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We begin with the words "Previously on Impact…" which makes me laugh for some reason.

Scott Hall arrives.

[Opening Credits]

Christian Cage defeats Kaz (then has the decision nullified)

This is a hell of a wrestling contest, but isn't half of what it could have been with proper build-up. This should be TNA's Rocky story - someone who was barely on TV two months ago is challenging to become the first new entrant to TNA's main-event picture in almost a year. He lost to Robert Roode last month, and is now wrestling Christian Cage for a shot at the world title. This should be a story that tells itself; instead we must settle for a killer match.

[Commercial Break]

There's a weird shot of Christian licking his own arm during the break. He gets Kaz with an Arm Bar Takedown, but since that's only a 0F 2D maneuver he only gets one (if you didn't get that, don't worry). Kaz engages in his usual acrobatics, nailing a brutal looking karate-style kick off the top and a Slingshot DDT that provokes the match's first "this is awesome" chant. An attempt at the Flux Capacitor is reversed into a Frog Splash, and that's all she…NO! I don't remember the last time someone kicked out of Christian's Frog Splash. An attempt at the Unprettier is reversed into the Wave of the Future, but Kaz only gets two. At this point A.J. Styles decides that it would be prudent to make his way to the ring, but Kaz cuts him with a suicide dive. Christian grabs a ladder as Tomko comes down to ringside, but Kaz proceeds to fight both of them off too. Ladies and gentleman, I think Kaz has arrived. Eventually the numbers game catches up with him, as A.J. distracts the referee and Tomko knocks him into a ladder see-sawed by Christian Cage. And THAT finally is enough for the three count. Awesome match.

Matt Morgan comes down to the ring. Apparently he's in charge while Cornette's away; if I ever take a vacation, I'm totally leaving my bodyguard in charge. He says that since the match ended in a screw job, he's tossing it out and making a ladder match at Genesis for the tournament final. Sweet. He then comments that Christian looks confused, and asks if he stuttered, which is a nice shot at the stupid gimmick with which WWE saddled him.

Angle's in his room with Karen and Nash, and he wants to know what Kevin did to provoke Scott Hall. When Kevin starts to talk about not being a good friend, Angle accuses him of acting like a woman. Before the two can come to blows, Karen calms down the situation and says that she'll be going to "take care of business" (which causes Tenay to spend the rest of the show trying to get "TCB" over as a catch-phrase).

[Commercial Break]

Crystal's in the back with Christian Cage, and he wants to know why Matt Morgan's in charge. That's a reasonable question. He is, however, happy with the ladder match stip. Out of nowhere, Tomko asks whether he's Christian's main man or whether A.J. is. Cage says that Tomko keeps committing the cardinal sin, and doing the one thing he was never supposed to do - think. So he puts A.J. in charge and walks off. Styles, thrilled to be team captain, takes initiative and questions how impressive Steiner's All-American Michigan career is - after all, A.J. was offered a scholarship to Gainsville Vocational College. I love it when A.J. compares his Georgia cred with other people's accomplishments. To prove his point, he challenges Scott to a five-minute takedown contest.

(2) Gail Kim defeats Alexa Jade

Alexa who now? While I'm a little confused regarding why Kim's wrestling some random lady, I think this Alexa is about as good as their higher-profile new women. This is a neat little match - nothing special, but nothing offensive either. Gail Kim wins with a new finisher that I'm pretty sure I've seen in a video game somewhere. It's sort of like a cross between a Death Valley Driver and a Michonoku Driver, which I doubt is very helpful.
VKM come onto the ramp, and BG James announces that Roxxie Leveaux will be winning the TNA Women's Championship at Genesis. He also calls Gail Kim "my little moo shoo gai pan", which strikes me as somewhat unnecessarily racist. Roxxie sneaks in behind Gail and nails a Dominator, only to be ambushed from behind by fellow challenger Angel Williams. Angel, who either has forgotten how many people are in the match on Sunday or else how to count to four, starts celebrating with her back to the ramp. ODB attacks her, and figures that now that everyone has interfered, she can celebrate a bit with the title. However, Gail's back up, and she nails an awesome Springboard Dropkick to knock out ODB and take back her belt.

