TNA Lockdown PPV live notes
April 19, 2009
Philadelphia, Pa.
Report by Johnny Dudeck, PWTorch.com reader

Overall, a thumbs up as a live show, though seeing fun live shows and good PPVs on TV is sometimes a completely different story.

I've read the arena holds 10,000ish, but in any case, it was about two-thirds full. My tickets were comped, but there were Temple Univ. staff, I believe, handing out tickets in front before the show to anyone that needed them, but there were still people in line buying tickets at walk-up.

Old ECW security outfit Atlas Security worked the show.

The crowd was mostly into the show, and didn't really crap on anything until the Abyss-Matt Morgan match, which got clobbered. By the time the glass and stuff came out, no one really cared. And someone needs to show Matt Morgan how to do a blade job. It was PAINFULLY obvious when he did and took forever tucking the blade back into his boot.

Actually, speaking on the crowd, it seemed like the crowd was a wrestling crowd that was up on "mainstream" wrestling (WWE), but just not a hardcore enough crowd that would have paid for their tickets but came since tickets were for free. ...

Danny Bonaduce played his part well as a chickens--- heel and made me laugh. I saw some commotion in the front row when he was doing his intro that had a guy in the front row falling down, then getting carried out by security, but it seemed like it was a plant, as the people around him were laughing, rather than being like "Holy shit, this dude is drunk and is swinging, I'd better move out of the way."

Awesome Kong got a HUGE pop for her frontsault attempt. I haven't read the results yet so I don't taint my view of the show, but it appeared something weird happened in the finish of that match. I saw Taylor Wilde do the crossbody and then pin Angelina Love, but for some reason the ref seemed to stop at two with no kickout, then it appeared there was a little bit of talk between the ref, Love, and Wild. Wild then just laid back down for the pin on Love, which saw an actual kickout, then Love's pinfall on her seemed to come out of nowhere.

I recognized some of the "security" that came out with Kiyoshi as early ROH champ Xavier and I believe Steve "Monsta" Mack.

Stevie Richards making his "debut" got an okay reaction, but I'd think if it were in Orlando and not Philadelphia, the crowd would have been indifferent. And where does this feud go from here? Stevie, as much as I respect his work, is not a match for Abyss. Hopefully he's made a mouthpiece because I think he'd be best suited for bringing new opponents to Abyss that way.

The Dudleys were over huge... HUGE. They must have come off as Steve Austin in 1997 on TV if the cameramen did their jobs properly. Match was good (everyone worked hard, but far from a "holy s---" match) but definitely elevated because of the huge heat for 3D after playing up the whole "Philly Homecoming" thing forever on TV.

Crowd briefly started a "We Want Tables" chant, but then that got overwhelmed by "We Want Fire!" chants. I think even the casual fans saw The Dudleys on WWE's One Night Stand, so they knew a better (more brutal) match could have been possible with the Dudleys, so that took the crowd down a slight notch.

Jarrett making the pinfall (well, "save") for his team killed any momentum they could have built off the huge reaction A.J. Styles received for his insane cage dive, or even that Christopher Daniels could have benefited from by making the save. To me it seemed like the general reaction when it was over, was "well, the good guys won, but it was Jarrett who won so whatever..."

Having attended tons of ROH, IWA-MS, and independent shows, I'm amazed at how much TNA has gotten the crowd to be nonchalant about Samoa Joe. I've seen him wrestle in front of one-thirtieth the size of crowds and get a bigger star reaction. I mean, he got a pop, but to see him just be like "okay, it's Samoa Joe, cool, I guess" really shows how much TNA has killed his natural charisma.

Christopher Daniels was very popular, but all of the MEM got bigger reactions and heat during the match. Steiner coming out and hitting a Frankensteiner immediately - getting the live crowd to pop for it hard - then giving us the finger was brilliant and had most of the crowd laughing in that great "okay, you really got us there" way. Perfect way to get a reaction for the heel, then him actually not taking the reacting and heeling on the crowd perfectly.

The Lashley bit got a good albeit confused pop. After the initial entrance, the crowd went silent, like "ummm, okay, that was a surprise, but he's a WWE castoff, isn't he?" sorta way, at least from listening to the fans around me.

After the Team TNA-Team Angle match, it seemed like a sizeable portion of the crowd left and the crowd heat died down a bit.

Sting and Foley did okay. I thought Foley would get a much, much bigger reaction from Philadelphia, but I guess since a majority of the crowd was comped, you had a more typical "cheer for the babyface" crowd than Philadelphia usually gets and thus Stinger got a better reaction.

After the match, Team 3D came right out to put Foley over. It worked and Foley did his Philly ass-kiss for the fans, saying he was about to wrestle in Japan for 60,000 people, but was more concerned with his upcoming match with 900 Philadelphia fans.

Vince Russo was occasionally coming from the back to watch the audience from our section from time to time.

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