terrible coming out of it as I did coming out of last week’s episode, primarily because the negative connotations that were present in the Kurt/Karen Angle storyline were lessened up on greatly for this show. However, TNA continues to run on the same treadmill that it’s run on all year long, taking the promotion in a direction that has generated virtually no interest in their shows aside from convincing a small, loyal fanbase that the PPVs are worth buying. The Pac-Man hype was the only somewhat redeeming part of this week’s Impact, and he really does have the potential to bring a few more viewers to Impact and Hard Justice. My only hope is that, if Pac-Man does indeed spike ratings and buyrates, that TNA does not take this as an indication that the rest of their booking strategy is successful. There are numerous months worth of numbers which point to that not being the case. If TNA does not realize this, I wouldn’t be surprised to see their post-Pac-Man numbers sink right back down to their pre-Pac-Man numbers within a few months.

Reader Feedback

We’ll let Bernard kick off the feedback this week:

Been reading your column pretty much since it started. Most times I don’t agree with you, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Reading your report on 8/3/07 did disturb me a bit though. You tore TNA down for the Kurt/Karen Angle storyline and stated that you felt viewers would make a correlation to the Benoit tragedy. I watched the show, and after watching the show, made no connection to Benoit until you mentioned it. I think that sometimes you tend to overthink and overact to things. Test joins the company and you’re upset that they are spending big money they don’t have. Test might be working a KFC dinner. You have no idea what they are paying test, or if he’s more expensive than an Indy guy. If he’s getting the same or less than an Indy guy, then it make sense to hire him over a guy with no name recognition. You talk about their PPV buy rates, and granted, they need to improve them, but they are also drawing in money from other sources such as DVDs, merchandising, house shows, advertising, their TV deal, etc. On one of your reports you had a back and forth with another 411 writer, where you stated that when you do your review, you do it with the casual fan in mind, however that’s not a good way to do it because you don’t know what the casual fan wants anymore than the wrestling companies do. Everything is hit or miss, and there are alot more misses than hits in every company. Sometimes you just have to look at things and appreciate them for what they are, rather than what you want to be. Of course, this is just one man’s opinion.

As far as Test is concerned, you’re right. I can’t tell you exactly what the company is paying him. What I was operating on was the general principle that, if you do have more name recognition in a particular field, you get paid more. That’s standard practice in every industry in the United States, and I’ve never seen anything that would lead me to believe professional wrestling is an exception. So, if TNA is somehow getting away with paying Test exactly what they would pay a man who has never been featured on an international wrestling program, then bringing him isn’t nearly as bad of an idea as I stated it was last week. I sincerely doubt that this is the case, though.

On the issue of PPV buyrates, you are correct that TNA does have a few other things that they’re selling. However, pay per view is far and away the primary income source for the company, as has been acknowledged by wrestling journalists like Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez. In addition to being the primary income source, it’s also the primary product that TNA attempts to sell with its television programs. Thus, if the company isn’t profiting (and it’s not), TNA either needs to fix the way that it sells pay per views or create a new primary stream of revenue and push that on Impact as opposed to PPVs. The way I see it they’re doing neither at this point.

And I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at when it comes to saying that I don’t know what a casual fan wants. I think that if you look at what casual fans have bought over the last several years, it’s pretty clear what they want. The most successful recent pay per view events haven’t come from wrestling but have come from UFC. Some people will try to tell you that the two genres are completely unreleated, but the simple fact of the matter is that UFC has been relying on very simple, old school pro wrestling booking in order to sell their pay shows and blew up when their television program followed Monday Night Raw, attracting a big crossover audience. What’s the usual premise behind the main event of most UFC PPVs? Two men have a reason to hate each other, and common folks can identify with that reason. The two men are also built up as being very good fighters. They then fight not only to settle their personal issue but also to see who is the best fighter. It sounds mind numbingly basic on paper, but it’s gotten millions of fans to buy these shows, which is fifty times more than TNA has been able to muster with its wacky comedy skits and multi-man matches with seventy-five rules.

