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The Specialists
4/3 TNA Impact Hits & Misses: Lockdown hype, Angle/Steiner, Monsters of Rock, & more! Apr 4, 2008 - 1:15:00 AM
Kurt Angle promo: This was pretty awesome, though I think the race baiting may have been unnecessary. His confrontation with Steiner was also absolutely fantastic. We're finally getting the payoff to that stupid briefcase storyline, and it's actually looking to be in a meaningful situation, not just a throwaway TV match. However, there is a miss associated with this, so look below for more...
Matt Morgan reveal: While I have mixed feelings about Morgan in general, I did think that the reveal was well executed. It seems inconsistent with his character, though, so I'm hoping they have an explanation up their sleeves. I'm not holding my breath, though.
AJ Styles & Tomko vs. Rhino & Christian Cage: The athletic highlight of the show. It's said after pretty much every one of his matches, but AJ is just so graceful and sharp in the ring. The fact that he hasn't been put in the position to be a real money player is tragic, but they have actually handled him better recently, and they have defined his character better. Tomko continues to be cooler than us all, though he's lost some momentum, and I think their failure to pull the trigger on turning him face when he was really peaking is going to keep him from being as hot a babyface when they do finally turn him. Christian continues to be the guy who's good, but doesn't need to draw all the attention to himself, helping make everyone else he works with look that much better. Rhino's character still needs a little something extra other than just being a recovering drunk, as right now, the only times he's really that interesting is when he's working with James Storm.
Rough Cut: I've really enjoyed these Rough Cut segments. I'd like to see them do more of these realistic style promos in the future. It's the modern version of the traditional sitdown interview. They need to be careful in not letting it become too Russo shoot promo style, but they've remained focused enough on the storylines that it has worked.
Samoa Joe training clip: A fun segment that made you feel like he's going to bring it and absolutely kill Kurt Angle. I liked the interspersed clips of Kurt Angle working out, and would have liked to see more of that during this build. Joe cut a good promo without yelling in our faces the whole time as well.
TNA Impact Misses
Promoting Kurt Angle versus Scott Steiner: This is a match for the Sacrifice pay-per-view. You may have noticed that there's another pay-per-view before that called Lockdown. All I could think after watching this was that I didn't want to see Lockdown, I just wanted to see Kurt Angle versus Scott Steiner. It also made me want to root against Joe at the pay-per-view, as I want to see this title match, and Angle losing would mean this wouldn't happen. Nice job reverse selling Lockdown, TNA!
Mike Tenay sitdown interview with Kong and her handler: Case in point about my earlier point regarding the evolution of pretape promos. Not that there aren't situations where they can work, but it certainly didn't work here. The idea of Amazing Kong, this monster who destroys other women, sitting down for an interview is absurd in the first place. Then you have the awful stilted promos by her handler that aren't quite bad enough to be comical, thus making them just bad and boring. You also have Mike Tenay making his stern face, and giving us all this exposition about the rules set out for the interview. Not good.
Crossing the Line: So what's with the stupid new catchphrase? And aren't catchphrases supposed to be, you know, catchy? I was particularly annoyed by that opening video package trying to talk about lines in every conceivable context, with none of it making any sense. I miss "We are wrestling." With Impact, kind of a lie a lot of the time, but at least that was something you could get behind.
Team Cage shirts: Could they at least have gotten Christian a shirt that fit? Christian looked like a little kid wearing his dad's clothes. The generic Team Cage shirts were pretty cheesy. Hopefully they get some slicker looking gear by the pay-per-view. I realized this was even dumber during the main event, as it said "TEAM CAGE" in the same ugly block font on the front and the back of these stupid shirts. What a great job looking like stars, guys!
The Monsters of Rock: I actually thought this was a kind of fun idea. The monsters are totally absurd and spend most of their time feuding with Eric Young, so why not go all the way and pair them up with the show's other goofy heel tag team and make them the Monsters of Rawk! They then go on to lose their match, briefly try to get their heat back afterwards, but then get beat up by Eric Young in a superhero costume. I think this officially puts their credibility level somewhere below that of Shark Boy and Curry Man.
Crystal: Her pretend trying to come up with the name of Consequences Creed was one of my least favorite moments of this show. Bad announcer acting drives me crazy. I guess she's been studying Mike Tenay tapes.
Women schmoz: I guess that it's just Amazing Kong, ODB, and Gail Kim that make this division work, as this segment, not including any of them, was horrible. The worst offender was Christy Hemme, who threw the worst worked punches I've ever seen.
Traci Brooks promo: So, she tells us to look at her back. We see a back that looks completely normal, other than the tramp stamp that makes it impossible to take this woman seriously. Then she tells us that bruises go away and that she's totally fine. So, lesson: When a heel beats down a babyface, don't worry, they'll get better quickly and won't really care about the beating in the first place.
Mike Roe is PWTorch.com's fill-in guy, providing his point of view on Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact until Hits & Misses Specialist Jon Mezzera gets home and kicks him to the curb for the inevitable walk of shame. Email him at mikeroe@gmail.com.
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