TNA Impact review
August 23, 2007
Taped on August 13 in Orlando, Fla.
Aired on Spike TV
Report by Daniel Wilkenfeld, PWTorch.com contributor

First thing's first: if you're reading this before Saturday, September 1st and get Spike TV, forget the recap and watch the encore of this week's Impact. If you're a wrestling fan, it's worth the time.

We start with Team Pacman in the back. The promo's actually somewhat funny, as The Truth talks about the "postivitiness" of their attack on Eric Young last week, and Pacman muses that he could have gotten $500,000 for the autograph he left on his (Eric Young's) back. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was in fact funny on purpose.

[Opening]

Kurt Angle's in the back too, and annoyed about the possible choices to become his fellow tag-team champion later tonight (Samoa Joe, Christian Cage, A.J. Styles, and Sting). Karen Angle says she'll make sure everything works out tonight and walks out, leaving Kurt to worry about whether she'll try to talk to Joe.

1 -- Team 3D vs... nevermind

The Motor City Machine Guns are out to wrestle Team 3D, but are cut off by an angry Scott Steiner. I was looking forward to seeing Shelley and Sabin wrestle. Steiner turns around a beat down and hits a couple of different suplexes. He then decides to get a table, clearly planning to put Devon through it with... the Steiner Recliner maybe? That would be cool. But in the estimated 15 minutes it takes him to get the table set up, Devon comes from behind and they nail the 3D. And a chair to the trachea. And a powerbomb through a table. And somewhere in there a hammer was involved. Wow. That's two weeks in a row where the Steiner Brothers prove they can still take a beating with the best of them, and I'm starting to care about this feud.

[Commercial Breaks]

Someone at TNA is apparently reading what I'm writing, cause it turns out they're going to give us some sweet Motor City Machine Guns magic after all. Shelley gets on the mic and issues an open challenge. I'm just starting to think nothing can derail this show when VKM's music hits.

1 -- The Voodoo Kin Mafia defeated The Motor City Machine Guns.

To assuage my fears, pretty much all of the offense in the match comes from Shelley and Sabin. In the course of a minute or two they hit:
--A combo springboard dropkick/flatliner
--A Poetry in Motion dropkick to the apron
--A drop toe hold/elbow drop
--Some sort of leaping reverse front face lock/dropkick to the face
And then Kip James hits The One and Only for the win. Huh.

This was actually an awesome showcase for the losing team, and served its function of making The Motor City Machine Guns look like they're a tag team of the future. Unless of course the function was to make VKM look good—then it did less well.

In a rapid fire transition, Kip James says that they aren't done, and starts to issue another open challenge when LAX's music hits. As Homicide and Hernandez make their way to the ring, XXX appears on the ramp, as does the team of Eric Young and Shark Boy. We get a few seconds of a pier six brawl before cutting to the back.

Karen Angle goes into Joe's locker room, and argues that there would be strength in a Joe/Angle alliance. When Joe's just hanging out in a T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap, he looks like a shockingly normal guy. That's probably a good thing for his likeability. Anyway, Joe scares Karen Angle a bit, and then she runs off. This was probably the worst scene of the night, and it was still competent.

[Commercial Breaks]

Karen Angle approaches the Christian Coalition next. I mentioned this last week, but again, it's worth watching Tomko's reactions in the back. During the course of the promo, he checks out Karen Angle behind her back, stands stoically while she tries to win over Christian and A.J., smiles at Christian's jokes, and rolls his eyes when it looks like they're starting to buy it. Tomko rules. Karen offers a title shot to Christian or A.J. if they can win their half of the tag team titles. After Christian leaves, A.J. falls for Karen's charms, and asks if he should help Christian win, but is told to try to win it himself. Why?

Tenay and West run down the line-up for No Surrender, and they've added Kaz vs. Robert Roode. That's good, cause here I was hoping we'd finally get a story-line about a random face trying to save Ms. Brooks from Roode.

James Storm is still pub-crawling, looking for Rhino. He says he realizes that last week he was foolishly going to bars that were way too classy for the Man Beast. It's a little repetitive this week, but is fairly short and hits a nice punch line (there's a hotline for Rhino spottings set up at 1-888-HAVE-A-BEER).