We’ll wrap things up with the angle involving the Angles. You accused me overthinking the skits and stated that viewers would not make a connection between the Angles and the Benoits. Fans making the connection really isn’t at the heart of the issue. First of all, people did make the connection prior to reading my column. I got e-mails to that effect, one of which will be printed here very shortly. However, even if I take the claim that people will not make the connection and accept it for the sake of argument, running the angle is still unacceptable. Less than two months ago, a woman and a child with ties to the wrestling industry died as a result of domestic abuse. TNA then did an angle involving domestic abuse in which the abuse was meant to be laughed at by the audience, perhaps even perceived as “cool” by Kurt Angle fans. I’m not saying that no television program should ever use domestic abuse as part of a storyline, but the timing in this case was horrible. If my mother dies in a car accident and then a television show whose writers are fully aware of my mother’s death produce an episode in which a joke is based on a character being injured in similar circumstances, that’d be a slap in my face. It would be insulting to me and anybody mourning the loss of my mother. It’s exactly what TNA did, and they did it in an industry in which many people – many of their own employees, in fact – are mourning the loss of Nancy and Daniel Benoit. It’s a disgusting promotional tactic regardless of whether casual viewers of the show make the connection.

Jeremy S. was also not thrilled with last week’s big angle:

I’m glad to see that you took such offense to the tasteless Angle Family segments, because I felt exactly the same way. I’d missed most of TNA for the last two weeks and was glad to have the chance to see it this week. However, I just turned it off about halfway through, when Kurt started calling his wife and daughter fat. I wish the show were run by monkeys, because monkeys might happen upon something intelligent on occasion. When they signed Russo, I knew it was only a matter of time. Recently, they’ve had a ring full of has-been tag teams arguing over their achievements in DIFFERENT PROMOTIONS. I thought that was dumb. The Kurt Angle stuff far surpasses it. God didn’t give us a word for this level of stupidity, because any being with the capacity for communication should never encounter it. I hope the whole company burns to the ground and Samoa Joe makes it out.

If you combine what I already wrote above with Jeremy’s e-mail, I don’t know that there’s a heck of a lot left to say about this situation. So, I will just let the foregoing words stand on their own and move along to the next letter, which is from Luke D.. I’m picking this up after a quick edit. He leads with discussion of the Karen/Kurt story from last week and its connection to the Benoit tragedy:

I guess [TNA will] argue that it’s the best way to move forward. Even though it clearly isn’t, and it isn’t TNA’s place to move forward anyhow. Either that, or they’re just really stupid. Also, I have a bit of a problem with them using the real children in these things. By all accounts, Dominic Gutierrez was traumatised by the storyline where Eddie was his real dad, even though they repeatedly told him it was just a story and nothing was really different. I’m sure it didn’t help that it was on TV, and that a disturbing number of viewers who watch still believe the stories are real (if Youtube is indicative of viewship, anyway). Then, of course, it went tits up when Eddie passed and it was all forgotten. Poor kid. At least that story was in a serious light and had the feel-good climax of Rey proving his love for his ‘illegimimate’ child. This, though, has Kurt just calling his wife a fat slut and taunting Kyra. This will be different because I doubt it will go on for months like the Eddie/Rey/Dominic thing, and probably (HOPEFULLY) ends after the Smackdown Vs Raw Special Main Event. However, it just seems bad that they would suddenly bring Karen and their daughter in to have them act like Kurt is a vicious bastard at home. Even if it is demonstrably untrue, it’s not great, and even from a TV perspective it makes no sense whatsoever to do this. There’s never been any sign or indication that Kurt was a wife-beater or a child abuser, then suddenly in one episode (and next week’s one) Samoa Joe ‘frees’ them and the audience is supposed to care about this? Talk about rushed.

