The Impact Crater 10.04.07

Well, here goes nothing.

Quick & Dirty Results

Segment #1: Rhino def. Chocolate Reign
Segment #2: Dudley Boys interview segment
Segment #3: Gail Kim def. Jackie Moore
Segment #4: Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man (c) def. The Dudley Boys by DQ to retain the TNA Tag Titles
Segment #5: Eric Young won a Royal Rumble match also featuring James Storm, Frankie Kazarian, Bobby Roode, Petey Williams, Jimmy Rave, Chris Sabin, Alex Shelley, Lance Hoyt, & Chris Harris
Segment #6: The Puerto-moan Connection (Samoa Joe, Rikishi, Homicide, & Hernandez) def. The XXX-ian Coalition (Christian, AJ Styles, Low Ki, & Chris Daniels)

The Full Show

Angle Numero Uno: Slaps, Lies, and Satellite Feeds

Tonight’s wacky series of Sting/Kurt Angle skits involved Angle watching a football game in which one of Sting’s sons was playing. The game was taking place in California, while the Stinger was in the Impact Zone in Florida. This angle was a failure on virtually every level.

First of all, we’re dealing with a major logic hole in this one right off the bat. If Sting was really so concerned about Angle harming his son, why wouldn’t he just call the police or, at the very least, officials at the school? Granted, Angle probably wouldn’t have been arrested for the sort of actions in which he was engaging, but it could have at least gotten Stinger Jr. an escort to his car, which would have prevented the attack that we all saw. TNA did try to cover this one slightly by having Angle claim that Sting sent his friend “Larry” out to the game (perhaps a sly inside reference to Larry “Lex Luger” Pfohl), only to have the Olympic gold medalist dispatch him. However, in their attempt to close the plot hole, they actually made the problem worse by pointing out that Sting DID have the ability to call somebody. This makes it easier for fans to reach the conclusion that he could and should have gotten the cops involved.

Another problem? At the end of the episode, Angle explained that he was harassing Sting’s family because, at Bound for Glory, he wants to face the old Sting. He wants to face the Sting with fire, with passion. However, when Kevin Nash first described that version of Sting to Angle two weeks ago, Kurt wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, he was afraid of the more aggressive Sting and went as far as forcing his wife to apologize to the former WCW Champion, hoping to receive some mercy from the man from Venice Beach. Now, all of a sudden, Angle wants to get a piece of the “killer” version of Sting. Why? We don’t know. There was no explanation given for the champion’s sudden change of heart, and, as far as I can tell, there’s not even anything that a creative fan can twist in to being an appropriate justification.

The funny thing is that TNA runs ads for Bound for Glory during Impact. The ad featuring the Sting/Angle match says something to the effect of “A champion returns to the city in which he won gold, and a superstar returns to the place that made him in to an icon,” referring to the ties that Sting and Angle have with Atlanta. If they just had the two guys cut promos on each other based around that basic theme and did one or two physical confrontations, I guarantee that they would sell just as many – if not more – pay per views than they’re doing with this convoluted, family-focused angle. Simple can be effective, and it often is. Apparently the guy who puts together the BFG commercials realizes this. I’m all for getting him on to the creative team ASAP.

Oh, and was I the only one who noticed that Sting was so concerned about his son that he took the time to reapply his facepaint after he left the ring?

Angle Numero Dos: The New Dungeon of Doom

The sad thing is that, for all of the flack I gave the Sting/Angle story, it doesn’t even come close to taking home the award for dumbest booking of the night. That’s because we saw the formation of Jim Mitchell’s new stable tonight, which apparently consists of Chocolate Reign, Johnny Devine, Raven. Ricky Banderas may or may not be involved. I don’t know for sure, because he wasn’t on the show tonight, and the announcers didn’t attempt to explain where he was.

The apparent formation of the group took place during the evening’s first match, Rhino vs. Reign. Out of nowhere, Don West began referring to Reign as “Jim Mitchell’s new solider.” Jim Mitchell was nowhere to be seen at this point, and it hadn’t even been explained that he was putting a stable together, let alone why he was putting a stable together. Ultimately, it was announced that the point of the stable was to take out Abyss. Okay, I can deal with that.

The match went on, with Raven eventually running in and attempting to cost Rhino the match. Nobody ever explained why Raven was attempting to cost Rhino the match. Rhino won, and Raven/Reign started beating on him. Abyss ran out and attacked Raven/Reign. Nobody ever explained why Abyss would have anything against these two men or why he would care about saving Rhino. Jim Mitchell ran out with his cane. Abyss scared him. Nobody ever explained why Mitchell would attempt to attack a three hundred pound man without bringing backup. Johnny Devine ran out and caned Abyss. Nobody ever explained why Johnny Devine would want to attack Abyss, especially given the fact that his mentor Raven was long gone by this point. Sting then ran out. Nobody explained why Sting would have an issue with Reign, Devine, or Raven, three guys who have never laid a hand on him. I guess the explanation was that he ran out because his interview segment with Kurt Angle was supposed to start.

