By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

IMPACT HITS

Beer Money: I am not sure how I feel about the name of Robert Roode and James Storm’s team. Part of me loves it, and part of me thinks it is very stupid. But, this Hit is for the team itself, while I try to reconcile how I feel about the name. After a bad promo from Hector Guerrero with LAX via satellite, Beer Money came out and Storm rightly pointed out that he couldn’t understand what Hector was talking about. Beer Money vs. Motor City Machine Guns was a fun, but too short match. I was surprised by the outcome, but I guess that Beer Money had to lose in order to set up them snapping on everyone in sight. I must admit that part of this Hit is for them whipping Don West, as he deserved it. I don’t understand where the rest of Team TNA was. If I’m Chris Sabin or Alex Shelley I am upset at my team. It was a memorable snap for Beer Money (I think I like the name a bit more every time I write it). As if they weren’t having a good enough night, Storm later introduced their cheesy Beer Money t-shirts. The fact that they were home made fit in perfectly with Storm’s cheap character. Storm and Roode are starting to develop good chemistry together. Their Main Event match vs. Kevin Nash & Samoa Joe was nothing special, but right now they are my favorite thing going in TNA. But, the fact that they lost twice and are the #1 contenders for the Tag Team Championships isn’t a good sign.

Booker T: Booker T had another fun little segment in his locker room with Jeremy Borash. He is playing his part well right now. I still am a bit worried about it going too far towards the King Booker gimmick, but it has been good so far. I like how he actually treats Borash well. It would be too easy for him to refuse to let Borash have some of the champagne for instance. The fact that he is treating Borash so well is a nice twist on a typical heel character, and I am curious to know whether or not there is something else more to his character. Either way, it has been fun so far.

IMPACT MISSES

Opening Segment: This was a poor episode of Impact. There was very little to like and it got off to a bad start. The show opened with AJ Styles and Karen Angle coming to the ring. Styles complained that Karen can’t do her job, because she is afraid. Remind me, what exactly is her job again? The show turned so trashy so quickly with Brother Ray’s rant about women. Rhino hasn’t been exciting in a long time, so I couldn’t get excited about him coming to Styles’ aid. His challenge to Team 3D and Kurt Angle was almost incomprehensible. What a surprise, the big six man tag match at the PPV will have a gimmick. Oh boy. And the fans get to choose. Rhino said the choice is between a Tables match, and a Full Metal Mayhem match (which I guess is TNA’s version of TLC), and later we found out that the fans can also vote for Falls Count Anywhere, although that wasn’t one of the original choices. This whole deal failed to get me excited about the PPV, or the rest of the show. The opening then featured the first of three blind dates for Kurt, but I will be talking about those...

Angle’s Dates: Now. Last week I was looking forward to the comedic possibilities of watching Kurt Angle going on blind dates. Unfortunately, the TNA writers apparently don’t know anything about comedy, as these three scenes were not funny period. Instead of trying to be clever, TNA went for the cheap joke route with a fat woman, a man in drag, and a woman with “ass problems” as Kurt said. They were not funny at all. And what was the pay off? A joke at Brother Devon’s expense that these are his types of women. That was a lot of wasted time.

World X-Cup: Stop the pain already. The silver lining of this convoluted, horribly booked and ridiculously inconsequential dark cloud of a “tournament” is that it is supposed to provide us fans with a nice dose of X-Division action. That was clearly not the case this week. I still don’t care about any of these international wrestlers. I’m still not sure we’ve met all of Team Mexico or Team Japan. I’m fairly certain that half of Team International and Team Mexico haven’t wrestled yet. This week we didn’t get the type of fast past fun action we’ve gotten during the first round. Rey Bucanero vs. Alex Koslov was 2 minutes, and the only memorable moment was that botched looking spot when Bucanero dropped Koslov on the back of his head, which isn’t a good type of memorable. Then we are introduced (I use that term lightly) to Milano Collection AT. Without any type of introduction, how am I supposed to take him seriously when he comes to the ring with an invisible dog (those leashes haven’t been cool since 1988, and I don’t think they were technically cool back then either). His match vs. Curry Man was only 4 minutes. That’s better than 2 minutes, but not much. I don’t care about any of these teams, or who wins. The entire “tournament” process is pointless as we all know it is going to come down to the Ultimate X. So why have the other rounds since they mean nothing?

Rough Cut: TNA, please stop talking about WWE. This isn’t going to get Matt Morgan over. There is a reason why WWE doesn’t mention other wrestling promotions. They know that they are #1 and they don’t have to. Maybe if you start to think about yourself as being #1 you won’t have such an inferiority complex. Why should I think of you as anything but a second rate promotion, when you constantly bring up a first rate promotion? It isn’t helping anyone or the company itself. Plus, by making a big deal about how Morgan was scripted in WWE to have a stuttering gimmick, it is reminding the audience that your product is scripted too. You want Morgan to seem like a bad ass, but if he was scripted to be a stuttering idiot as you say, that means he is being scripted to be a bad ass. It doesn’t make him a bad ass, it reminds us that he is only a character.

Sting: I am convinced that Sting needs to retire. He has barely done anything in TNA this year. I know that he wanted a smaller role, and that is fine. But why should I care about him randomly showing up in the rafters if he hasn’t been on t.v. other than those horrible interviews a while back with Mike Tenay? I am finding it difficult to get into the whole Nash vs. Joe angle, and throwing Sting into the mix isn’t going to make me any more interested. Maybe TNA has something great in mind that will slowly be revealed over the next few weeks (I doubt it). At least for now I was left with the feeling that Kevin Nash and Sting are now both over shadowing the Champion and the challenger heading into the PPV.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw, Smackdown, ECW, and TNA Impact each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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