Nick D'Achino, PWTorch.com Contributor (8.0)

This edition of Impact deserves high praise, the highest of any this year. The wrestling told the story tonight, and there wasn’t a scent of overbooking on the entire show. I thought another plus was trimming down to having 4 matches rather than 7 or 8. I thought Hogan set the tone perfectly early in the show with his strong promo about the importance of the World Title. The ensuing #1 contender's match and title match itself were exactly what they needed to be and delivered. As much as I’m personally often entertained by the Band, I think that their absence from the show, as well as Team 3D, Eric Young and the like, really added to the positive, fresh feel of the show.

I’m as big a stickler as anyone as far as storyline consistency goes, but if the nature of Samoa Joe’s appearance was any indication that they have dropped whatever goofy idea they had for him coming out of being “kidnapped,” I’m all for it. I’m interested to see what will become of the TNA ranking system, considering they don’t appear to have the type of bookers with the organization or planning it would take to pull that sort of thing off. Did someone really reign in (or lock out) Vince Russo? Or did his ideas just happen to get back-loaded for the next taping that will air next Monday? You never know with TNA, but if this is in fact a sign of things to come, it was a very good one.

Greg Parks, Torch Columnist (8.0)

The fact that TNA has the ability to put on a show of this caliber really makes me angry about all the slop they've served out over the past few months disguised as a pro wrestling show. THIS was a pro wrestling show. The crowd was unbelievably hot and the wrestlers even seemed to have a little extra giddy-up in their step. The show actually seemed focused and they weren't just throwing 25 angles out there, with none of them having any impact on the viewer at home.

A lot of people are complaining about them giving away Jeff Hardy vs. RVD and A.J. Styles vs. RVD for free, but I won't be one of them. It was a smart move at a time when WWE was especially vulnerable, and based on the ratings, it was the right move. TNA clearly doesn't care about the PPV buyrates, since so much of their money comes from Spike TV. The only things I would consider negatives would be the continued push of Rob Terry and the return of Samoa Joe, with no mention of where he's been. I'll give them a few weeks to give an answer, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Still, if the trade-off is Joe being a bad-ass again, I'll take no explanation.

Daniel Wilkenfeld, PWTorch.com Contributor (9.5)

That blew January 4th away as the best Impact...well, probably ever. To reiterate, I expect many people will be annoyed by a random title change in an unannounced match—that's actually one of my favorite things in wrestling, and something I don't remember seeing in years outside of injuries, suspensions, and the usually awesome Money in the Bank cash-ins. Weekly shows are supposed to feel like anything can happen, but they rarely do. I actually think in the medium term this could do a lot to help sell Sacrifice, since people might have been getting fed up with A.J retaining. In the short term, though, this was just a great show. The title change was the first time I've literally let out a "holy shit" since, I believe, Cena's return in the 2008 Royal Rumble (though I think I might be forgetting one). Both his matches were very good, and Team Hogan vs. Team Flair was much more on point than last night. Those three matches, and the booking thereof, were pretty close to the entire show.

I love that Morgan's character doesn't really change when he turns heel. The women's match was probably the weakest link on the show, and it was just mostly pointless, not bad. (Okay, also the timing of commercials was weird, but with three 10+ minute matches I won't complain too much about that). The Joe return will almost certainly lead to something awful next week, but for tonight it was just awesome to see Joe kicking ass again. Even Hogan was on point, capitalizing on the solidifying of power in his hands by immediately booking A.J in a title defense. Also, for those who forgot: RVD is now a World Heavyweight Champion again (and this time will hopefully remember his lesson about driving high).

I wrote the above right after the glow of the RVD win, so it was probably a bit overly excited - but not significantly. I'm a bit more concerned by the complete absence of Dinero then I was last night, but mostly, it still was all kinds of awesome. Writing this today, I do kinda wonder whether the title win was RVD's 4/20 present for (hopefully) staying clean(ish). Hopefully they'll find a way to get Dinero back into the mix. Actually, now that I think about it, it would be way cooler for Dinero to win the title in the King of the Mountain match, which has only ever crowned one new world champion.

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