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The Specialists
UNDER THE MICROSCOPE - 8/28 TNA IMPACT: What I noticed on the show that you might not have
Aug 28, 2008 - 11:03:47 PM


By Curtis Shanks, PWTorch Specialist

Welcome to the TNA Impact edition of Under the Microscope. We're here to review all those 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. After last week we know that Booker T loves accents, Hernandez actually speaks, and that the lighting guy owed Jeff Jarrett and Sting a few favors. But what else is there to notice? Let's see what we can spot. Cue the opening pyro.

Let's hope Sting is a responsible driver and doesn't get pulled over. As he pulls into the arena tonight in his SUV his front license plate is noticeably absent. I hope his new TNA deal that was worked out pays him well, as failure to display proper plates is quite the hefty fine.

Awesome Kong's name could almost be taken literally, as she has been awesome in destroying the Knockout division in TNA. But they use a different adjective to describe her outside of TNA. She has wrestled as Amazing Kong in Japan, along with some Shimmer appearances in the US. With a changed ring name in TNA, they are able to trademark it and own the rights to it, thus the slight change.

TNA's profile videos (Rough Cuts, Gail Kim) are great because we get to see those who are not seen on a weekly basis. This weeks "where are they now" appearance is Terry Taylor. Taylor had many personas in WCCW, WCW and WWF in the 90's, most notably The Red Rooster. Before his current talent relations role in TNA, Taylor was a WWE agent and the backstage interviewer for TNA during the FOX Sports days. Brodie Chase, Creed's trainer is shown in the video as well. Chase wrestles as "The Stray Cat" Brodie Ray Chase in NWA Anarchy.

Petey Williams is quite the conglomeration of characters. There's the Scott Steiner clone of Little Petey Pump. And don't get me started on the Arnold voice he occasionally uses during his promos. But who else does he resemble? Arrogant persona, obsessed with his muscular physique and majestic sounding intro music. That kind of sounds like Chris Masters to me. If you listen closely, his intro music is actually very similar to the one Masters used during his WWE stay.

Who would you think appears in the most Impact segments on a weekly basis? My guess would be either Jeremy Borash or interviewer girl Lauren. Almost every backstage segment on TNA programing features an interviewer standing by, microphone in hand. TNA deserves more credit for this. Kudos to them for eliminating the "invisible camera" logic loophole that is all too present in wrestling today. We all know it's fake, but what makes a great show is promotions trying their hardest to make it seem real.

A weird, disturbing Karen's Angle segments is featured on tonight's show. On the positive, this was the first edition that ended without run-ins and brawling. You think they'd lock the doors to her TV set or get better security. It seems the only prerequisite for having a wrestling talk show segment is a cool name, Karen's Angle, The Cutting Edge, The Highlight Reel, etc. So who's next in line in TNA for a talk segment? We could go with Johnny Devine's Devine Intervention, The Shark Tank with Shark Boy or Sabin and Shelley hosting The Gun Show.

Love him or hate him, Curry Man is the only wrestler I can think of who is named after a food.

During the Curry Man intro Mike Tenay tells us "They're on their feet. Find anyone in this crowd who isn't standing", selling that the fans are on their feet going ape for Curry Man's dance moves. After a quick DVR rewind, I can actually see plenty of people still in their seats.

I find it great that TNA acknowledges past storylines, not going with flavor of the month feuds and expecting fans to have no long-term memory. You see past feuds and even personas referred to almost on a weekly basis. But did we really need to see Kip James revert back to his Billy & Chuck days? I used to enjoy seeing The Beautiful People on my TV screen, but leave it to TNA to ruin that by adding Kip to the mix. It could be worse, though. We should be thankful that he doesn't do the crotch ropeburn entrance that Angelina and Velvet made so enjoyable.

If my hair grew as slow as Roxxi Leveaux's does I would save a fortune on haircuts.

After reading about TNA's "Suicide" subliminal marketing campaign the past few weeks I finally noticed one tonight. Tonight's hidden snippet was during a shot of Booker T in the Sting video before the main event segment.

TNA has a knack for looping old story lines into current ones. We all see the obvious dissension between Samoa Joe and Sting. But the underlying tie-in is Sting speaking tonight saying the young guys are spoiled rotten brats and he wants to bring respect back to the wrestling business. If you remember Samoa Joe's promo last December after the Scott Hall no-show, he put down the veterans saying they didn't have heart or respect and were just there to pad their bank accounts.

Tonight's notable MIA's: LAX, Beer Money, Christian Cage, Matt Morgan, Sonjay Dutt, Sabin & Shelley and of course Gail Kim.

Numbers crunched harder than an unprotected chair shot to the head: It's been quite some time since we've seen Jeff Jarrett in TNA. Aside from a brief appearance on Global Impact, the last we saw of Jarrett was his feud with Robert Roode in early 2007. Jarrett lost that PPV match, so when was his last singles win in TNA? August 13, 2006 when he defeated Sting at Hard Justice to retain the NWA title. After tonight, we have now seen 107 consecutive episodes of Impact and 24 consecutive PPV's without Jarrett winning a one-on-one match.

Curtis Shanks is a self-described wrestling nerd. Who else would lay claim to keeping up-to-date on the title histories of over 40 independent and foreign promotions? In the words of 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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