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Bashir vs. Lethal: This was a solid “debut” match for Sheik Abdual Bashir. Unfortunately, it reminded me a bit of recent Raw matches in terms of length. It was only about 4 minutes long. However, those 4 minutes were pretty good. Bashir and Jay Lethal are talented workers and they put on a good short match with each other. Of course the heel had to cheat to win, but that is par for the course for TNA. I am looking forward to seeing Bashir be given more ring time than he got in WWE, because he is a good wrestler. My only problem with the match was his lame finisher (more later).
Hernandez vs. Storm: This was the best match of the night. Many people have said that Hernandez can be a breakout singles star in TNA, and he showed that potential. The match only went 5 minutes, but it was a very good 5 minutes of action. The announcers did their best to totally ruin the match. Talking about how Homicide might have permanent eye damage made me think of the lame Chris Harris eye patch gimmick, and how WWE has the storyline of the year focused on the eye injury of Shawn Michaels. Comparing TNA’s and WWE’s eye injury stories distracted me from the match. Also, Don West called Hernandez “the strongest man in professional wrestling” which made me think about how Mark Henry is stronger, distracting me from the match. Also, Mike Tenay (who deserved a Miss for his poor work throughout the show) talked about Hard Justice, while completely missing the call of Hernandez’ come back with an Electric Chair on James Storm, distracting me from the match. It is a testament to how good Hernandez and Storm worked in the match that I could have enjoyed what they were doing in the ring despite the stupidity coming out of the mouths of the announcers. I have not been a believer in Hernandez as I have hardly ever seen him have to sell, as Homicide usually does the majority of the selling in LAX matches. But, Hernandez impressed me here.
IMPACT MISSES
Morgan & Abyss: I can’t care less about a possible union of wrestlers than Matt Morgan and Abyss. I am just not a fan of either of these guys, and can’t get excited about a tease of them teaming up. The bigger deal (away from my own personal bias) is that this was too random. Why did Team 3D attack Morgan after his match? Did I miss something? Seriously, that wasn’t a rhetorical question. I guess it makes some sense that Abyss would come out, as he comes to people’s rescue all the time. That is part of his new gimmick. But, in the past he as come out to save people who really needed it, and I wasn’t buying Morgan actually being in trouble when Abyss made the save. They seemed to have something somewhat interesting going with Abyss and Awesome Kong, but maybe not any more.
The Beautiful People and Kip James???: The Beautiful People have been one of the best acts in TNA for quite some time. So what in the world is TNA thinking by putting them together with Kip James? Do they think he will help the act? Or, are they hoping Angelina Love and Velvet Sky will help his career? Or, are they not thinking at all? Unfortunately, Love and Sky had a bad week all around. Their appearance on Karen’s Angle was one of their worst appearances ever on Impact. They did not give a good performance. Karen Angle was her annoying self. I wanted them all to just shut up, then I wanted to cry when Love and Sky introduced their new stylist. I’m not going to give Karen’s Angle a Miss as I am still happy she has an official position with TNA (or Spike, however that works), but I will say that Karen’s Angle has pretty much sucked and served no purpose so far. But, it isn’t a Miss.
The WMD: I don’t have a problem with Bashir calling his finisher the WMD. That is fine. My problem is that it was just a DDT with the opponent on his knees. The DDT has become such a standard wrestling move that I don’t buy it as a finisher, especially when the opponent’s head is lower to the mat since he is on his knees. Obviously in calling it the WMD, TNA wants it to be taken seriously as a finisher, but I can’t. I’m also not a fan of taking a well established move with a well established name and calling it something new. I never liked hearing the announcers call a DDT a Raven Effect just because Raven was doing the move. It was still a DDT. My other problem is that Mike Tenay (who really had a Miss worthy show) felt the need to tell all of us stupid fans that WMD stands for Weapon of Mass Destruction. Thanks Mike, I didn’t realize that.
Main Event: Is there anything more boring to watch than a fake amateur wrestling match? Amateur matches can be fun to watch, largely because we know that the match is real, but that wasn’t the case here. I hated everything about this match. It was boring. I am finding it hard to get behind AJ Styles as a babyface right now, so I wasn’t rooting for him to take the Gold Medal away from Kurt Angle. Mike Tenay (have I mentioned yet that he had a Miss worthy show?) made a total fool out of himself multiple times in the same exact way when he would say something like “I have the match at 6-0.” There were official rules. There was a score card on screen giving the up to the moment score in the match. So everyone had the match at 6-0. He did that multiple times during the match and each time sounded like an idiot. It was like he wanted to sound like an expert commentator (he’s play by play, not commentator by the way) the way that say a gymnastics commentator will sound during the Olympics, by making a guess as to how the judges might score a particular performance. In doing so, he came off like a jerk. Enough about him. Can you believe there was a referee bump in an amateur style match? I wish I could say I was surprised by that, but I can’t. Didn’t the time run out on the last period? Then how did the referee make a three count? I understand gloating over taking the Gold Medal from Angle, but Styles looked at the Medal with reverence like he had actually won it at the Olympics. That made me want to cheer him even less. I can’t remember hating a match this much in a long time.
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. 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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