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Welcome everyone. My name is Curtis Shanks and I am here to give you a microscope review of TNA Impact, a look at all the little observations and tidbits you may have missed. This is not a detailed recap of the show, but a review for those of you that saw the show but didn't actually "watch" it. Let me start off by confessing, yes I am a TNA fan and supporter. Judging by the TV ratings and PPV buys, I realize I'm in the minority. Don't worry, I'm not a chant monkey that will yell "that was awesome" after every suicide dive. I'll be the first to admit that TNA does suffer from some bad gimmicks and logic loopholes among other things (see West, Don). But they are doing some things right as well.
To give you a brief bio, I have only been a professional wrestling fan for about ten years. Sure, I jumped onto the bandwagon during the popular Attitude Era, but don't let that fool you. My obsessive nature set in and I tried absorbing as much wrestling knowledge as possible. I have since spent many a hard earned dollar filling my DVD collection with who came before (WCCW, AWA), who's on the way (ROH, PWG, Chikara) and who else is out there (AJPW, AAA). But enough about me, we're here to take a look at the Thursday night experience that is TNA Impact. Cue the opening pyro.
Shane Sewell draws the referee card for tonight's opening match. Some of you may know him by a different name. Sewell made a name for himself wrestling as Glamour Boy Shane in Puerto Rico's two largest promotions, IWA and WWC. Shane has held almost every major title in the two promotions, including the tag titles with Sean Morley (Val Venis) in Carlos Colon's WWC.
Looks like there's a focus tonight on gold medals and Kurt Angle, professional wrestling's only Olympic gold medalist. Angle says he's the greatest amateur wrestler ever. But has anyone ever heard the name Cael Sanderson? The current Iowa State University wrestling coach went 159-0 in his collegiate career and won gold in freestyle wrestling at the 2004 games. Just a rumor, but it was said there was some interest in him by WWE, wanting to capitalize on the success of Kurt Angle. But there was zero interest from Cael, and the topic was forgotten. What could have been.
After a few weeks with his Click, Click, Boom sounding intro music, Matt Morgan is now back to a remake of his previous ring music. Speaking of intro music, The Beautiful People, Beer Money and ODB all had new remakes of their themes at Hard Justice.
We've all noticed TNA's mirror images of WWE characters. Jay Lethal is Randy Savage. Shark Boy is Stone Cold. But each time I see The Beautiful People they remind me more and more of Miz and Morrison on ECW. Although it is more than likely unintentional, both the way they carry themselves and their promo styles are very similar.
The roll through suplex that Jay Lethal used last Sunday and on tonight's show has been seen in TNA before. It's the finisher of British wrestler Doug Williams, who was in this years X Cup. He calls the move the Chaos Theory and even used it on an Impact match last month vs. Masato Yoshino.
Bravo to Samoa Joe in his tag match tonight. If you look at his eyes during the Coquina Clutch you see they're rolling into the back of his head. Nice touch to make it seem that he's applying the move with force. Harumph to the outcome of the match. After 800 instances of post-match beat downs and ref attacks, this is the straw that broke the camel's back and prompted a reverse decision?
We've seen TNA reference real names in the past before with Steve "Sting" Borden and Terry a/k/a. Rhino. During the Rough Cut segment we heard Consequences Creed referred to as Austin. No news there, as we knew that his real first name couldn't be Consequences. But if you look close, there are two instances where we see his real name in the headlines of news clippings, Austin Watson.
This is our first glimpse of James Storm and Robert Roode as tag champions. James Storm is now in his eighth reign as a tag champion, a new TNA record. He jumps ahead of former partner Chris Harris' seven. Storm is now the second person to hold gold with three different partners as well; Harris, Roode and Christopher Daniels. A.J. Styles is the other, with four different partners.
Tonight's notable MIA's: Prince Justice Brotherhood, Homicide (selling injury), Sabin and Shelley, Petey Williams and ODB.
Numbers crunched harder than an unprotected chair shot to the head: With his successful title defense last Sunday, Samoa Joe has now wrestled in the main event of the last six TNA monthly PPVs. He's still got a ways to go for the record, though. Kurt Angle wrestled in 13 consecutive main events before missing number 14 with an injury. Kaz replaced him on that PPV in the triple threat title match with Joe and Scott Steiner. Even during the Planet Jarrett Era, Double-J could only muster five consecutive PPV main events.
Curtis Shanks is a self-described wrestling nerd. Who else would admit that they try to research the bio of every jobber that appears on TV or in a dark match? Who else would lay claim to keeping up-to-date on the title histories of over 40 independent and foreign promotions? To quote Adrian Monk, "It's a blessing...and a curse". Curtis encourages anyone with questions or comments to e-mail him at curtisshanks.torch@gmail.com. Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
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