This was literally a month and a half worth of television angles crammed in to fifteen minutes. TNA could have gotten TONS of mileage out of this, with Mitchell first announcing that he was going to form the stable and then slowly adding members week after week, foiling the babyfaces every time that they think they have the upperhand. Instead, this ragtag group of men is a stable all of a sudden, with no explanation given as to why they’ve all decided to become friends and no explanation as to why a bunch of folks who previously had no problem with Abyss now hate him with a passion. Even if the promotion wanted to put the entire stable together in a week, they could have taken a better route to get there. Why did Don West have to announce that a stable was forming before the formation actually took place? If you’re not going to build to something, you may as well attempt to go for the surprise factor, and TNA even managed to completely destroy that. Is there anybody on the planet who doesn’t think that this would have been one thousand more times effective if, unannounced, the bad guys laid out Rhino en masse after the match? Follow that up with a Jim Mitchell promo explaining how and why he brought these men together, and you’d have something with the potential to be remotely entertaining. As things were, this was atrocious.

Oh, and for those of you who don’t know the story, Ricky Banderas hurt himself pretty badly falling off a ladder at a show in Mexico a couple of weeks back. The last three episodes of Impact were all taped before the injury, which explains his presence there. I’d assume that the stable was put together as an emergency measure to get Abyss and Rhino opponents for the PPV since Banderas probably won’t be able to make it. Later in the show, Raven challenged Rhino and Abyss to a match. Abyss accepted and said that he wanted it to be a Monster’s Ball match and that he wanted Raven to “bring Black Reign.” It was never explained whether “bring Black Reign” means that we’re getting a four corners match, a tag team match, or a triple threat with Rhodes in Raven’s corner.

Angle Numero Tres: Tag Team Turmoil

The other big focus of the show was on the Dudley Boys and their efforts to receive a Tag Team Title match. They did this by beating the hell out of Jay Lethal, Sonjay Dutt, and Shark Boy. Sharky was wearing a neck brace, which Mike Tenay explained was a result of the chair that Bubba slammed in to his throat last week. Tenay apparently forgot that Shark Boy was wearing the brace for no apparent reason BEFORE he took the chairshot.

Ultimately, Jim Cornette did grant the Duds’ request for a title shot, and we got to see Pac-Man Jones come as close to wrestling as he possibly could without performing any moves or having any moves performed on him. It was during this match that I realized I don’t understand what TNA is attempting to go for with its tag division. Team Pac-Man are heels and the Dudley Boys are heels, so we had a heel versus heel matchup for the belts here. AJ Styles and Travis Tomko are also heels, and they’re the guys getting the title shot at the pay per view. The New Age Outlaws, who are also heels, ran in during this match and attacked Ms. Pac-Man, presumably setting them up as challengers after the next PPV. Is there some Guinness Record for consecutive heel/heel title matches that TNA is trying to break, or have they done the world’s worst job of making Team Pac-Man in to faces? Whatever the explanation is, I’d much rather see the belts involved in the awesome Steiner/Dudley feud, which unfortunately looks like it will be blown off on the PPV. I understand that the Steiners are not meant to be a full-time unit in TNA, but dear god do I hope that they wind up going over in the end.

Angle Numero Cuatro: At Least They Kept One Promise

This isn’t an angle per se, but I did want to take a moment to comment on the in-ring action that we got on this episode of Impact, just because one of the company’s big promises to fans was that we would see more actual wrestling on Impact once the two hour expansion occurred.

It turns out that we actually did see far more wrestling than we had in the past. I loosely timed the main event, and it got roughly twenty minutes. I wasn’t watching the clock during the Royal Rumble match, but it felt like it got a comparable amount of time. Of course, time means nothing unless the wrestling is good, so I am glad to report that both matches receive a very big thumbs up from yours truly. Even if the Royal Rumble was meant to promote the insipid Fight for Your Right (TO PARRRRRRTY!!!) tournament at the pay per view, it involved a lot of guys who were often kept off of television due to the old one hour format and provided them with an opportunity to strut their stuff. (Though they still won’t mean anything unless they’re allowed to also develop as personalities.) Normally battle royales wind up being a bit on the boring side, but this one was far better than average because most of the time they managed to keep the ring empty enough that the crew could still do some of their signature highspots.

