TNA house show
January 9, 2008
Belton, Tex.
Report by Kristopher Watkins of Ft. Hood, Tex., PWTorch correspondent

Hello all - it’s been awhile since I have been able to attend an actual wrestling show - 10/2/06 ROH Unstoppable in Philly - but since then the Army has moved me to the Midwest and deployed me to Iraq. Luckily, I’m back on R&R visiting my wife and kids - when I happened to log onto the TNA wrestling website - where they were promoting the return of Booker T to Texas. Much to my surprise the first show was in Belton, Tex. which is 20 miles from Ft. Hood. With my wife’s permission (I know, I know) I was able to attend the first house show of TNA in Texas.

The first thing that was a bit different was the number of kids 8-12 that were at the show. Not a bad thing, just different from the others shows I’ve been to. Anyways, for the size of the crowd (a good 900) and the facility - the crowd was hot pretty much all night!!! The show started promptly at 1900 hrs (7 pm).

(1) The Black Machismo defeats Kaz. This was a good match to start the show. Both wrestlers hit a couple of high spots with Lethal winning with the Macho elbow.

(2) Awesome Kong defeats Jackie and Ms. Brooks . Short match, but man Kong is a big woman1 A Jackknife powerbomb on Ms. Brooks ended this match.

(3) Eric Young defeats "Cowboy" James Storm. There was a lot of comedy to this match, with Earl Hebner actually wrestling the start of the match. Young wins when Storm attempts to choke him out, but Young kicked off a turnbuckle and held Storm to the mat.

(4) Motor City Machine Guns defeat Johnny Devine and Elix Skipper . MMG are a good looking tag team. This was actually a good tag match with Devine pulling all types of heat. MMG wins with a tag team stretch-dropkick maneuver on Devine.

Intermission. They had LAX signing autographs at the merchandise table.

(5) Christian Cage defeats Samoa Joe. This was the best match of the night. I’ve seen live Joe matches before and he hits hard, but I was surprised that Cage took as many hard shots as he did. They fought outside the ring, with both man able to get in their signature moves. Cage wins with underhanded tactics - but after a post-match Muscle Buster - we wondered who the real winner was.

(6) LAX defeats Lance Hoyt & Jimmy Rave. LAX had the second biggest pop of the night - seeing as where we are in the country that shouldn’t be had to imagine. Hernandez made a habit of chucking Rave around the ring - man, that boy is big!!! LAX wins with a double team spine buster / diamond-cutter.

Jeremy Borash then allowed any service member in uniform into the ring and the crowd gave their thanks. I wasn’t in uniform so I didn’t into the ring (damn).

(7) Booker T defeats Robert Roode - Booker came out to the biggest pop of the night. First thing I liked was that even though this is a house show - they continued the storyline from the PPV with Roode cutting a promo about breaking Sharmel’s jaw. This match was hard-hitting and all over ringside. Booker won after a failed chair shot attempt by Roode that was thwarted by Ms. Brooks. An axe-kick later, and Booker was declared the winner.

NOTES: After the show they had Booker in the ring taking pictures (for a couple of bucks). This was a good wholesome show. While not on par with the “wrestling” of ROH - TNA brought a better “wrestling show” feel to the place. TNA said they would come back to Texas and I sure do hope so!

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