By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

IMPACT HITS

Beer Money and Abyss: These were not great segments, and I find it hard to believe that Lauren kept running back and forth between their drinking session and the other interviews she was doing throughout the night, but there was still enough about these segments that was fun to give them a Hit. I laughed at Abyss' line that Matt Morgan was in the gym like always. Jackie played her part well in reluctantly kissing Abyss just to help out her team. One of the things that I liked about these segments is that it wasn't totally clear what Beer Money was trying to accomplish. Were they trying to appease Abyss so that he would go easy on them at the PPV? Were they trying to get him drunk to undermine his friendship with Morgan? Were they trying to undermine his therapy? You didn't really know until the end when you found out they were trying to soften him up.

Mixed Tag Match: TNA came up with some pretty clever booking for Awesome Kong & Scott Steiner vs. Christy Hemme & AJ Styles. Before the match, it was nice to see the video package on Styles training Hemme. She mentioned the training before, and this was a nice follow up to it, and the match was a nice follow up to the video. As opposed to the majority of the Knockouts Division (more later) Hemme is actually playing a commendable role, a challenger working hard to achieve a goal, to become the Knockouts Champion. The match itself wasn't great, but the Mixed Tag elements were well done. The ending sequence was fun as Styles helped Hemme into position for the Tornado DDT to finish off Kong.

Final Resolution Video: WWE could learn something from TNA. Ending the final Impact before a PPV with a well-produced PPV hype video is a good idea. The end of the show is typically going to have the biggest audience of the night. With the most eyes on the screen at that time, it is a good way to get the most out of a PPV video. It is a simple, yet very effective tool to hype a PPV.

IMPACT MISSES

"The Code": What exactly is this code that Team 3D and Rhino were talking about all night long? This is just another example of TNA's love affair with insider terms. They like to make fun of internet fans, yet they cater to them by using insider terms all the time. Here they are talking about a supposed code of conduct that apparently all wrestlers are supposed to follow. It was just cheesy. Most fans don't care about what happens behind the scenes. That is one of the fundamental flaws with the Main Event Mafia vs. the TNA Frontline storyline. It is almost entirely based on the idea of backstage politics which the fans don't care about. That is why the heel faction isn't booed that heavily or why the babyface team isn't cheered that heavily. Throwing out terms like "the code" and having a feud built around it doesn't help.

Trashy Knockouts: The Knockouts were once the best thing going in TNA, but no longer. And, you can't just blame it all on the fact that Gail Kim left the company. The Beautiful People are a good act, but they are far from a classy one. That is fine, as it is their heel gimmick. However, when you start to pile on the total trashiness of ODB, Roxxi, and Taylor Wilde, you really get a trashy division, which is unfortunate. They are babyfaces, yet they are trash. That is not a very enlightened position on women: to be liked, you have to be thrash? The amount of bleeps from Roxxi is amazing. It serves ODB well, but not the others. ODB's Angle was hard to watch.

Sarah Palin: This was about what you would expect. I am glad that it appeared that some of TNA didn't think it was really Palin, but why not just come out and say it? This was mostly just a waste of time. It wasn't terrible. But, it wasn't good. It was a lame payoff to a lame publicity stunt. This is all TNA had in mind when trying to get main stream media attention a few weeks back? Lame.

Over Booking: TNA had two matches on Impact that could have been Hits. Unfortunately, after some solid to good wrestling action, the bookers got involved and took the matches out of the Hit column. The first was the street fight between Booker T and Samoa Joe. This was a good match until the end, when Sharmell distracted the referee, allowing the Beautiful People a chance to spray something in Joe's eyes, allowing him to stagger conveniently into the perfect position for the ax kick from Booker. The second match was the main event, Sting vs. Rhino. This was a solid main event that with a better ending, could have been a Hit. Instead, Angle got involved and it wasn't. At least it wasn't the formulaic over booking, as this time the face got the win. But, that is still two big matches that ended with over booking. Why pay money to see more of the same on Sunday?

Too Many Videos: I realize that I have already talked about the good video of Hemme and Styles training and the Final Resolution video from the end of the show. Rough Cut: LAX was another good video. But, unfortunately, those three videos were not the only videos on Impact. Half of the commercial breaks during the show ended with a video on Kurt Angle. What was that all about? There was a cross the line video randomly played at one point. There was a long Feast or Fired video. There was another Suicide video. It is just too much pre-taped content that adds very little if anything to the broadcast.

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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