As good as the Rumble was, the main event was even better. Samoa Joe, LAX, and friggin’ Rikishi seems like an odd lineup on paper, but they worked well together and the rest of the folks in the match moved fast enough that viewer could barely even tell how rusty and bloated the ‘Kish was. The closing moments of the match truly were “total nonstop action,” and if this is the high impact style of professional wrestling that the company wants to promote, they did a fine job of showcasing it. My only complaint is that the rules of tag team wrestling wound up being completely thrown out the window for the final third of the match. In some instances, you can lose yourself in the moment during an exciting tag match and forget about that sort of thing, but that wasn’t the case here. (Perhaps because it was just a match as opposed to something with a more enticing story behind it.) One thing that I’d like to see TNA do in order to avoid this problem in the future is take a page out of the CHIKARA playbook and integrate “lucha tags” in to their rules. This would allow members of a tag team to replace partners who roll out to the arena floor with no actual tag being necessary. It would allow TNA to do the same crazy, fast-paced style of tag bout while eliminating the logic gap. Aside from that relatively minor quibble, I wouldn’t be surprised if the main event here winds up being the best wrestling match of the week. (And, yes, I do remember that there’s a WWE PPV on Sunday.)

And the Rest . . .

~ Did anybody else pick up on the irony of TNA starting off the show with a video package that promised a “new era of wrestling” and then going immediately to a total WWF-style match that we could’ve watched three years ago on Sunday Night Heat?

~ TNA explained where Bobby Roode got his money from. Good to know that important aspects of a gimmick like this one take the creative team a FULL YEAR to address. As far as his angle with Traci Brooks and Frankie Kazarian is concerned, I have a hard time caring. I like both guys, but Roode and Brooks have literally been arguing since they got paired together, so this is nothing new or exciting.

~ I don’t know if anybody else picked up on this, but, after most of the commercial breaks on the show, TNA would run a brief video package announcing one of the matches for the next PPV. For some reason, the announcement of the match would be followed by a clip of commentary from Don West. In the package for the Team Pac-Man vs. AJ Styles & Tomko match, Don was featured yelling “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I feel the same way, Don. I feel the exact same way.

~ I’m so glad that TNA expanded to two hours so I could see a feud develop between their TWO GENERIC BLONDE INTERVIEWER CHICKS. Honestly, until tonight, I didn’t even realize that there were two of them. I thought they were the same woman. When the company is attempting to establish a legitimate women’s division, why would they even waste time doing a feud between two untrained ladies who (as was displayed tonight) can’t even act?

~ Jackie Moore may be the most underrated wrestler on this show. Seriously. Her fundamentals are better than half of the guys in the X Division.

~ For all of the good in-ring action that we got in the last hour, the best spot of the night was Don West marking out for Homicide’s tope con hilo. It reminded me why, in small doses, I love Don.

Overall

Now this was a polarizing show. The first hour was horrendous. It featured the terrible formation of Mitchell’s group, the tag division segments in which apparently no babyfaces were involved, and the dumbest parts of the Sting/Angle exchange. It sounds like a joke, but I watched that one hour of television and it was so overbooked that I looked at my watch expecting to see that there were fifteen minutes left in the show. Instead, there were SIXTY. This was undeniable proof that the second hour will not be the magic bullet that kills all of TNA’s problems. Every weakness that they had before was on full display here, from matches that featured too many run-ins to storylines that weren’t explained properly to the company emulating its competitors instead of trying to differentiate itself from them. What we really need to get TNA off of the ground is a new writing crew, not hour number two.

Yet, as I watched the second hour of the show, I saw something completely different. If hour two had aired on its own as a sixty minute edition of Impact, I would be here proclaiming it as one of the best episodes in the history of the program. Granted, when I watched it tonight I was so frustrated as a result of hour one that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have otherwise, but it was excellent when viewed in isolation. They did exactly what TNA has always needed to do in the one hour slot. They ran two matches and gave them both a significant amount of time but also made sure that the matches would promote events taking place at the PPV. When the matches were not taking place, they ran video packages which would promote other Bound for Glory bouts. Had they just started to book like this a year ago, there would have been no reason to even ask for a second hour.

It actually felt as though hours one and two were put together by completely different people. If that is the case, I have a plea for TNA: Give the guys in charge of hour two complete creative control, and send the guys in charge of hour one packing. They’re not worth your time.

With those comments, we wrap up another Crater. I’ll be back on Sunday to handle the Custom Made News Report, which this week will feature a TNA DVD review for those of you who just can’t get enough of me talking about this product. Until then, be sure to check out my MySpace blog and add me as a friend to get an update every time I post new content to 411.