Karen Angle enters Scott Hall's room in the back, and tells him that whatever he's here for, she can make him a better offer. She whispers something to him, and he seems intrigued, but then she makes the mistake of saying he can trust her. He takes issue with that, because he's learned that you can't trust anyone in this industry. He tells her his business is with Kevin and then kicks her out of his office.

That segment had a lot of content.

[Commercial Break]

JB is with Karen Angle in the back, and she doesn't seem happy with what Scott said. I'm now quite sure why, as he basically said that he wasn't after Angle, but never mind. She says she's going back to Plan A, and then ducks into the men's room for a meeting.

They show footage of Team 3D beating up Shark Boy and Petey Williams in catering.

Team 3D defeats "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal & Abyss

I would have saved the confrontation between the killers of the X Division and the X Division Champion as the ultimate showdown, but that's just me. Tenay announces that Lethal will be defending on Sunday against Sonjay Dutt, which is a criminally wasted opportunity for a real feud, but hopefully I'll have more on that in my PPV Preview. There's some okay wrestling here, but nothing special. It drags a bit in the middle. The story of the match really starts when Black Reign comes out to the ring, and he and Abyss (very slowly) brawl to the back. To TNA's credit, they let Lethal take it to Team 3D by himself. However, Devon eventually hits a low blow behind the ref's back, and one 3D later it's over. I think it was a good move not making Lethal job clean. After the match, Teams 3D sets Lethal up on a table and beats him with belts, but Shelley and Sabin make the save.

Karen goes back to Kurt, and tells him that her meeting with Hall didn't go well, but that she has another plan. Kurt seems miffed, and goes to get answers from Hall.

[Commercial Break]

Kurt's in the ring, and he gives Hall 10 seconds to come out. What if he was in the bathroom? Hall doesn't respond, so Angle goes backstage to look for him. He bursts into Hall's locker room, where the first thing he sees is Eric Young "doing a bad job of hiding, apparently". Hall reiterates that he's just here for Nash, but Angle doesn't like his tone and tries a cheap shot. Hall deftly turns him aside and pins him up against the wall. Angle, suitably chastised, leaved the room.

Crystal's in the back with the Steiners, and Scott delivers some promo gold, mostly great for his random ripping on her. He then proceeds to describe in some detail how he's sleeping with A.J.'s girlfriend.

[Commercial Break]

Scott Steiner defeats A.J. Styles in a Takedown Challenge (via DQ?)

A.J. tries to go for quick single leg takedowns, but Steiner rebuffs him via the skillful technical maneuver of standing there. A minute in, however, A.J. nails Steiner with powder to the face and gets 3 quick takedowns. He hits a Spineroonie after one of them - I have no idea if that will turn out to be relevant. After the third takedown Scott washes the powder out of his eyes, and now he's ticked. He hits some takedowns of his own, but Tomko ambushes him after four. The two of them beat down Scott for a bit before Rick makes his way to the ring and the Steiners clean a little house.

Angle is in his room, complaining about how Hall's crazy and attacked him. Nash says that he has to find out what Hall's up to, but says that if it's what he thinks it is, then they're all in trouble.

[Commercial Break]

Sting & Eric Young, & Samoa Joe defeat James Storm & Robert Roode, & Kurt Angle

Robert Roode's mysterious female fan is at ringside again, but stays uninvolved. The dominating theme of this match is that Roode is trying to avoid Joe and Angle is (to a lesser extent) trying to avoid Sting. There's a great moment where Young ends up in the ring with Angle and, after looking panicky for a second, takes Kurt to the outside and nails him with a conveniently placed phone book (Angle beat him with a phone book last week). Karen Angle makes her way down to ringside with a massive smile on her face.

[Commercial Break]

Not surprisingly, Eric Young is being isolated from his team. Eventually he slips out of a Backdrop and gets in the tag to Samoa Joe, who is his usual awesomeness. After some interference by Roode on the outside Joe actually gets isolated for a bit, which is odd. Eventually he makes the real hot tag to Sting, and everything breaks down. Sting and Storm end up in the ring, and Sting reverses an attempted Superkick into a Scorpion Death Lock for the win.

