By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

IMPACT HITS

Sting - Angle Dynamic: I enjoyed the interplay between Sting and Kurt Angle. Both played their parts well. Sting cut a solid promo about wanting revenge on Team Pacman and earning his half of the Tag Team Championship. Kurt did a good job trying to work with Sting, including agreeing that Karen had to stay in the back for their match and then removing her. It was interesting last week that Kurt came to Sting’s defense after Team Pacman jumped him, and Sting did the same this week. They worked well together in the ring, but there was some tension. The tension, and Kurt’s attempt to appease his partner are what makes this angle so intriguing.

Main Event: While not nearly as good as last week’s Main Event, Impact delivered another good Main Event this week. While I question the decision to give the first teaming of Angle & Sting away for free (three days before we are being asked to pay to see it), it does make some sense that they would get a chance to team before defending the tag titles (although the challengers didn’t get that opportunity). It was a good way to hype all three of the big Angle matches at the PPV at the same time. The little interaction between Angle and Jay Lethal had me wanting more. If given proper time, Angle vs. Lethal could steal the show. But I am assuming given the amount of build for Angle’s other matches that it will be the shortest of the three (time will tell). The Main Event itself featured nice wrestling with some nice near falls. Abyss getting the clean victory over Angle certainly adds to the intrigue over their PPV Main Event on Sunday.

PPV Hype: Overall, TNA did a good job of hyping No Surrender, not a great job, but a good job. Having Angle in three matches helps because every time he is on, the audience is being sold on three PPV matches at the same time. This week they did a good job of selling those three matches, as opposed to previous weeks when they have only focused on the Tag Team Title match. On the whole, the build to Angle vs. Abyss has been poor, but it was much better this week. They also continued the nice feud between Samoa Joe and Christian. Those are the four big matches and all got a great build. The other matches got a decent build. Robert Roode interfered in Kaz’ match against Tomko, but Kaz’s clean loss hurts his credibility and the hype of their match. They had a decent build to the Black Reign vs. Chris Harris match, although once again, they had not hyped it at all before this week. The Rhino vs. James Storm match was nicely building the last few weeks, until this week, when it was very poorly executed (more later). So there were some problems with the hype, but on the whole it was still a good effort.

IMPACT MISSES

“No Consequences”: I might be over reacting, but I was disgusted by Pacman Jones’ statement during the opening segment when asked about consequences to his actions last week, and he said there were “no consequences.” I took this as a slap in the face to the NFL for suspending him and for the various law enforcement agencies investigating his alleged crimes. Instead of rehabbing his name (one of his stated purposes for coming to TNA), he is playing up his perception of being a thug, and saying that there should be no consequences to his actions. This is a case where reality broke into the fantasy of pro wrestling too much for my taste.

Tag Team Gauntlet Announcement: Once again, TNA is having a big gimmick match at a PPV where they barely announced the match, didn’t announce all of the participants, and really didn’t do a good job of explaining the rules to the match. It is a complicated match with ten teams. Can you name ten teams in TNA? I can’t. I can only thing of about six, which means we will likely get three or four thrown together teams. Why not take the top four or five real teams and make a more logical less confusing match?

Black Machismo: Well it happened this week. I have been saying all along that I enjoy Jay Lethal’s impersonation of Randy Savage, but it would eventually ware thin, and might be detrimental to Lethal in the long run. We don’t know about the long term effects the character will have on Lethal, but this week the character ran thin. This is the first time I have not enjoyed his performance. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t as good an impersonation as usual. It was very disappointing considering how good he usually is.

Storm and Rhino: After two good videos the last two weeks of James Storm looking for Rhino at various bars, TNA produced a terrible video of him looking for Rhino at an AA meeting this week. The previous videos were fun and somewhat realistic. This one was so far beyond realistic it was ridiculous. There is no way an AA group would allow a camera into their meeting. The acting by the AA group leader was horrible. The entire alcoholism storyline has been handled poorly for the most part, and this was no exception. It was insulting to the many people who have gone through 12 Step programs in the past. And it wasn’t entertaining at all. And then Rhino’s phone conversation with the announcers was one of the oddest and silliest moments in recent TNA memory. The whole situation was not handled well this week.

Raven vs. Samoa Joe: This match was way too short to be interrupted by a commercial. That was stupid. They showed less than half of the actual match (given Raven’s involvement, maybe that is a good thing). Despite the fact that Joe looked strong in basically squashing Raven, there wasn’t much to like here. The ending was weak as Raven attempted to rub his nasty rag in Joe’s face only to have Joe move and Raven accidentally rub it in the face of AJ Styles for a few seconds before realizing that he had the wrong guy. That was idiotic. The match basically served the purpose of having Joe in the ring to be attacked by the Christian Coalition, but they could have put on a better match at the same time.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hitlist Specialist, providing his point of view in the Torch's hitlist format for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

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