Anyway, sorry for ranting. Keep up the great work and hopefully one day someone who can make a difference may stumble across one of your pieces and find they can’t stop slapping themselves.

Luke brings up a whole other aspect of the angle that I didn’t even bother to talk about last week because I was too wrapped up in how insensitive the whole thing is. He’s right when he says that this story was far too rushed for its own good. Karen Angle just showed up on TV one day, and fans are immediately supposed to care about her without knowing who she is, why she’s there, or what her past issues have been with Kurt. Effective wrestling booking is all about building something up and then paying it off. Had Karen’s announcement that the marriage was over come on the heels of several weeks or several months of Kurt treating her like crap on TV, that might get somewhere because fans would then care about her as a character and would be enthralled by the fallout of the marriage. Of course, instead of several weeks or several hours, TNA managed to give this storyline roughly forty-five minutes of build, and I’m willing to bet that not one extra person will be buying Hard Justice because they want to see what Karen Angle will do to her husband.

ANIVERSARIO~! Bonus Content

Well, it turns out that my one year anniversary edition of the Crater was a particularly difficult one to write, with a fairly lousy episode of the show to review and more talk about domestic abuse and Chris Benoit, which is something that I wish I could leave behind me. However, let’s shift gears here and try to have a little bit of nostalgic fun. Like I said at the top of the column, I figured that the perfect way for me to celebrate a year of reviewing Impact would be to look back at the five best and worst moments of the show from the period in which I have reviewed it. Let’s go!

The Five Worst Moments in Crater History

Number Five: Sting Sucks at Christianity
Date: October 26, 2006 (Crater Link.)

Every religion has its share of hypocrites. The Crusades saw people murder in the name of their gods. Jim Baker stole thousands of dollars from senior citizens under the guise of doing the lord’s work. However, there may be no worse Christian on the planet than Sting. (That’s Sting the character, not Steve Borden the actual man.) His lengthy feud with Abyss centered around the fact that Abyss had a deep, dark secret. Sting, instead of respecting the man’s wishes like a good Christian would do, repeatedly hounded Chris Park and demand that he not only tell him what the secret was but that he reveal it to the whole world. As part of this quest of harassing the reformed ex-convict, Sting not only tied Abyss upside down from a cord and beat him with a baseball bat but also assaulted Jim Mitchell, a tiny man who doesn’t look to have an athletic bone in his body. If that wasn’t un-Christian enough, there was also an episode of Impact that featured Mitchell and Sting going on a date . . . and we all know how the religious right feels about same-sex relationships.

Number Four: They Fight, They Fight, TheyFightTheyFightTheyFight, Fightfightfightfightfightfight
Date: January 4, 2007 (Crater Link.)

If there’s one thing that I’ve made fun of in the time since Kurt Angle’s TNA debut, it’s been the over-use of the pull apart brawl. Since this phenomenon began immediately after Angle joining the promotion, I can only assume that it’s a direct result of his creative input. It feels like we’ve seen a pull-apart on every episode of Impact since October, and it was at its worst in Kurt’s feud with Samoa Joe. The fight between the two men on the January 4 edition of Impact was particularly bad because it JUST WOULDN’T END. The two wrestlers spilled in to the backstage area of the Impact Zone and, for at least fifteen minutes, traded punches and hit each other with conveniently placed weapons. Fifteen minute matches are fine, because one spot can progressively lead to the next and a story can progress . . . but, when two guys just punch each other a lot for the same period of time, fans get bored and change the channel. The only redeeming quality of this segment was a cameo by one of the Harris twins. Go Harrii!

Number Three: The Take Stuff Off Poles and Put It in the Special Box with your Name on It Match
Date: November 2, 2006 (Crater Link.)