[Commercial Break]

Nash comes down to the ring and asks Hall to join him. This time Scott accepts the invitation and makes his way into the ring. I was actually starting to wonder if he was really in the building. The crowd is glad to see him, chanting "welcome back" and "Razor, Razor!" Nash is barely able to suppress a grin at the crowd's warm response for his buddy. Hall makes a couple jokes about Nash's suit and gray hair, but Nash says that they have to grow up sometime. Hall questions where Nash was during his personal problems (if there are any who don't know, Hall has had a storied battle with alcoholism and family problems), and Nash responds that he had problems of his own and maybe wasn't as good a friend as he should have been. Hall seems to accept the apology, and says that he wants to let everyone know that he's not Sting's partner at Genesis. The two of them share a hug and a couple of NWO hand gestures. That was actually kind of touching, which is not a word one normally associates with professional wrestling. Angle comes down to ring, and wants to know why Hall is here and who Sting's partner will be. Sting appears on the apron, but doesn't say anything.

Where We've Been: I'd actually like to step back for a second and talk about World Title feuds. A couple of weeks ago Sting said that his title match with Angle was not about the title, which drew a lot of ire from wrestling fans. The claim was made that grudge matches and title matches are two distinct sorts of things, and by making the one into the other Sting cheapened the title. I agree that something was wrong about what Sting said, but disagree with the thesis that personal feuds and title feuds should be kept separate. There is actually something uninteresting about a feud that is really only about the title - the fact is that it's just a belt, and everyone knows that. The title means something because of its power as a symbol of greatness. People aren't generally feuding over a piece of gold, but about who is the better man, and that sort of feud is enhanced by personal rivalry. The problem with Sting's promo was not that he was conflating a personal feud with a title feud, but that he seemed to be carrying on both independently. Really great feuds have elements of the personal and the professional, but the key is that the two be causally connected to each other. Either contention over the title should give rise to some personal rivalry, or else a personal feud should take on the title as the symbol of ultimate victory. Examples of the first kind are virtually any HHH feud, and an example of the second kind is Rock-Austin. Rock and Austin hated each other, and they each wanted to deprive the other of the title because of that personal animosity. The problem with Angle-Sting was that they hated each other, and they were fighting over the title, but it wasn't really clear what the one fact had to do with the other.

Where We're Going: So the million dollar question is (or at least is supposed to be) "who is Sting's partner?" I suppose some of you might know who TNA has available, but I don't, so this is actually an interesting puzzle. Sting claimed that whoever it is has a beef with Angle and was a former World Champion in WWE and WCW - at first I assumed that he must have misspoke, but then they reran the clip this week. That narrows the options precipitously. Off the top of my head, the only free agents I can think off who were champions in WWE and WCW are Hogan, Hart, Booker T, Randy Savage, Goldberg, and Jericho (if it turns out he's been playing us regarding WWE). Hart is presumably not an option. Hogan is an outside possibility, but one would think they would advertise him if they had him. Savage's last stint in TNA was a bust, and he has never encountered Angle. The whole time Goldberg was in WWE he was on Raw and Angle was on Smackdown, so that doesn't make any sense, and Jericho is a pipe dream. That leaves us with Booker T, if he's not under a no-compete. All I want to say for now is that if it is Booker T, I think bringing him to TNA would be a mistake. He won't be able to contribute significantly to TNA's in-ring style, and they already have more talkers than they can get interviews. More importantly, however, TNA does not need another past-his-prime WWE cast-off (with drug related baggage) - it would be bad for their image and, I would think, for locker room morale if he got any serious push. My guess is that he's not coming Sunday, and if TNA hasn't already signed him, I don't think they should. At least, he should not be brought in as a main-event wrestler - he could probably be very good in some sort of managerial capacity.

Tonight's Show: I opened my computer to start writing this column, and ended up putting it down so I could enjoy the show fully my first time through. That's a good sign. The main event promo was a bit anti-climactic, but I'm an NWO mark, and so was reasonably pleased nonetheless. Everything was fairly enjoyable, and the opening contest was excellent: A-.



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