TNA house show results
June 18, 2010
Columbus, Ohio
Report by Nic Bjorlin, PWTorch reader

The Ice Haus is a separate youth hockey arena connected to Nationwide Arena, where WWE runs their shows. It was not quite a sellout, but a larger venue and larger crowd than the house show TNA ran in town last year.

Don West was on the horn a great deal pushing the merchandise and promoting that TNA founder Jeff Jarrett was at a side table signing autographs. Meanwhile, Jeremy Borash came out to "Welcome to the Jungle" and got the crowd in a frenzy for backstage passes throughout the night. Eventually, the festivities got underway and the Knockouts were the curtain jerkers tonight.

(1) Velvet Sky (sans Beautiful People cohorts) defeated Sarita (without Taylor Wilde) in a decent opener. Sky actually received a more favorable response coming out than Sarita did (probably due to her wearing black boyshorts with the pink trim), but Velvet worked hard to get the crowd against her. This included the non-verbal "Kiss my butt" gesture to the fans and the mockery of Sarita's mannerisms. Sarita felt two could play that game and started taunting Sky. There were a few sloppy moments, though, including Velvet attempting an indescribable move on Sarita. Nonetheless, the nearfalls and lack of restholds made this one better than typical Knockouts fare. Ultimately, Sarita ate a DDT for her troubles and Sky picked up the win in approximately seven minutes.

After more riling up of the crowd by Borash, "Nature Boy" Jay Lethal came out to Ric Flair's music accompanied by a local blonde bombshell. In his Flair voice, Jay got the crowd to do the O-H-I-O chant. He was in his wrestling gear, indicating he was up next for some X-Division action. He hoped Earl Hebner would call it down the middle since Hebner is known for screwing wrestlers over. This prompted Hebner to shill his new striped shirt that was on sale at the merchandise stand and mock Bret Hart's mannerisms.

(2) X Division champion Douglas Williams beat Jay Lethal, Homicide, and Shannon Moore (w/out Jesse Neal) in a four-way match to retain the X Division Title. Williams received a lot of heat in the form of boos and a boisterous "U-S-A" chant. Moore joined in on the festivities by waving a miniature American flag in Williams's face. This was an action-packed, breathtaking bout throughout that had a lot of the fighting outside the ring. The faces dominated early on, but ultimately Williams was able to hit his simple-yet-effective offense on Lethal and Moore. Eventually, the heels double-teamed a face while the other good guy was outside incapacitated. The finish saw Lethal hit a sick-looking inverted suplex on Homicide with Williams rolling him up from behind and escaping with the belt. The crowd was really into everyone and all four guys busted their humps like it was a pay-per-view match.

(3) Knockouts champion and hometown hero Madison Rayne beat Taylor Wilde to retain the Knockouts Title. Solid match. The highlights of this match were the mockery of each other and Earl Hebner's antics. He planted a huge kiss on Rayne and started doing a Flair-like strut like. Both competitors were aggressive in the match and hit some sharp maneuvers with no botches. The false finishes gave the impression Taylor might win the title, but a schoolgirl by Rayne put an end to that wishful thinking in a crisp, hard fought match.

(4) Kurt Angle & Mr. Anderson & Jeff Jarrett beat Matt Morgan & Eric Young & Abyss in an entertaining six-man tag match. Young came out to The Band's generic NWO music and Abyss was full-blown heel giving the Italian salute to the crowd numerous times. Mr. Anderson channeled Sting and wrestled with his shirt on the whole match. Jarrett played the role of Ricky Morton in the match and eventually Angle tagged in and attempted to clean house of the heels until he was struck by Morgan's Carbon Footprint. Morgan tried it again and was sent over the top rope. Young tried to execute a Tombstone Piledriver on Angle, but it was reversed into an anklelock. Seconds later, Young tapped like crazy to concede defeat.

There was a ten-minute intermission with the backstage pass winners getting their chance to meet the Superstars. During all of this, Don West pushed the merchandise again and plugged the appearance of two-thirds of the Beautiful People (no Lacey) at the autograph section. The line for Sky and Rayne went well into the fifth match of the night.

(5) Global champion Rob Terry beat Orlando Jordan to retain the Global Title. Nice match. The story here was Jordan playing mind games (e.g. blowing kisses) with Terry and working on Big Rob's recently injured leg. Jordan was the second wrestler of the night to use the "Kiss My Butt" gesture towards the fans. Terry made his Lex Luger-like comeback and put O.J. away with a variation of a spinebuster. Surprisingly, there was no noticeable homophobic heat towards Jordan with it being Columbus's Gay Pride weekend, but he did get some boos during his pre-match posing.

(6) Jeff Hardy beat A.J. Styles in the main event. It was a back-and-forth "Match of The Night" candidate. Styles played the role of chicken in the beginning, threatening to walk off numerous times and coming back in just before Earl Hebner counted to ten. Styles got on the mic and ran down the crowd a bit, provoking Hardy to say some words of encouragement to his "Creatures of The Night." When Styles stopped being a coward, he was on point and executed quite aggressive offense against Jeff. The action was back-and-forth for a while until Hardy put A.J. down with the Swanton for the pin.

Post-match: Styles scampered to the back as Hardy stuck around ringside to soak up the cheers. Borash said Jeff mentioned not all the noisy people could fit backstage, so they wanted to bring "backstage" out to the fans. Several TNA stars, most notably Jay Lethal, Douglas Williams, Rob Terry, Orlando Jordan, Sarita, and Taylor Wilde made their rounds mingling with the fans all while signing programs and posing for pictures. Abyss was at the autograph table (in his mask) signing for a decent line of fans.

Overall, a pretty solid effort by TNA even though some notables like Motor City Machineguns, GenMe, Angelina Love, Rob Van Dam, Beer Money, and Desmond Wolfe were not on the card. Perhaps a pay-per-view with all those stars in Ohio's capital is not out of the question. It is such a shame the match quality on Impact is not up to par with the house shows.

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