By Curtis Shanks, Torch specialist

James Caldwell's Note: My review of this week's TNA Impact TV will be online Friday.

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 Kong is not a mute after all, Mick Foley loves Devo, and Sting is sacrificing his career. But what else is there to notice? Let's see what we can spot. Cue the opening pyro.

TNA has been playing off the names of their PPVs as of late, and Sacrifice is no exception. It's easy to see the main event of Sacrifice is based on wrestlers making sacrifices for a chance at the World Title. Last month for the Lockdown PPV, TNA used the Smashing Pumpkins song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" as the theme. This song was chosen because of the familiar lyric "despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage," playing off of the all-cage-match theme of the show. But there are songs out there TNA could choose for Sacrifice to keep with the tradition.

Motorhead released a song titled Sacrifice in the mid-'90s off their album of the same name, although their allegiance appears to lie with Triple H and WWE. Sacrifice is also a song title from both Elton John and the Steve Miller Band, although I have a hard time seeing either of those songs as PPV hype worthy. I would rather they choose from one of my favorite bands to release a "Sacrifice" song, Symphony X. Symphony X, best described as prog-metal with a splash of symphony strings, released "The Sacrifice" on their 2007 album Paradise Lost.

The Mafia was Godfatherless tonight, as Kurt Angle was away filming a movie. While his movies are not in the league of The Rock or John Cena, or even Mr. Kennedy or Ted DiBiase for that matter, Angle has landed some movie roles in upcoming releases. According to IMDB.com, Angle is slated to be in five different films throughout next year. His film credits include Chains, End Game, Dead of Night, River of Darkness, and Land of the Astronauts. None of these movies is considered a major release, although Dead of Night also includes fairly well-known actor Taye Diggs. End Game also includes another familiar face to TNA fans, Jenna Morasca.

Don West threw out a Matt Striker-esque reference tonight as Samoa Joe was squashing Eric Young. Joe punted Young, who flew over the top rope, prompting West to state "shades of Tom Dempsey right there." Dempsey was an NFL kicker during the 1970s, playing for five different teams. He was best known for succeeding in the NFL despite a birth defect on his kicking foot. Dempsey was born without any toes on his right foot, and wore a modified shoe that allowed him to kick a football with success. He was selected to one Pro Bowl (his rookie year) and set an NFL record for the longest field goal - a 63-yarder. The record has since been matched, as West could have also said "shades of Jason Elam right there."

Speaking of West, he continues to impress in his heel commentator role. Mike Tenay introduced another pointless Jeff Jarrett video, but West was able to chime in just as the video started. West quickly said "Yawn" after Tenay set up the video. The video that followed had west proclaiming "there's another one?" He was once again flawless in his delivery of a heel jab. Jerry Lawler has been acting as a heel during Matt Hardy matches on Raw, but unlike West, he has seemed forced and over the top with his sympathies towards the heel wrestlers.

Brother Ray seemed a little mixed up on his facts concerning his own wrestling past. Ray put over the tag team division in TNA and gave reasons why Team 3D "left that other company." The decision to leave WWE was not 3D's, as WWE released the team in July of 2005 (officially, WWE decided not to renew their recently expired contracts). They were part of WWE's annual roster purging, as fifteen wrestlers were released that day. Notable names who joined 3D at the unemployment line that day included Mark Jindrak, Billy Kidman, Spike Dudley, Maven, and current TNA roster member Matt Morgan.

I'm all for character development in wrestling today, and one way to do that is with a pre-produced video segment. TNA has produced some great video packages on Jarrett, Foley, the Mafia, and others. While the videos are a great way to give us a refresher on a character, they can come at a cost. The negative is that we get three or four a week on Impact, many of them repeated from previous weeks. If TNA were to cut down on some of these generic videos, it could add a valuable two or three minutes to a lot of the rushed X Division styles matches that only get a few minutes apiece.

TNA has another ask.com question this week, and it appears they are running out of ideas. They posed the question "what musical instrument did Booker T play in his high school band?" I know most of you are like me and don't really care, but I looked it up for TNA's sake. Going to ask.com and typing in the question just as Tenay phrased it actually does not produce any results. There are items on musician Booker T. Jones and plenty of links to Booker T. Washington high schools, but nothing about Mr. Huffman. By using a Google search, we find that Booker played the drums in his HS band. Thus concludes the most worthless thing I have ever sought out online.

It was a blast from the past this week, as we got some video of Jeff Jarrett inside TNA's old home, the Asylum in Nashville, Tennessee. TNA ran all of their weekly PPVs from the Asylum, switching over to Orlando, Florida when Impact began airing on Fox Sports during the summer of 2004. The Asylum was not a large sports arena, but rather a small building located on the Tennessee State Fairgrounds to keep production costs low. As Foley was attacking Jarrett in the show-closing segment, there was further evidence as to where the beat down was taking place as the chair Foley used had "TSF" (Tennessee State Fairgrounds) written across the bottom in tape.

There was no "Mick" counter from Sting this week, as we only got a sit-down interview with Mike Tenay (he only said "Mike" once). But the bleep counter is still chugging along as we got five this time around - one in the Mafia locker room, one from Steiner in the hallway, one from Kip James, and two during the Jarrett beat down.

Numbers crunched harder than an unprotected chair shot to the head: there are many aspects in a talent that the two major wrestling companies look for in a talent today. Wrestling ability, charisma, and promo skills will take you a long way with a company, but sometimes size is placed above all those aspects. The stereotypes are that Vince McMahon and WWE love their huge, big guys, but TNA has a roster full of the X Division guys who favor the light-weight styles. But do the numbers back up those assumptions?

The weight limit for the old Cruiserweight title in WWE was 225 lbs. - a kind of barrier between the small guys and the large guys. There are 22 male wrestlers in WWE could still qualify as a CW, while TNA sports 14 guys under the 225 lbs. mark. If you're looking at a wrestler's height, both TNA and WWE have 13 guys who are under six feet tall on their rosters, although TNA's roster is half the size. It's interesting to look at little tidbits like that, but what about the overall averages for the two companies? They are actually a lot closer than you would think.

The average current WWE male wrestler is 6'1" and tips the scales at 248.1 lbs. The average TNA wrestler also averages 6'1", but surprisingly surpasses the WWE average with a weight of 249.5 lbs. Raw is actually the smallest show in WWE (6'0", 242.5 lbs.), weighing down the overall average. Smackdown competitors average 6'2", 252.8 lbs. while the ECW average is 6'2", 250.6 lbs. Despite the size stereotypes, when you add up the numbers the difference between a WWE and TNA wrestler is nothing more than a mere 1.4 lbs.

Curtis Shanks is a self-described wrestling nerd. Who else understands what Matt Striker is talking about all the time. Feedback is welcome, as comments, suggestions and questions can be sent to Curtis at curtisshanks.torch@gmail.com or in the comments section below.

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