The Hard Justice main event has nothing on this one when it comes to ridiculous stipulations. Christian and Rhino were set to have a barbed wire cage match, and TNA had them fight in this very special contest as a way of building up that contest. See, their barbed wire cage match wasn’t going to be a normal barbed wire cage match. Instead, each man was going to be able to have special items at his disposal. (Sort of like a “power up” in a video game.) They would earn these items in this match. Poles were erected on four of the corners of TNA’s six sided ring, and hanging from them were weapons or “means of escape” from the barbed wire cage. One of the means of escape appeared to be a key to a gas station bathroom, complete with a large wooden block attached to it. So the two wrestlers fought, climbed poles, and retrieved items. Once the items were retrieved, the MATCH ENDED. That’s right. There was no winner. There was no loser. In fact, the contest was designed that way from the beginning. Why should wins and losses matter, anyhow? Even better was the fact that the rules of the match were never made clear by the announcers, so the ringing of the final bell was the first time that any of the audience was clued in to the fact that the contest ended when all of the items were taken. Perhaps the most hilarious aspect of the whole thing, though, was that Don West made sure to note that the items would be put in a “special box with the wrestler’s name on it.” This sounds like something that you would give your five year old child, not something that should be involved in a pro wrestling angle. The “special box” was a generic, five dollar Rubbermaid tub with some tape on it. Go TNA prop department.

Number Two: Dumbest Upset of the Century
Date: March 1, 2007 (Crater Link.)

Yes, Tyson Tomko pinned Samoa Joe with a clothesline. This made me so angry when it first happened that I wrote well over a page on the matter, so let’s talk a little bit more about the fallout than the actual result. The interesting thing to me is that the “TNA can do no wrong!” crowd defended this decision by claiming that it was the beginning of making Tomko in to a big star. Boy, how wrong those people turned out to be. Since this match took place four months ago, Tomko has been in the exact same role as he was before beating Joe: The guy who stands behind Christian and loses to Cage’s rivals as part of a feud’s buildup. Some elevation. Worse yet is the fact that it came out that at least part of the decision to make Joe lose was based on a comment he made on a Ring of Honor show about “tripping over some bad booking.” I’m all for TNA punishing their employees when they step out of line, but punishing them in a way that hurts their credibility in the eyes of fans and their ability to draw money for the company is beyond ridiculous. Is just fining a guy really that difficult?

Number One: REVERSE BATTLE ROYALE
Date: October 26, 2006 (Crater Link.)

You had to know that this one was coming. TNA decided to crown a number one contender with an incredibly convoluted and ridiculous tournament. The first “stage” of this tournament was a reverse battle royale, something that had never been done in wrestling before! There’s a reason it’s never been done in wrestling before . . . because it’s a dumb idea. It was absolutely hilarious watching men pretend that they had trouble getting IN to the ring, a feat that could probably be performed by my wheelchair bound grandmother in two seconds. Worse still was the fact that it was incredibly difficult to tell what was going on because, if you didn’t know, a studio set up for a wrestling show is set up so that the focus of the cameras will be on the ring, not the action going on outside of the ring. So, for filming this one, TNA had to rely a lot on handheld cameramen who were practically standing on top of the wrestlers that they were filming. TNA made things even worse by deciding to shoot numerous angles during the match. The highlight was Mike Tenay claiming that Billy Gunn had walked out on the match, despite the fact that Billy Gunn had never been seen on camera. Much like the Joe/Tomko result, I got a couple of people e-mailing me in defense of the match, but I proved to be on the more popular side of the debate in the end, as the readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter voted this the Worst Match of 2006.

The Five Best Moments in Crater History

Number Five: Alex Shelley and Eric Young Hunt for Sting
Date: September 21, 2006 (Crater Link.)

If there’s one thing that gets under my skin in TNA, it’s their pathetic attempts at comedy. Not only are the jokes painfully unfunny, but they’re also usually placed in to angles that are hurt by humor. However, this was the perfect example of TNA doing comedy and getting it right. Two midcard acts, Alex Shelley and Eric Young, did a brief segment full of one liners, many of which appeared to be witticisms that they came up with on their own as opposed to something that was scripted and fed to them by Ducth Mantel. The absolute highlight was Young talking to men about trying to find “the guy from the Police.”

