Terrie Neilson of Las Vegas, Nev. (7.0): Best: Williams vs. Roode (match and post-match); promos. Worst: Kong vs. Kim For a go-home show, this one was better than recent efforts, though there was almost too much to digest before Sunday. The build for all the matches showed progress, except one: Amazing Kong vs. Kim. The women they brought in from elsewhere all seemed very bimbo except for Kong, who reminded me as a cross between Bertha Faye of then-WWF and Mt. Fiji of GLOW. I'm hoping that Gail Kim will be the first champion, but the name, Knockout Champion, is a misnomer on all kinds of fronts that devalue the championship. Compared to this past week's interaction in Miz-Kelly-Balls triangle, the Roode-Brooks-Kaz triangle has equal chemistry but better traction. The Roode-Williams match before it was very good, and showed they still have good chemistry in the ring. The Sting-Angle progress was much better this week, and Sting is ramping up his aggression and edginess while Angle is becoming more obsessive and blindered in focus. TNA had better watch themselves: John Cena may be on the DL, but his phrases are still trademarked in his absence. Christian's coconut beatdown of Joe was reminiscent of Piper's coconut beatdown of Snuka, and I really wasn't expecting this. The only match where I want to see just one result is the tag match, as Styles and Tomko should take the straps off of Jones and Killings. Killings needs to be partnered with someone who isn't in the predicament that Jones is in. Tomko having two titles would do something with further splintering of the Christian Coalition, which needs to be shook up a bit to keep it fresh. The rest of the PPV card looks okay, though I'm not expecting a whole lot with the Steiners-3D match.
Vince Russo [photo by Wade Keller (c) PWTorch]
Josh Newell of West Monroe, Louisiana. (2.0): Best Match : Main event. Worst Match: Team Pacman vs. Triple X. My God, that was a horrible wrestling show. I am a diehard wrestling fan, and even promote shows down here in Louisiana. If I would have booked that show down here I would have gotten run out of the building. Since when does TNA cuss every time there on the microphone? Is this edgy now ? Where is Eric Young? Did we forget he was over. Why did Triple X job like THAT to team Pacman? Don't they have a "BIG" match Sunday with LAX? What a joke. The storylines are recycled, and the time when there supposed to be giving us the best stuff they ever have, it's all going in reverse. I like a lot of the matches signed for Bound of Glory, but the build up for them has led to TNA not getting my pay-per-view money which was the primary goal of this Impact.
East Coast J in the VIP Forum: Somehow, Impact inspires the kind of anger in me that I didn't think I was capable of having towards the week to week direction of a wrestling company. I've seen my share of bad wrestling shows over the years, but the things I have seen on the last two Impacts have been so unfathomably bad that I honestly just can't wrap my mind around the fact that it was actually done on purpose. TNA trying to tank their own promotion is the only thing that even makes sense to me when watching their television or hearing rumors like David Arquette, because it's just beyond my realm of comprehension that anyone could run their wrestling promotion like TNA currently is. WWE blows. I'm perfectly content continuing to skip their lame television, even moreso than ever now that John Cena is out and the future is pointing to another six months of Shawn Michaels and Triple H. The thing that makes me so frustrated about TNA, though, is the fact they are in the position that no new American upstart has been in in 20 years. They have a financial backer that was willing to take short term losses in the tens of millions of dollars, they have the strong support of the most advantageous cable network they could have possibly partnered with, and they have millions of disgruntled wrestling fans currently out there to draw from. TNA is being run like a private company by a bunch of washed up babies. I'm sure Vince Russo and Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantell are quite content blowing millions more of Bob Carter's money to prove to the world that their antiquated vision of wrestling (that fans have been actively rejecting for two years now) is money, but the part that makes me the angriest is the fact that EVERYONE (even ten year olds on Youtube) sees TNA digging their own grave and nobody in management does a thing about it. Vince Russo and Dutch Mantell deserve to be fired for being blockheaded idiots unwilling to step outside their comfort zone and realize we aren't living in the '80s and '90s anymore, Jeff Jarrett deserves to made a silent partner, and Dixie Carter deserves to be filing papers at Panda for her business sensibilities. The company just deserves to go out of business. They have literally every vital peice of the puzzle in place, but the people hired to put it together have wasted years trying to jam the corner pieces into the middle over and over again. They celebrate mediocrity. If I saw Bob Carter walking down the street tomorrow, I would tell him to pull the plug. It's a shame to see someone else's money and the whole roster's livelihoods being squandered by a management team that thinks they are genuises but can't even guarantee 25,000 buys for a PPV.
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