James Caldwell, Torch Assistant Editor (5.5)

I wouldn't call this a step back from last week's TNA Impact, but TNA fell into a number of their bad habits on this show. First off, the pacing was horrendous in the second hour of the show. Too much was thrown out there without enough time for the angles to sink in. It felt like TNA was trying to dip back into the Crash TV format at times after being very disciplined on last week's live Impact and early on in this week's show. Also, TNA trying to present multiple "camera perspectives" with traditional wrestling shots, the "Reaction" movie presentation, and apparently an "Office" style documentary with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall acknowledging the backstage cameraman (not just the camera) was another example of TNA's inconsistency and hoping to throw enough at viewers for them to be so numb that they'll just sit back and accept it. It was a mess at the end of the show after a very good first hour in terms of pacing.

Ric Flair wrestling should be a huge deal. A huge deal. At 61-years-old, if he's going to step into the ring, it needs to be hyped for weeks and weeks, if not for a month. He's an attraction and the law of diminishing returns has kicked in on his marketability in the ring. TNA is hurting his potential to draw money or TV viewers down the road, especially when it's uncomfortable to even watch him in the ring taking a back-body drop, much less bleeding all over the place again. TNA is wasting away Flair's potential drawing power.

Now, what TNA did right. They focused on RVD in the opening segment as the new TNA World champion, A.J. Styles had a terrific heel promo, Matt Morgan was elevated as a heel, the announcers hit their stride engaging the audience in intelligent debate, Mr. Anderson and The Pope had a very strong promo exchange, the feud between Angelina Love and Tara was escalated, Samoa Joe continued to beat people up, and there was no Rob Terry. There were little things in addition to these items that enhanced the show, but were probably overlooked by the audience with way too much happening at times on this week's episode.

Nick D'Achino, PWTorch.com Contributor (6.0)

The opening segment got things off to a very good start. Everyone involved looked good here. One of the best things about TNA is when they just let guys go out in the ring, ad-lib, and play off each other on the microphone. I think that’s something that’s really been missing for wrestling for quite some time now with how WWE scripts promos, and for the past few years in TNA where Vince Russo has tried to impose his writing on every aspect of the show. I was expecting a bit more from the rankings announcement, although they explained it further on the website, and have the following weeks to get all the aspects of it across on television.

For the second consecutive week, the TNA reaction-style segments continued to be the highlight of the backstage portion of Impact. Matt Morgan is becoming more entertaining by the week. I really missed having Douglas Williams on the show. The Abyss/Flair main event was definitely not a great way to end the show. I don’t see how any babyface looks good beating up Ric Flair at this point. Aside from being “an old guy,” he’s also one of the most beloved figures in wrestling history. Combine the two, and they could actually generate some real sympathy for Flair if they feuded him with an up and coming heel. The best option in my opinion though, would be to keep Flair out of the ring all together, and save the guy from himself. There were a lot of live reports saying this wasn’t a very good show, but I thought it came together well enough to hold the momentum for next weeks live show.

Daniel Wilkenfeld, PWTorch.com Contributor (6.0)

This show started off very promisingly, capitalizing on last week's big finish by letting RVD cut his second real promo in just about a decade (the other one was at the first ECW One Night Stand). A.J Styles struck the right cord in his response, even if it was a bit generic. The women's action was good, and I actually really like the interplay between Morgan and the X Division wrestlers — it's nice when story-lines span the typical domains. Then we got to the big mid-show tag match, and everything just sort of collapsed. The match itself was a mess. It seemed like three separate matches — a Falls Count Anywhere, a regular one, and then another Falls Count Anywhere — and only the first of those three was any good.

Things picked up dramatically for Dinero's promo. He was able to get his Congregation to chant along to two relatively new catch-phrases — not quite as easily as, say, The Rock, but pretty damn close. Anderson gets better and better every week, especially now that they've distanced themselves from the stupid unpatriotic angle. The team of Neal & Moore has a bit of potential — certainly more than either of them had as single's wrestlers. I have absolutely no clue where they're going with The Band—Team 3D, so it's a bit soon to comment, and while I'm fairly certain they are going somewhere stupid with Orlando Jordan, I'll hold out on that one too.

The rankings announcement was a huge letdown, as we got no actual information. Then we got to the main event, about which the best that can be said is that they really tried. The match itself was slow and no selling brass knucks is just silly. All of that would have been fine if the dramatic culmination of the show hadn't been Hogan announcing that he would be giving Ric Flair's ring to, um, someone next week. I don't know where to go with that, so we'll play "choose your own snarky comment":
A) RVD winning the title this was not.
B) That'll put asses in the seats.
C) Please be Rob Terry! Please be Rob Terry!
D) William Jennings Bryan.
In short, the show did a lot of little things right, but the three advertised main event angles all fell almost amazingly flat.

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