Number Four: Christopher Daniels & AJ Styles vs. LAX – Street Fight
Date: August 24, 2006 (Crater Link.)

It wasn’t very long in to my tenure as Impact reviewer that I got to watch this excellent free television match. The Styles/Daniels/LAX feud was a fine piece of work, with everybody playing their roles to excellence. Styles and Daniels were the plucky and slightly homoerotic babyfaces that everybody in the audience could get behind, Homicide was the guy who kept up with them hold for hold in some incredibly quick exchanges, Hernandez was the man who would bring variety to the matches with his strength, and Konnan told the story. Though their cage and Ultimate X matches would go on to surpass this little street fight, it was still a top notch main event for an hour long television program and probably still one of the top five matches that I’ve seen on Impact. And, yes, this is the violent brawl in which Daniels wore business causal clothing, something that a few fans still make fun of him for.

Number Three: Scott Steiner Tells It Like It Is
Date: May 24, 2007 (Crater Link.)

One of the things that I can’t stand when I’m watching current WWE television is that everybody’s promos sound exactly the same because they’re being scripted by the same writing team. If there’s one advantage to TNA, it’s that they are more likely to let a wrestler completely wing it, as appeared to be the case when Scott Steiner decided to rip in to the Dudley Boys after the Dudleys wanted to show their “respect” to Scott and Rick. Though the match between the two teams wound up not happening thanks to the Booty Daddy’s freak injury, the promo still stands up as one of the greatest in company history, as it cut the Dudleys deep and got fans talking. It was even better for me, because I Scott wound up voicing some of my legitimate gripes with the Dudleys, namely that they’re an OK team but one that seriously overrates their own position in history.

Number Two: The Dudley Boys vs. LAX vs. Christopher Daniels & AJ Styles
Date: July 5, 2007 (Crater Link.)

This was so recent that I’m sure the majority of readers will remember it with no problem. Though it was part of the build to the insipid “Match of Champions,” the three teams involved in this Tag Title contest put it all on the line and turned in one of the best in-ring performances in Impact history. This was particularly surprising coming from the Dudleys, who many people have tagged as being out of shape an unmotivated since coming to TNA. Ironically, at the same set of tapings, Rhino, Kurt Angle, and Christian had an hour long three way contest that many folks in the company were calling the best match in TNA history. However, it was the tag teams that wound up putting on the better show, both in my eyes and in the eyes of several readers who weighed in on the matter.

Number One: LAX has a Fiesta
Date: September 21, 2006 (Crater Link.)

Weird how many of these involve LAX, huh? This was another part of the feud with Styles and Daniels, during which the Latinos were celebrating . . . something. Their celebration included a dummy dressed like Uncle Sam, which was hanging from a cord in the middle of the Impact Zone. Konnan cut an excellent promo, which drove the live audience crazy. It was clear that he was immensely enjoying all of the work that he was doing during this period, and this night was no exception. Eventually Styles and Daniels crashed the party, though it resulted in a beatdown on the gringos, complete with Styles being hung from the cord that had previously held the dummy. Mike Tenay compared the beating on the hanging Styles to a pinata, and Homicide gave him a mighty kick to the side of the head. With a great promo and some great physical action, this is probably the one segment from Impact’s history that is clearly seared in to my memory, and that’s why I have to put it at the top of the “best moments” list.

And that does it for me. It’s been a hell of a year, and I truly appreciate all of you who have been reading the column over the course of the past twelve months. I especially appreciate those of you who have taken the time to share your thoughts on the crazy world of TNA, whether you agreed with me like a drugged up sycophant, called me an asshole, or fell somewhere in the middle. Though I often don’t like the shows I’m reviewing, I do have a great time doing this, and you guys make it all the better.

With that said, here’s to twelve more months!