Entrances start for the main event with half of the show left to go. Joe gets the full Samoan fire-spinner treatment for no particular reason. At about this point I become convinced that Sting has to win the match, as he's the only one to whom Karen Angle hasn't talked—so of course they cut to Karen Angle talking to Sting in the back. If they're toying with me on purpose, I have to give them props for doing a good job. Karen says something incoherent about winning this for "the children", and he tells her to put on more clothes. The Angles round out the main event by coming to ringside.

[Commercial Breaks]

2 -- Sting defeated A.J. Styles, Christian Cage, and Samoa Joe in a fatal four-way.

This match went half an hour, and there's no way I can do it justice. Christian and Styles start off working as a unit, beating up Sting and Joe in turn. Joe turns things around, and convincingly beats up both until A.J. hits the smoothest flip-over-inverted-DDT I've seen in ages. As everybody's reeling, Sting hits a top rope cross body block on Christian and A.J.

[Commercial Breaks]

We come back to Joe and Sting trading moves in the ring. Joe dodges the Stinger Splash, but when he tries to follow it up from the top rope he gets caught with a superplex. Christian goes for a cover on Joe, but A.J. breaks it up; it seems there's trouble amongst Christian's peeps. As they argue, Styles quickly rolls up Christian in a small package. Suddenly the two of them are engaging in some quality chain wrestling, and then things start moving really quickly. A.J. goes for a Styles Clash on Christian, ducks a clothesline from Sting, but then nails Sting with a Pele. Joe and Styles take each other out with a double clothesline takedown, but when Christian attempts a frog splash they both have enough energy to move out of the way. Everyone but Joe gets tossed out of the ring, and then he hits a corkscrew splash from the ring to the outside. Once again: wow.

[Commercial Breaks]

A.J. and Christian are back to working together in beating down Sting. Sting explodes, hitting a Splash on A.J. and a Scorpion Death Drop on Christian. Christian gets out of the ring and goes for a chair, but is intercepted by Samoa Joe; the two of them brawl to the back, apparently not understanding the rules of the match. A.J. distracts the referee long enough for Tomko to come out and hit a big boot on Sting. A.J. gets a cocky smile, which is a pretty good sign that Sting's kicking out. Sure enough, it's only a two count, and when A.J. goes for some sort of springboard move it's countered into the Scorpion Death Lock. That's the ballgame, folks. It didn't have such a well worked story, and not even a hint of anything that could be called psychology... but I don't remember watching a more fun half hour of wrestling in years.

Karen Angle gives Sting his belt, and then he and Kurt shake hands. Sting continues celebrating in the ring, but is assaulted by "Team Pacman" and tagged with the word "Pac" in spray paint. Kurt returns to the ring to make the save.

Where We've Been

During the tag team brawl in the second segment, West commented that it just went to show the depth of the TNA tag team division. He was not wrong. With the tag team belts being tied up with other titles for the last 3 months, it was good to have a reminder that TNA still has as good a roster of tag teams as all three WWE brands combined. It's also nice to see Sabin and Eric Young, both of whom having been floundering of late, get something productive to do (though I admit that I have no idea how Shark Boy got involved). Now we just need to reinvigorate the X division and TNA will be right back where they should be.

Where We're Going

So the big news out of tonight's show is obviously that Sting and Angle are now allies. I have to admit that they now have me absolutely baffled as to where the main event picture is heading. If they're going to try to create a Sting-Angle rivalry, it'll take some brilliant booking to get it off the ground by October. Still, if they could pull it off it would be a main event worth seeing. Also potentially interesting is that Sting is now allied with both of the men in No Surrender's main event, Kurt Angle and Abyss. I doubt they're going this direction, but a Sting heel turn would certainly make things interesting at the top. My main point (assuming I have one) is that, for a week at least, they've got me contemplating some interesting possibilities going forward—that keeps me a happy viewer.

Tonight's Show

It felt extremely rushed, and I didn't really get what Karen Angle was trying to accomplish. Still, I think I was excited from the first appearance of Scott Steiner (and maybe even "Team Pacman") to the final save by Kurt Angle, which says a lot. For one hour, things were good in the world of wrestling. A

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